Stall Pattern

Here’s a little bit of late-night updating this week. I’ve been knitting most of the day — about 7 hours I’d say. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that Vivian has any place here today. She’s been put on the back burner. For one, it’s warm out! She’s out-of-season, and I’m not too anxious to finish her. Secondly, I’ve got some commissions that are taking a priority. That’s what I’m going to show you today.

I’ve taken on a commission for kilt hose tops, but these I’m particularly proud of. My client came to me with a sample that had been machine-knitted overseas. It is particularly easy to machine knit intarsia in the round — not so easy by hand. Some people say it’s impossible. Others say it can only be done with a small section of intarsia on a solid ground. Still, others say sure, it can be done, but you need to have a seam involved. I say no to all that rubbish — I set out to prove that solid intarsia can indeed be done in the round. And that is exactly what I achieved. The kilt-hose pictured started with an intarsia section, followed by a plain knitting section, which was then doubled up and joined together to create a double-thick cuff. Now I am on the second diamond pattern. Once finished, some diagonal lines will be duplicate-stitched across, giving you a true argyle feel. I will be posting about my findings for intarsia in the round at a later date. I want to work out any possible kinks before I go about telling people how to do it!

I am also working on some lace. Fairly simple, nothing complicated — easy to memorize. The stitch count is rapidly increasing. I’m somewhere around 240 right now. The goal is to get to in the 380 ballpark range. The pattern my client chose is Twin Leaf by Jojoland, with their recommended yarn, Jojoland Cashmere. If you can’t figure out the growth pattern on this pattern, it’s ridiculously back-and-forth between written pattern and charted pattern. I despise that combination! However, I figured it out and this pattern can be done pretty blindly. The yarn is nice, though. No complaints there — super soft, super warm, and just a touch fragile.