KNITTING UP DULWICH ROAD

I really hoped I’d slam dunk this one and this ‘test’ would end up as the final, but the piece was knitting up a little tight so I cast off pretty quickly. Even with just 14 rows knitted, you can see the leaf pattern developing. It becomes more obvious as the fabric grows.

Resources

• Yarns
  • Rowan Felted Tweed, shades Cucumber (K0016) & Alabaster (197)
  • Rowan Summerlite DK, shade Mocha (451)
  • Rico Ricorumi DK, shades Pearl Grey (4), Yellow (6)
  • Yarnsmiths Merino DK Heathers, shade Forest Glade (H3620)
• 3mm knitting needles

What I did

• Cast on 48 stitches (2 pattern repeats across), using 3mm needles
• Followed the 12-row published pattern using the following colours, until casting off after Row 14
  • Leaf overlay Forest Glade
  • Rows 1-2 Pearl Grey (path)
  • Rows 3-4 Cucumber (grass)
  • Rows 5-6 Yellow (daffodils)
  • Rows 7-8 Cucumber (grass)
  • Rows 9-10 Mocha (still-bare trees)
  • Rows 11-12 Alabaster (sky)

As I said in the planning for this square, the idea is to give a sense of the field of vision, with more grass at the bottom and more sky at the top, and I think this little swatch shows it can work.

I chose to use 3mm needles over 48 stitches because the Yarnsmiths and Ricorumi yarns that dominate here are more substantial than the Felted Tweed used for Brockwell Lido Wall, which is 53 stitches across, knitted using 2.75mm needles. Unfortunately, this new swatch was coming up a little short of 7″ across the whole width, and the first 12 rows were also missing the target needed to hit 7″ in height with 5 full pattern repeats (60 rows). Sigh.

I could probably have stretched the square in blocking, but with reduced give in stranded work I didn’t want to rely on it. Time to leave this one before I couldn’t bear to ditch the work.

For Test 2

• 3.25mm knitting needles – no need for any bigger; I was only just short and may even need to pull the work in a little when blocking
• I had been intending to run a 12-band pattern repeat across 24 rows (see planning), but in the course of this short test I changed my mind. Instead, I will run the 12 rows above 3 times, then change the top two as follows:
  • repeat 4, no daffodils and 2 different sky colour bands
  • repeat 5, still no daffs, just one band of grass and 3 sky colour bands
• I might try tapering off the leaf overlay towards the top, to give the idea of looking over the gate, but it could look boring. Or more likely, I could fail to work out how to taper the pattern effectively, leading to dog’s dinner.