KNITTING UP DULWICH ROAD

Knitting this square led my poor grey cells a terrible dance, so it’s just as well I like the result. The leaf overlay is a soft rendering of the view through the park railings, and the changing colour bands are a fair re-creation of the ground-to-sky view at the entrance. Maybe it’s too much of a ‘picture’, but it’s a piece of fun and l’m looking forward to working up the colours for the other park seasons (see Layout 1 and the planning for this square).

Design of the piece eventually happened in the moment, as I saw part way up that the green needed to phase out completely to enable more sky. There are three sky colours in the top two repeats. It’s a shame that the shades of cloud grey (Basalt) and path grey (Peal Grey) are more similar in the finished work than they seemed as two balls of yarn, but you can’t win every game. I’ll take it.

Here is a reminder of the springtime park images that inspired my choices.

The final square in the main image is not quite as I knitted it. When the piece emerged from blocking, some of the stripes looked brutish, especially the daffodil yellow, so I introduced Swiss darning to get a better balance. I dotted green darning over yellow stitches here and there in repeats 2 and 3, a little more each time, to knock back the harshness. I also darned a very little of the palest cloud colour (Ice Green) into pattern repeat 3, to bring a hint of that light further down. Here’s the original. The final version is more nuanced, I think.

I’ll keep Swiss darning in mind as a way to get my shades right in the summer, autumn and winter versions of these squares when I get to them.

It really would help if I was more experienced with work of this complexity. The chart for this pattern would be tricky in any circumstances, but it was horrendous given that my colour bands were similar-but-not-actually-the-same as those published. I kept misreading the chart and then unpicking rows. Sometimes one row after the other. Often the same row more than once. But I guess this project is as good as school and I should welcome all it brings. When I get to the other park seasons I will help my little brain by making a full 48-stitch x 60-row chart using my chosen colours for each square before setting out.

Oh, and the finished square is actually the completion of Test 1. I did start a new version on bigger needles, but in the end it was knitting up too big, so I got the small test swatch back on the needles and went from there. It blocked perfectly to 7 inches.

PATTERN

I can’t post a pattern for this one as I knitted directly from the published ‘Ivy League’ chart (Vogue Knitting, p. 83), amending only the colours.

But here are the details I can share.

Yarns

• Ella Rae Cashmereno Sport, shade Basalt (3)
• Rico Ricorumi DK, shades Pearl Grey (4), Yellow (6) & Ice Green (37)
• Rowan Felted Tweed, shades Cucumber (K0016) & Alabaster (197)
• Rowan Summerlite DK, shade Mocha (451)
• Yarnsmiths Merino DK Heathers, shade Forest Glade (H3620)

Instructions for shaded bands

Using 3mm needles, cast on 48 stitches with Forest Glade

Knit the following 2-row bands.

• Pattern repeats 1-3
  • 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)
• Pattern repeat 4
  • Rows 1-2 Pearl Grey (path)
  • Rows 3-4 Cucumber (grass)
  • Rows 5-6 Mocha (still-bare trees)
  • Rows 7-8 Alabaster (sky)
  • Rows 9-10 Basalt (cloud)
  • Rows 11-12 Ice Green (cloud)
• Pattern repeat 5
  • Rows 1-2 Pearl Grey (path)
  • Rows 3-4 Mocha (still-bare trees)
  • Rows 5-6 Alabaster (sky)
  • Rows 7-8 Basalt (cloud)
  • Rows 9-10 Ice Green (cloud)
  • Cast off Alabaster (sky) (I cast off a little early as the knitting had exceeded 7 inches)