KNITTING UP DULWICH ROAD

The chart I worked out last month works! Go me. I ran the test over just the middle rows where the window shape appears and I reckon the result in the knitted piece above does a pretty good job of mimicking the real deal.

I can now be confident using the chart to make the whole square, although things will be very different following a major ‘Doh!’ that hit me while knitting the test. First, the reflection.

Resources

• Yarns
  • Rowan Felted Tweed, shades Clay (177), Shadow (224) and Carbon (159)
  • Rowan Kidsilk Haze, shade Lustre (686)
• 3.25mm knitting needles

What I did

• Cast on 45 stitches using 3.25mm needles.
• Followed the chart using stranded work, carrying all yarns across each row.
• Used Clay and Lustre as a single strand to knit the background.
• Used Carbon to knit the inner shape and Shadow for the outer lines.

I said in my planning notes that I’d never done three-colour stranded work and it really showed because my tension was waaaay too loose at the start. Got it right in the top section and, by the magic of block-and-press, there’s no obvious difference in size. So, all good, I guess.

But I did not enjoy knitting the swatch. I usually love learning a new skill, but I’m not the most gifted with stranded knitting in the first place and I was out of my depth here. Doesn’t matter how many videos I watch of calm knitters with genius fingers showing me how to manipulate the yarns for their stranded work, I cannot get it. Not even when they slow their work right down so the movements are blindingly clear. My fingers just won’t go there. I always end up wishing I’d learned how to knit from my Swiss mum rather than in my English primary school classroom; so many videos show that her European left-handed style makes stranded work much easier than my right-handed throwing. And, yes, of course I could learn it now. But don’t make me.

Anyhow, my technique for two-colour stranded knitting isn’t too bad these days, but that third yarn ball was never in the right place throughout this test and I wasn’t looking forward to knitting the full square. Or to those I have planned for other St Jude’s details that will use a similar look.

And then came that major ‘Doh!’ What on earth was I doing knitting this square as stranded work when it would be an easy breeze using intarsia? Wouldn’t challenge my lumpy fingers, wouldn’t use so much yarn, wouldn’t make such a thick piece of fabric. And I wouldn’t even need to load bobbins for the intarsia. Loose lengths of Carbon and Shadow would do for the features and the odd cheeky bit of stranding would avoid having too many of those. Hah!

For Test 2 / final

• Knit the square using intarsia. Doh!!
• Use 3mm needles. Even when I’d got my tension right the dimensions were coming up big in this test, and it was still doing that across a small swatch of plain stocking stitch using Clay and Lustre.

Such a relief to be knitting again. Hand still a little stiff, but I could wait no longer!