Day

July 27, 2010

27
Jul
2010

Climbing Trellis

Climbing Trellis is now available for purchase as a download, for $3.00 either on Ravelry, or directly through the blog by clicking the buy now button.

Climbing Trellis is a fast and simple knit. The shape is created using the slant that comes from offsetting vertical lines of decreases and yarn-overs. This technique creates a scarf that has a zig-zaged rather than a straight edge, and a fabric where diagonal solid lines are placed next to diagonal lines of yarn-overs. This movement as well as the play that the negative and positive spaces have, brings to mind the image of vines climbing a trellis. The solidness of both the vine and the trellis juxtaposed with the spaces between the trellis supports and the vines.

This is a fairly intuitive and easy to memorize pattern, consisting almost entirely of left leaning and right leaning decreases, yarn-overs, and purl stitches. All patterning is worked on the right side of the piece, with all the wrong sides being “rest rows,” this does mean that the piece has a “wrong side” and a “right side,” and is not fully reversible.

Climbing Trellis

Climbing Trellis is the first in a collection named To Spin, To Knit, To Dream. This collection is a series of knitting patterns originally knit out of handspun. Designed to make the most out of a finite amount of yarn these patterns are designed to allow a knitter to easily modify the pattern in order to make the most out of the yarn available. These patterns work great for handspun, luxury and vacation yarns, or simply a yarn that has been discontinued.

In the case of Climbing Trellis the easiest way to use up every last bit of yarn is to simply keep knitting until the very end of the ball, ending with a wrong side row, and then bind off. While this may put you at the very middle of a zig or a zag, it does mean using up all of your available yarn. If ending in the middle of a zig or zag doesn’t sit well with you, then the pattern can easily be ripped back to the end of the last full zig, and you can bind off there.

Yarn: 240 yards (219 meters), of a light fingering or heavy lace weight yarn

Needles: 1 pair of US 5s (3.75mm) straights or circulars can be used

Gauge: 7sts/inch; 9 rows/inch in stockinette stitch

Blocked Dimensions: 9″x45″

Skill Used:
cable cast on (though another loose cast on could be used)
binding off
knitting and purling
yarn overs
knitting two together
slip, slip, knit
blocking lace