#needleworkmonday | Top Down II - Lace Pattern

This week I started my next top-down cardigan, this time using some Rowan baby merino silk double knitting that I picked up in a sale.

I'm trying three variations on the original pattern:

• double knitting instead of chunky or bulky weight.
• a lower neckline.
• filling the panels with a lace pattern.

I found this free dictionary of lace stitches and chose St. John's Wort which is worked over six stitches and four rows. It looked very pretty and very simple.

Source One note of caution: it is important to work a purl row for every knit row to maintain the number of stitches. In the knit row, one stitch in each set of six stitches is slipped over the two knitted stitches following; in the purl row, there's a yarn over between these two stitches.

I did my swatchtape trying out double ribbing, stocking stitch and the St John's Wort lace stitch. I washed the swatch and let it dry naturally before using to work out the numbers of stitches I needed. In the pattern, I'm erring on the side of too few stitches rather than too many, as I'm sure my knitting rhythm will become even more relaxed than in the swatch. You can find out more about swatchtaping in a previous post.

This was my first experiment. This is for an ordinary round neck, transposing the calculations for bulky wool (72 stitches) to double knitting yarn (112 stitches). As this sample was just to check for size, I ddn't knit a neck edging, I just cast on the number of stitches I wanted for the pattern and started increasing with each knit row.

Straightaway, I hit two design questions:

• what kind of increases to use (kfandb; yarn over; M1) and
• whether and how to integrate increases into the pattern.

As it was a lace pattern, I thought I would try yarn over increases: interesting, but I didn't like them! I decided to stick with my tried and tested kfandb.

I couldn't make up my mind whether to keep the lace panel the same size for the length of the garment/sleeve, with stocking stitch as a border; whether to start the pattern repeats once I had six more stitches or whether to bring the increases into the pattern as soon as I could. In the end I decided I wanted the pattern to be all over.

Here's the final garment with the lower neckline, knitfandb increases and all over pattern. I used the previous sample to decide where to start the new neckline and how many stitches to cast on (192 stitches).

To give a bit more structure to the neckline, I cast on 180 pattern stitches (166 ribbing stitches and 14 button band stitches, 7 at either end, worked in garter stitch) and worked five rows in k2;p2 rib, with the first buttonhole worked in the third row (knit 3, yarn over, k2tog, k2).

In the sixth row, worked purlwise, I increased by 12 stitches, using the M1 method to make the 192 stitches to start the pattern increases. I'm interested how the increases will work out. At present, I'm increasing on every knit row.

I'm really pleased with how this is working so far. I was thinking that I would like to try a few samples with colour work - either in stripes, perhaps with fake Fair Isle patterning or intarsia. I've avoided intarsia until now as it looks complicated and I wonder how difficult it would be to maintain an even tension. On the other hand, Kaffe Fassett has made an art out of it:

Source Visit Kaffe's website for lots more gorgeous colour patterns.