A Stitch a Day (31st March)

Here is a third colour version of the current fabric:

A Stitch a Day (30th March)

This is a second colour version for yesterday's fabric:

A Stitch a Day (29th March)

This is a new fabric, of the usual kind. It lies flat and is not suitable for knitting machines, as the last one was.

A Stitch a Day (28th March)

I spent Earth Hour today with a candle light dinner. Whilst it is not such an unusual experience, as we have power failures several times a year, switching off the light today was a conscious decision.

I always think at such occasion about the many centuries during which people had no electricity, no light during the dark hours. I find the long nights during winter hard even with light. But not so long ago people did live without electricity at all. Still they managed to write the most amazing texts, manuscripts, and built the most beautiful buildings.

Many years ago I read "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco. I couldn't understand the fascination with jewels and precious stones of some of the actors he described, until some time later I visited the Pfalzkapelle in Aachen, where I saw some of the artefacts, embellished by these coloured stones, shown in a rather dark room, lighted, as if lit by candle light.

In his Art and Beauty of the Middle Ages Eco wrote:

" We have seen how medieval theorists looked upon beauty as something intelligible, a kind of mathematical quality, ... But when it came to their experience of colour, - of gems, materials, flowers, light and so on - the Medievals revealed instead a most lively feeling of the purely sensuous properties of things....

Their love of colour and light ... was a spontanous reaction .... The beauty of colour was everywhere felt to be beauty pure and simple, something immediately perceptible and indivisible ..."

One doesn't have to wonder why, I suppose.

Here is the pattern for today, the last in this series. Only two colours in this one, more colour sequences are possible:

A Stitch a Day (27th March)

Here is yet another version:

A Stitch a Day (26th March)

This is still the same fabric, in a further colour version:

A Stitch a Day (20th to 25th March)

More work done in the garden.

So I load the patterns for the missed days up here in one post.

Now, these are in some ways different to the patterns that we had here before. I was trying to find patterns that are suitable for knitting machines, because these can't do the 4 elements in one row. They need special devices for garter stitch and ribbing, as they normally only knit, and don't purl. I learned that with these special devices slip stitches are not possible. So only a subset of the possible patterns of my technique is possible, that is the one consisting of only knit and slip stitches.

Therefore the right part of the charts below, which is normally for knitting in the round, should be possible to work for knitting machines.

These fabrics also curl. I wondered how I manage to scan the swatches. I found out it works if I let their edges curl "around" a piece of card board. It's not perfect though, that's why I hope you don't mind if some appear at an angle here. It wasn't possible to scan the other side, but that's not really necessary, as these fabrics do have a right and wrong side, I'd say. The wrong side looks a bit like in fair isle or mosaic knitting.

They are similar to mosaic knitting, but not the same. You do not, like in mosaic knitting, always have two corresponding rows.

As always, different colour sequences of rows yield different patterns for the same structure, and that is how the patterns below emerged.

I forgot to mention another difference to the usual patterns. Here one should cast on loosely. The bottom edge tends to curl upwards. A loose cast on diminishes this.

20th March

21st March

22nd March

23rd March

24th March

25th March

A Stitch a Day (19th March)

I'm still with the same fabric, and like yesterday the pattern appearing on both sides is the same in this colour sequence, just that colours are inverted.

A Stitch a Day (18th March)

This is yesterday's fabric, in another colour sequence. Again, the same pattern appears on both sides, albeit with colours reversed this time:

A Stitch a Day (17th March, St. Patrick's Day)

No, I didn't go to a St. Patrick's Day parade today. I actually never did. I worked in the garden and enjoyed the great spring weather there. I was out again there in the last days, and it's so good after the long winter inside.

We had the coldest January and driest February since so many years. Well, I didn't notice the latter when I walked over the sheep's pasture then, it still felt like a huge sponge, and despite that I tried to make myself as light as possible, every step left a deep mark. We have this waterlogged gley soil, where water can only evaporate later in the year, it doesn't drain. As Michael Harding put it in his column in the Irish Times last week: "Leitrim is a floating sod of daub".

Now, whilst the old trees around our house make a good shelter belt against wind, they also cast a lot of shadow over the garden. They send down lots of debris, needles and leaves, and moss grows everywhere in this damp and shady atmosphere. This has to be cleaned up after winter. Part of it I did today.

I've sown tomatoes in the house a while ago, other seeds meanwhile, and there will be more to come. The tomatoes and peppers have their first leaves. It's always exciting to sow seeds, and wait for the little seedlings to emerge. I'm also every year amazed about the various distinctive shapes of the seeds of different plants, as well as about the shapes of their first leaves when they appear.

Those little tomato seedlings: you wouldn't believe that they will grow into huge plants in the tunnel and bear loads of tomatoes later in the year - well, last year there weren't loads. We had no summer. Lets see how this garden year turns out...

Here is a new fabric. It looks the same on both sides:

A Stitch a Day (16th March)

I feel here texture is more important than colour:

A Stitch a Day (15th March)

Below is the result of a third colour sequence for the fabric of the last two days. Isn't it amazing?

A Stitch a Day (14th March)

This is the result of a second colour sequence for yesterday's fabric:

A Stitch a Day (13th March)

This fabric that makes some nice borders. Here is the first one:

A Stitch a Day (12th March)

This is a third colour version of the current fabric. I like the funny shapes that appear with it: