As you know, I’ve been working on my knitting: getting back into it…just been taking advantage of the fact that knitting is a relaxing and portable form of crafting.
Something to keep me centered and help me get back to me.
Therefore, I’ve knitted at MOPS meetings, toddler birthday parties, while waiting at the doctors office, and of course while rewatching Downton Abbey/Call The Midwife/The West Wing on Netflix or Amazon Prime.
But, I’ve added writing a pattern into my knitting time. And since I’ve been trying to do both—writing and knitting said pattern—it has taken me longer then I’d like.
That is also because I didn’t really sit down and plan my pattern before I started. I just thought: I’m a good knitter, I don’t need to really plan this out.
But, as usual
I W A S W R O N G.
Therefore, one night last week, I sat down with my trusty Field Guide to Knitting by Jackie Pawlowski and planned.
However, first I needed to start with my ‘Must List’ to aid in using up my bars of soap:
• knit — no explanation needed
• cotton — I have a TON of cotton-but that’s a future blog post
• enclosed — to hold a bar of soap
• a patterned ‘body’ — to aid in exfoliation, something subtle
My pattern musts were:
• two different patterns, one for above the i-cord and a different one for the body
• only one would be a pattern I’d done before
• I wanted to be a tad bit fancy
I also wanted to use my new Knit Pick Try It Needle Set
and thusly try the magic loop method of knitting.
Oh yeah…I want to share the pattern with all of you!
Now, since I’d done several different iterations of a soap sack kinda without a pattern, I had a rough estimate of how many stitches I’d need to have to accommodate some of the bars of soap I had.
So I turned to my Field Guide to Knitting (you can actually see the whole book here-gotta love Google!).
I did know that I wanted to use the honeycomb pattern-it’s one of my favorites. It’s also the one I had been messing with in my BP «before planning» sack and therefore learned from my mistakes and knew how many stitches I needed to make the body correctly-56 sts.
Now all I needed to do was find something I liked for the top-above the i-cord.
I considered a leaf edging—but I’ve done it before «I can’t remember what on».
I decided on the large bell cast-on (p264). It’s kind of perfect for the large honeycomb which required a denomination of 8 stitches for the pattern and although the large bell starts with considerably more stitches, it ends with a denomination close to 8 stitches.
So now came all the math…if you didn’t know, making a knitting pattern requires math.
And after a week of concentrated knitting—mostly because the the honeycomb has a pattern that requires holding stitches in front and in back, and remembering where you are in that pattern can be hard when your husband is asking you questions about what just happened on The West Wing—I finished it!
And have a pattern to share with you.
