The Wickerwork Blanket is the other pattern I chose to knit using Universal Yarn Bella Chenille Big. Have you read my 3 tips on knitting with Bella Chenille Big yarn from yesterday’s post?
Sometimes patterns are marked as easy, intermediate, and difficult so you’re able to choose one appropriate to your skill level. I took a brief look at this pattern and thought it would be an intermediate and not pose any real issues for me.
Pattern photo from the Wickerwork Blanket pattern.
I should really know better than to hand the universe a straight line like that because, for the life of me, I could not wrap my mind around this Wickerwork Blanket pattern. The pattern itself isn’t that difficult – twelve rows of a six stitch pattern repeat. The patterned stitches do slip around a little bit, they shift forward and back, but really, the pattern isn’t that difficult!
Here are the first few rows of the chart. You can see how the repeated section shifts forward and backwards.
I know when you’re knitting a pattern like this it takes a few rows for it to show up. Until then, It usually looks like a tangled garbled mess, and that’s okay because it eventually resolves into a pattern.
For me, this wasn’t happening. Partly because I was using K2 at the beginning and the end of the pattern repeats and there weren’t enough stitches for them. The setup rows had a K2 at the beginning of the row and a K2 at the end of the row. This made the whole pattern “off.” Things weren’t lining up and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong until I started counting the stitches (of which there are many). When I realized I didn’t have the correct amount. I marked down where I made the change and immediately got rid of the K2s at the beginning and end of my rows. Perfect! Things were lining up and now making sense.
You can see the Wickerwork stitch pattern starting to form.
At that point, all the stitches were making sense and the repeats were either between the stitch markers or one-off (because I had to move the marker due to the “jog” in the pattern repeat). I’m also going to go ahead and tell you to use the stitch markers. Don’t be a hero: USE THE STITCH MARKERS. It’s a little bit of a pain in the neck because the pattern repeat keeps shifting forward and back, but they will help you see if you’re off-kilter way sooner than without them.
Use stitch markers and then you’ll know you’re headed down the wrong path and need to adjust before you do several inches, or feet, of pattern incorrectly.
The moral of this story is, make sure you’ve got the mental bandwidth or mojo you need in order to pay attention to this pattern. There are 19 repeats across the whole blanket and this is not something you can do while you’re half asleep. You’ve got to be on the ball and sharp like sewing scissors.
Yup, join me tomorrow for more knitting fun with Universal Yarn Bella Chenille Big yarn…
