The Trinity Stitch....

..is my Bitch!

My lovely Gallifrey Gal Pal & fellow knitter, the Amazing Anne, gave me a scarf at the Gallifrey One Convention as a present this year, done in what is called the Trinity (or Raspberry/Blackberry) Stitch. She explained it to me several times & I remember being terrorized at the apparent complexity of the pattern. Even if I hadn't been so drunk (& ooh lawd was I drunk!) the idea of knit, purl, knit all in one stitch would have had my mind blown.

I have been wanting to tackle this ever since then, but I was kind of intimidated & stuck to the garter-stitch patterns I knew in the meantime, mostly in order to replenish my rapidly-dwindling supply of hats, which were selling briskly at those Art Markets.

Well, now that I have some free time from the med skool I decided to give this terrifying stitch a shot. I looked the stitch up on Youtube & found several helpful videos. This is the one closest to what I did to make the swatch:

http://youtu.be/vAAqMPIfJtk

I also had to look at a couple of videos to remind me how to purl, but you can find those on your own.

When you Google this stitch, all the patterns tell you to cast on a multiple of 4 stitches & some advise to cast on 2-4 stitches as selvedge. I added 2 stitches to 20 and did a garter selvedge (that is, I knitted the 1st & last stiches of each row to form a stable edge) on the swatch below, which was knitted on size 11 (8 mm) needles, using Bernat Baby Blue Baby Blanket yarn:

This is the front, or bobbled side

This is the back, or flat side.

As you can see, using a different weight yarn (& probablly different sized needles) has produced a slightly different sort of bobbled effect here than in the scarf.

As I got started on this, I had to remind myself not to be scared a few times. The fear evaporated pretty quickly when I began to trust the pattern & I finished row after row. Something strange started to happen then:  I could hear the Amazing Anne's voice, see her face in my mind's eye, explaining each maneuver, tacitly affirming her belief in my talent. I got that exhilirated at learning feeling that I'd almost forgotten about! Now I'm really excited at using this stitch in my next project....perhaps a baby blanket, done on larger needles? A scarf? 

Who can say?

Whatever it is, I owe a big thank you to the Amazing Anne for the inspiration!!


Ooh & before I forget, this is the basic pattern (does not include selvedge stitches), taken from:

http://www.knittingonthenet.com/stitches/trinityst.htm

Multiple of 4

Row 1 (RS): p
Row 2: *k1, p1, k1 into next stitch, p3tog; rep from *
Row 3: p
Row 4: *p3tog, k1, p1, k1 into next stitch; rep from *

Hot off the Needles...

I feel like it has taken me a year to finish this baby blanket/throw!

The pattern calls for you to cast on 80 stitches with very large needles (I used 11 US circular needles), knit for 7 rows, then transfer to smaller needles (I think mine were 4 US circular) for 7 rows, alternating back & forth until desired length, casting off from the larger set of needles.

I initially tried to do this double-stranded, thinking it would go faster, & that was fine on the larger needles. But ooh lawd what a mistake it was when I got to the smaller ones. I think I knitted 2 rows & it was so tight & so hard to work with that I put it aside for awhile & eventually pulled it back & worked it single-stranded, which was MUCH easier.

I used 3 balls of Bernat "Summer Hours" (AKA Mardi Gras Colors) yarn to make this little beauty, which measures approximately 33" x 22" It is machine washable on cold, dry on medium!

Let me know what you think!

These images don't do the beauty of the ribbing justice

https://www.etsy.com/listing/126378463/ribbed-unisex-baby-blanket-in-mardi-gras