Stranded Knitting Pattern for a Unicursal Valknut

[lwood]

After poking through a lot of the pre-existing patterns for stranded colorwork in knitting, I thought I would make one of my own for including in the upcoming Heathen Crafts, which may or may not be Our Troth III once we're done arguing about discussing it, a discussion that basically boils down to: "Everyone wants to be in Our Troth, nobody wants to be in 'yet another Troth book', and dammit now that I can generate new content I don't want to be in 'some other book'."

But that's for dr_beowulf, dpaxson, and I to thrash out, and ultimately dr_beowulf to decide. For you, Gentle Reader, I give this pattern, so that any knitter with a crazy Odin person in their life may decorate doodads appropriately:

Pattern originally sweated out by me on custom-generated graph paper, 8 st/10 rows to the inch, then transcribed to the small screen with the help of David Xenakis's Knitter's Symbols Fonts at 10 pt font w/10 pt leading (aka "line height" if you know web design jargon better than you know printers' jargon).

This pattern is 20 stitches wide by 20 rows tall, and is meant to be repeated around in a circle. It won't repeat vertically without some work.

I like unicursal (one-run) valknuts. You like tricursal? Design your own!

Technically, this is stranded knitting and fails at Fair Isle primarily due to the long horizontal lines, which means that one yarn has to twist around the other on the wrong side, instead of what any sensible Fair Islander (or, you know, EZ the Knit-Dís) would do--construct the pattern in a way that would avoid this. Like rune carving, knitting favors vertical lines and diagonals over horizontal lines--I suppose, if I really cared, I could revisit this from a rotation that would make this less of an issue, but this suits me for the moment.

-- Lorrie

Comments

[evilwenchesinc.livejournal.com]

Ooooh! Shiny!

[lwood.livejournal.com]

*grin* Glad you like it!

-- Lorrie

[neohippie.livejournal.com]

Neat!

Except for the moment I've still yet to attempt increasing and decreasing, so I don't know if knitting pretty pictures into things is something for me to do in the near future.

Heck, I don't even know how it's done! Horizontal stripes is about the only color pattern I can muster at the moment. Oh well.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Except for the moment I've still yet to attempt increasing and decreasing, so I don't know if knitting pretty pictures into things is something for me to do in the near future.

Honestly, after fiveish years of knitting, it's something I only picked up in the last few weeks as part of the practical research for Heathen Crafts. However, I did not find it difficult.

Heck, I don't even know how it's done! Horizontal stripes is about the only color pattern I can muster at the moment.

Unlike horizontal stripes, where one is only working with one color at a time, in two-color strand work, two threads are carried at all times, with one thread being worked and the other being held back as a "float" across the wrong side. While one may have more than two strands in a given row, this is generally not done, and indeed it has been theorized that stranded knitting was originally simply a way to incorporate more yarn for a warmer garment.

The tricks are these:

1. Finding some way to manage multiple threads: managing the yarn in English style on one hand and German on the other is often cited, but I find I can do better by holding both threads in different ways on one hand, and then keep knitting in my usual (German/Continental) way.


2. Keeping any "float" from being longer than five stitches or one inch, whichever is shorter. I broke this rule in the cited pattern: in these cases, the two threads should twist around each other every fivish/inchish stitches, to keep floats from becoming too long.


3. Keeping all floats at the right tension: a float should lie loosely across the wrong side: too loose and it snags, too tight and the work will pucker and be unloved.

Figuring these things out is why I made two scale-model sweaters before tackling something larger. ;)

For the third model sweater, I'm going to attempt intarsia cable in the round, for which, no doubt, some will call me mad.

-- Lorrie

[neohippie.livejournal.com]

Hmm, this makes slight bits of sense. I used to cross-stitch, so I'm thinking of how if you're not skipping too many squares, you can carry the thread over on the wrong side instead of ending the thread.

'Course, another way I know of to make pictures in things is to do stockinette stitch but have purls on the picture so they're sticking out in a relief sort of way. I wonder if that would work with this pattern.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

I used to cross-stitch, so I'm thinking of how if you're not skipping too many squares, you can carry the thread over on the wrong side instead of ending the thread.

Exactly! The tension questions are a little different in knitting, that's all.

'Course, another way I know of to make pictures in things is to do stockinette stitch but have purls on the picture so they're sticking out in a relief sort of way. I wonder if that would work with this pattern.

Damask knitting would work fine for this, feel no fret.

-- Lorrie

[neohippie.livejournal.com]

Oh, by the way, while we're on the subject of fiber crafts...

I am looking for a knitting pattern for a kewl swishy cloak... I'm thinking if something along the lines of the Elven cloaks from the LOTR movies. I can't find anything anywhere, I guess because wearing swishy cloaks is kind of a weird thing to do. Or maybe knitting is not the best method to create such a thing, though it's the only fiber craft I know at the moment.

Just thought you might have ideas, being a fellow weird pagan type person.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Well, I know how you could do it...whether you'd want to is something else.

The swirly cloaks I've seen in real live aren't big rectangles, they're pie-wedges. I can explain how to construct one of those out of light woolen coating (or whatever) easily enough; the pattern involves making a compass (the geometry kind, not the navigational kind) and using it to mark the pattern pieces.

However, you could get the same effect with the sort of short-row method used to make pie-wedge (aka Pi, etc) shawls, only with more (WAY more) yarn.

So: you could, and that's how you could, but I'd recommend sewing over knitting for this.

-- Lorrie

[neohippie.livejournal.com]

I'd recommend sewing over knitting for this.

Hmm, I thought so.