Arabic Diamonds

            Well I've had an exciting day, I finished two swatches, managed to get a ninetails and a ditto in pokemon go, my bf's parent's have finally organised us going to france, and I'm going on holiday to weymouth in two days so I am very excited.

            First the swatches, I'm nearing the end of the ribbing chapter before we reached it on this blog which is ideal I have about 4 left so it looks like you'll be close to where I am when I start the slipped stitches chapter (hooray!). Secondly the ninetails and ditto; I don't know if I've been particularly unlucky but I have managed to somehow miss every ditto out there, (one sec the tv is super loud mum's left it on bleeding hochanda -_-)  today me and mum went out to walk up a few candies from our buddies and hatch some eggs as it's the last day of PokeFest. I had to walk 1km more in order to get a ninetails so I decided once mum had gone in to quickly zip up to the local park and back on the jog there I thought "wouldn't it be funny if I caught a ditto now mum's gone in?" and low and behold a rattata appeared I caught it and literally sprinted home upon it transforming into a ditto. 

Clearly the best Icecream.

            The france thing, I have only been to continental europe once in my life, my parents prefer to go on holiday within britain (which is fine I love weymouth but we'll get to that later) this means the only time I left the uk was for a day trip to belgium with school back in 2009, it is somewhat expensive but I should be able to afford it if I'm frugal next term. And lastly, weymouth, our annual holiday to the best holiday place in the uk, (yeah I said it) I am excited to show the bf a Rossi's ice cream (also the best) as he LOVES icecream.

On with the stitch, like yesterday's stitch the arabic diamond is traditionally done in the eastern knitting style and features twisted stitches. The pattern provided by barbra uses regular stitches, however it is also easily changes simply by either purling into the back loop or knitting into the back loop. The swatch below is knitted using the non-traditional regular switches.

Swatch is as follows: 4ply - 2.5mm needles - 33st x 48st - Longtail CON - Chain COFF

Pattern for working flat (non eastern version):
CON - multiple of 8st + 1

Row 1 - *P*

Row 2 - *K*

Row 3 - P4*K1,P7* end P4

Row 4 - K4*P1,K7* end K4

Row 5 - P3*K3,P5* end P3

Row 6 - K3*P3,K5* end K3

Row 7 - P2*K5,P3* end P2

Row 8 - K2*P5,K3* end K2

Row 9 - Row 5

Row 10 - Row 6

Row 11 - Row 3

Row 12 - Row 4

Well that's it for today, and likely tomorrow, as we're very busy preparing for our holiday. Hopefully I'll get some knitting done on the drive down to weymouth but I won't be writing up a blog post until we get to the caravan, because I get horribly car sick and it's worse with reading. Sadly I've no time to set up another post tonight so you'll all have to wait. Luckily we're heading towards several pretty looking stitches so patience will pay off! Happy Knitting!