King Charles Brocade

You know what I just realized. I haven't told you all about my hamster! This is outrageous since I've had her since my birthday, and I practically won't shut up about her to everyone else. So everyone meet Tobus:

Awe isn't she cute when she's not keeping me up at 3am 😾😾😾

She's being a bit of a devil right now by making a ton of noise when I'm tired. The combination of her LOUD drinking (seriously just lick the ball stop chewing the metal 😡😡😡) and assignment stress is keeping me up so I've decided to write part of a post to chill me out. So let's talk about hamsters! 🐹 Most owners say every hamster has a personality, if that's the case than little Tobus is a schizophrenic. One day she will be happy to climb all up my arm and sit on my head and just chill out; other days she won't let anyone near her. Sometimes she'll try and get out constantly (those are the days I let her free roam in the empty bedroom) other times she'll sit in her tube for hours just hanging out.

She's pretty much the ideal pet though, she took a while to tame because she gets antsy occasionally and likes to test things via nibble, but she's probably the only hamster in the world who actually uses the hut provided with the cage as a bed. I'm a bit worried about taking her home on the train but knowing her she'll probably just sleep through it!

Enough about the floof though you came here for knitting patterns! The king's Charles Brocade is a stitch for for royalty. Literally. If you aren't British you might not know about old Charlie 1 so I'll explain. Charles the first is probably the worst monarch in our history, now a lot of people will disagree with that and point to John or Henry VIII, (who in my opinion gets a bad rap as king) but neither of them managed to cock it up so royally (pardon the pun) as to actually end it. (albeit temporarily) The English civil war was between a bunch of guys in silly hats Vs a bunch of guys in silly helmets.
Perhaps unsurprisingly the guys with helmets won. Now the leader of the helmet dudes (Roundheads) was a bloke called Oliver Cromwell. He was a miserable bum, he literally banned Christmas (because puritans are boring) but in order to fully establish the monarchy was over he tried the king and cut his head off (he assumedly would have gone whole french Revolution on the royals but Charles son, confusingly also called Charles, fled the country) now how does this relate to knitting you ask? Well Charles I wore a vest in the tower of London, where he stayed during his trial, and that vest was knitted in this very nice brocade. That vest is kept in the museum that is in the tower. I don't think he was wearing it when he got his head got chopped off though.

Swatch is as follows: 4ply - 2.5mm needles - 37st x 54st - Longtail CON - Chain COFF

Pattern for working flat
CON multiple of 12st + 1
Row 1 - K1*P1,K9,P1,K1*
Row 2 - K1*P1,K1,P7,K1,,P1,K1*
Row 3 - K1*P1,P1,K5,(P1,K1)x2*
Row 4 - P1*(P1,K1)x2,P3,K1,P1,K1,P2*
Row 5 - K1*K2,(P1,K1)x3, P1,K3*
Row 6 - P1*P3,(K1,P1)x2,K1,P4*
Row 7 - K1*K4,P1,K1,P1,K5*
Row 8 - Row 6
Row 9 - Row 5
Row 10 - Row 4
Row 11 - Row 3
Row 12 - Row 2

Sooo it took A LOT longer to post this than I expected.... I'm literally going to write the next blog post with an update about the even longer gap. :)