English Diamond Block Pattern

So I've been busy. And by busy I mean insane exam period happened and I temporarily became fully nocturnal thanks to two back to back exams. Seriously wtf is the organiser doing? Every semester my exams have been well spaced and not stressful at all but oh it's the third years fuck those guys it's not like these exams are LITERALLY the most important, and stressful exams of their degree! Despite the HORRIBLE organisation (and one of the exams being a total awful curve-ball) It's gone OK. Well enough that I'm still on track (OK mum! Don't freak out!)

And I also ended up totally wasting the two weeks I had off (because my exams were so smashed together I got an extra free week I guess) on Final Fantasy XV, great game, the combat system is brilliant... or at least it is when there isn't a tree or hedge screwing with the camera! And for once the story wasn't pants-on head ridiculous, it does have a very weak middle act given one of the characters is criminally under developed, but I would honestly say there hasn't really been as brilliant a villain since Kefka in final fantasy VI, without spoilers - the villains motivations are pure brilliance.

Tobus has been busy driving me insane, over Christmas she escaped once and chewed a massive hole in her bin cage lid this wouldn't be so bad here because I don't own a cat unlike my parents. Since she's gotten back to aber she's chewed all the runners off  her wheel (that I made for her), figured out how to climb on the wheel to climb on the lid so the second box has to be permanently shut, but of course once she figured out how to get on the lid she immediately ran around the room she's in. I though this wouldn't be a big deal because she's not in our bedroom anymore we keep her in the empty room in the house, (it isn't being rented out right now) so the only stuff in there is a wardrobe and a desk. Now I blocked the bottom of the wardrobe up with books because it's a small enough gap for a hamster but not small enough for an arm so I didn't want her getting under there because I wouldn't be able to get her out. Obviously the first thing she did when she got out? She chewed up the corner of a book to get under the wardrobe -_- RIP rogues anthology. Luckily she's easily lured with food and no harm was done, but now if I let her free roam all she wants is to get under the wardrobe so I'm considering breaking up the old damaged bed frame for the wood slats.

Anyway on with today's stitch English Diamond Block pattern, whew that's a mouthful. Another one Barbra doesn't really say much about we can at least learn from the name it's from England but that's really the extent of the knowledge I can find which is pretty unsurprising given how generic it is, it's just another variation on purl welts really and a pretty meh appearance one at that.

Swatch is as follows: 4ply - 2.5mm needles - 33st x 40st - Longtail CON - Chain COFF

Pattern for working flat:
CON multiple of 14st + 5
Row 1 - P5*K4,P1,K4,P5*
Row 2 - K5*P3,K3,P3,K5*
Row 3 - K7*P5,K9* end last repeat K7
Row 4 - P6*K7,P7* end last repeat P6
Row 5 - K5*P9,K5*
Row 6 - Row 4
Row 7 - Row 3
Row 8 - Row 2

And that's all for this post I'll be posting this in the future *oooh spook past blogging* but I'll be continuing to write several posts and queue them up for the next few days so hopefully this will make up for the several month hiatus I've had. (seriously third year university is HARD work I have 2 less modules this term so hopefully I can write more) Good luck and Happy Knitting! :)

Triangular and Pennant Stitch

my life rn

            Oh no It's been a whole week! In my defense I will say I hacent been fleeling great, I won't
super go into it because 1) It's gross 2) It's a periodic thing so if I say I'm not feeling well you ccan all assume I'm suffering because sometimes my organs like to not work properly. I'm getting a bit impatient at the minute because Cook Serve Delicious 2 is coming out in around 3 hours and I've had to wait an ectra 3 weeks and ITS KILLING ME, also student finance has decided to be stupid and take their website down at basically the worst possible time (seriously it's a week before uni starts and the site is down for maintinance bloody idiots shouldve waited until at least mid-term) so I cant preint out my declaration form and it's stressing me out tbh. AND my holiday to majorca is on saturday so I am getting excited for that especially now it's getting bleeding cold in the day. Oh and there was a powercut today. That was fun. And I really need to pack. There's a lot of stress right now.

            Anyway as a sorry for not posting for a week I'm doing two stitches today, although to be fair they are very similar and would probably have been two shorter posts otherwise. Anyway Triangular and Pennant stitch both have a tendancy to form a pleated look if left unblocked. Pennant tends to do this more than triangular stitch, or rather it makes more defined looking lines vertically in fact the effect is so strong it's sometimes called pennant pleating. Triangular stitch is often also called mock kilting which strongly suggests it's orgininal development being in Scotland or Ireland. Blocking tends to lose the plating so I would suggest doing a swatch of these before using it, as it tends to draw in a little, particularly towards the ends, because of the pleating. Because blocking ruins it they can be hard to predict.

Triangular stitch

Swatch is as follows - 4ply - 2.5mm needles - 35st x 42st - Longtail CON -Stretchy COFF

Pattern for working flat:
CON multiple of 7st
Row 1 - *P6,K1*
Row 2 - *P2,K5*
Row 3 - *P4,K3*
Row 4 - *P4,K3*
Row 5 - *P2,K5*
Row 6 - *P6,K1*

In theory you could broaden this stitch by editing the pattern only slightly, a nice pattern for a skirt.

Pennant Stitch
(blurgh it's slightly blurry I should really re-take this.
I may need an update)

Swatch is as follows - 4ply - 2.5mm needles - 30st x 36st - Longtail CON - Stretchy COFF

Pattern for working flat:
CON multiple of 6st
Row 1 - *K1,P5*
Row 2 - *K4,P2*
Row 3 - *K3,P3*
Row 4 - *K2,P4*
Row 5 - *K5,P1*
Row 6 - *K2,P4*
Row 7 - *K3,P3*
Row 8 - *K4,P2*

Both of these patterns have common repeats, so they are quick to pick up. And because the pattern chages slightly every row it's not a chore to knit. Again this would make a nice skirt.



Right that's it for today I'm off to impatiently wait for Cook Serve Delicious 2. At least I can impatiently wait with other people on the Dev's Dischord. This is where it doesn't get released until late into the night and I'm waiting up till 3am only to download it and be too tired to play. I swear half the games I wait for I can never end up playing as soon as I would like. See Persona 5. Anyway have fun with the two patterns, we're heading onto some very nice, very old ,overall patterns soon (yay brocades) so nothing complicated in our future for now. Happy Knitting!

A real pleated kilt

Pinnacle Chevron

Current paint project,
she's taken about a week so far and still isnt finished.

            Oh no, I didn't keep my promise of posting yesterday! And no one is surprised. Look I just
forget when I'm on holiday and because my laptops doing "something spooky" as my brother would put it, it's a real PITA to post when I'm here, I keep leaving it upstairs and it's annoying to climb three flights just to get my laptop down. Not only that but because my phone is being weird with instagram at the minute some of the pictures I've taken need to be edited again on my laptop which again, is testing my already lazy nature. I've also been doing very little actual knitting since I got here mostly because Persona 5 partly because stellaris and partly because a bunch of my mini's arrived and I've been painting. (Yes I paint mini's, yes that's like the lamest thing anyone can do, but really I only do it for display/I like painting, not for actual wargaming unlike the BF who is a much bigger dork than I am) My problem is I have about 20,000 different hobbies and I tend to have very intense periods of doing one a lot more than the others then I get distracted and drop it. I procrastinate my hobbies with more hobbies! For example the above paint project is actually a "side project" for my main project which is a giant dragon. And I havent started it as I can't decide on a colour scheme I've narrowed it down to either, black and blue, black and red, or white and blue. Buuuut I'm sure I'll figure it out when I get back to uni. I'm actually staying here longer than expected as the BF doesn't have to go home next week and I didn't want to abandon him to a house with only J*** (one of our housemates, he's fine but the BF wanted to have a longer holiday with me) in it.

Anyway on with todays stitch. Pinnacle chevron. One of the prettiest patterns in the first chapter (possibly beaten by seeded chevron which is next up) it's a very nice overall texture. Because it's basis is a broken 2x2 ribbing the pattern also has a lot of lateral stretch. If left unblocked or blocked lightly the ribs tend to twist slightly, (a result of the moving purl stitches) and resembles a mock ribbing rounding out naturally, defining the chevron.

Swatch is as Follows: 4ply - 2.5mm needles - 37st x 48st - Longtial CON - Chain COFF

Pattern for working flat:
CON multiple of 18st + 1
Rows 1 & 3 - P1 *(K2,P2)x2, K1, (P2,K2)x2, P1*
Rows 2 & 4 - K2 *(P2,K2)x2, P1, (K2,P2)x2, K1*
Rows 5 & 7 - P1 *P1, K2, P2, K2, P3, (K2,P2)x2*
Rows 6 & 8 - K1*K1, P2, K2, P2, K3, (P2,K2)x2*
Rows 9 & 11 - Rows 2 & 4
Rows 10 & 12 - Rows 1 & 3
Rows 13 & 15 - Rows 6 & 8
Rows 14 & 16 - Rows 5 & 7

I've added spacing to this pattern as I think it makes it easier to read. I will be doing more complex patterns this way from now on to save your eyeballs. This pattern is another cyclical one, (like the chevron pattern) where the second half is the inverse of the first half. This pattern is also a good one if you want to practise "reading" your knitting as it's pretty obvious is you make a mistake. Anyway hopefully I will remember to do another blog post sooner rather than later. This week has been a pretty good test of how often I will post when I'm at university, as the only difference is I'll be doing lectures rather than just playing persona 5 and painting. I will likely post less if I have a lot of work to do (obviously) but twice a week is a pretty good rate for most blogs anyway. Good Luck and Happy Knitting!

Chevron Pattern

I'm the good guy. Right?!

            Ah! How has it been so long since the last post?! I blame Persona 5, that game is

Me right now.

ADDICTIVE. But it still has the bs gameover mechanic if your main character dies in battle, why can't my teammates use a revive bead on me? Why can't I restart the battle rather than being forced to lose an hour of progress like it does with boss battles? Basically I'd been grinding for an hour in order to beat the second palace boss and a whole load of crap happened that was beyond my control. I ambushed a shadow in a room full of shadows, excellent it's practically impossible to lose in a battle if you ambush an enemy, I win fight end but then another enemy joins the battle (this can happen if there were other shadows nearby) Enemy happens to be faster than everyone in my team, fine it gets one turn then I can weakspot and talk my way out of it. Nope. Lucky crit on another character gets another attack, weakspots my main character (before I have the opportunity to change persona) gets another attack, then just hits my main character again (of course it didn't go for anyone else) and kills them. I lose an hour of grinding for sucessfully ambushing an enemy. Great. That's why I've stopped for now as I'm a little salty.

Enough about my salt and on with the pattern that you've all been waiting patiently for. Speaking of patterns I've completly filled the second book now and I'm onto the slip stitches so we won't be out of options when we've finished the basic ribbings. The chevron pattern is formed of transverse zigzags, that we saw earlier in the parallelograms of the vandyke pattern. In the second half of the pattern the first halves odd rows, become the even rows and visa versa. The pattern if left unblocked tends to ruche up in a zigzag pattern meaning although the overall texture is flat if worked in a large yarn it would make an interesting wavy blanket.

This picture shows off the natural wave better than the distinct pattern, likely because of the tweedy yarn I used

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

Pattern for working flat:
CON multiple of 8st + 1
Row 1 - K1*P7,K1*
Row 2 - P1 *K7,P1*
Row 3 - K2*P5,K3* end P5,K2
Row 4 - P2*K5,P3* end K5,P2
Row 5 - K3*P3,K5*end P3,K3
Row 6 - P3*K3,P5* end K3,P3
Row 7 - K4*P1,K7* end P1,K4
Row 8 - P4*K1,P7* end K1,P4
Row 9 - Row 2
Row 10 - Row 1
Row 11 - Row 4
Row 12 - Row 3
Row 13 - Row 6
Row 14 - Row 5
Row 15 - Row 8
Row 16 - Row 7

Well that's it for today, I will probably only post when I get home again, or maybe I'll post on the train on wednesday so see you then. The next two patterns are very nice and are probably my favourites in this chapter but they are somewhat tricky the seeded chevron particularly. So good luck and Happy Knitting!