Treble Knitting

[bercilakslady]

Pattern #55, the Crochet Knit Treble Shell Pattern, in "Traditional Knitting Patterns from Scandinavia, the British Isles, France, Italy, and other European Countries" by James Norbury, is driving me up the wall

Comments

[colorwhirl]

Isn't w.f. another word for yarn over so you're just dropping yarn overs?

w.f. between knit stitches = yo

[irishlacenet]

So dropping those just means that you don't purl the YOs when you come to them on row 3. You just let them drop off the needle.

And row 4 shouldn't decrease. You knit the 4th stitch from the needle, then the 3rd stitch, then the 1st (which you can then drop off the left needle), and then the 2nd. At that point, you can drop the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th stitches off the left needle.

What you end up with is a cable where two stitches cross over two other stitches. And the two stitches that are on top form a smaller cable, where one stitch crosses over the other.

If you want to, use a cable needle:
1. Slip three stitches to the cable needle
2. Hold it to the back of the work.
3. Knit the next stitch from the left needle.
4. Return the leftmost stitch from the cable needle to the left needle
5. Put the cable needle to the back of the work.
6. Knit the stitch on the left needle (the one you just returned)
7. Knit the remaining two stitches from the cable needle

Does this help at all?

Re: w.f. between knit stitches = yo

[bercilakslady]

That makes much more sense, thank you. I'm not quite sure how you get from the description to the cables as you describe them, but I can see how that would work.

[sarakate]

In Row 2, the w.f. (wool forward) is equivalent to a YO, so you're ending with almost twice as many stitches as you had at the beginning of the row

[bercilakslady]

Huh. That seems like it would be very hard to physically manage, but now I see where the yarn is supposed to be. I'd worked on this with a friend who has been knitting about 10 years longer than I have, and she wasn't seeing it either.

Thanks so much for the explanation.

[sarakate]

Actually, it's really quite easy to manage -- I knitted up a couple of repeats, just to be sure I wasn't missing something, and found that the slack you get from the elongated stitches on Row 3 makes Row 4 very easy to work.

One note: this looks *really* weird when you've just finished a Row 4 or Row 8, with bits wanting to stick out oddly. Go ahead and do the subsequent Row 5 or Row 1 (purl back, in other words), and give the whole thing a downward tug, and it will look much better.