G is for...

Garter stitch

One of my many WIPs at the moment is the 'baby surprise jacket' (see the Schoolhouse press website - scroll down the page a bit) for a friend who is expecting in the New Year. It is an interesting design whereby, after a bit of woollen origami, you only need to seam along the top of the sleeves to turn what looks like a very peculiar piece of knitting into a little jacket! The whole thing is done in garter stitch (like the Mason-Dixon baby kimonos I've knitted in the past) and I have to say I'm still rather on the fence as to whether I like garter stitch or not. The plus side is that it is all knit stitches - no purling to slow you down. But I kind of like the smooth surface you get from stockinette stitch, where you can see the pattern of the individual stitches much more clearly, and trace the path of the yarn...

Perhaps if I knit another I'll take a look on Ravelry and see if anyone has tried to knit it in stockinette.

Speaking of which, I've just swatched for the Peacock Feathers shawl as a very special present for someone... I'm not sure if I want to knit it as triangular shawl though, so I decided to see if anyone had knitted it as a rectangular stole, and lo and behold, a combination of Google and Ravelry lead me to Chappysmom who has done just that. It looks great and so I'm now trying to work my way through back through the charts to convert them into a form my brain can cope with when knitting without those triangular increases...