A few weeks ago I’ve got an email from one of my knitting friends (thank you, Trudi!) with a photo of a machine knit scarf that she wanted to replicate. The scarf had a stripe worked in an interesting stitch pattern – it looked like a set of simple eyelets but each eyelet was longer than the ones created by a yarn over.
After quite a bit of trial and error, I found a way to mimic the look of that “elongated lace” pattern.
Let’s see how it works.
Overall, it is a fairly simple stitch pattern with a 4-row repeat. There is just one little trick that changes the look of the fabric. It is worked in rows 2 and 4. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and better start with the cast on.
The cast on part is easy – cast on any number of stitches using any type of cast on you like. For the swatch featured in this tutorial, I’ll cast on 8 stitches using the long tail cast on.
The “magic” happens in even-numbered rows, so unlike many other stitch patterns, this one starts with a wrong side row.
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Row 1 (wrong side): purl all stitches
Row 2 (right side): knit 1, then work as follows:
2.1 Insert the right needle from front to back under a strand that is between the stitch we’ve just knitted and the next stitch. Wrap the tip of the right needle with the yarn and pull the wrap through. This way we knit an extra stitch from the strand between stitches.
2.2 Knit the next stitch.
2.3 Slip these two stitches to the left needle. When slipping, insert the left needle into each stitch from left to right to make sure we don’t twist the stitches.
2.4 Knit two stitches together through the back loop.
You can simplify steps 2.3 and 2.4 if you insert the left needle into the two stitches so that the tip of the left needle is in front of the tip of the right needle, then wrap the tip of the right needle with the yarn and pull the wrap through.
Repeat steps 2.1 through 2.4 to the end of the row.
Row 3 (wrong side): purl all stitches.
Row 4 (right side): knit 1, then work as follows:
4.1 Knit an extra stitch from the strand between stitches, just as we did in step 2.1.
4.2 Knit the next stitch.
4.3 Slip these two stitches to the left needle the same way as we did in step 2.3.
4.4 Knit two stitches together. This time, we do it the usual way – through the front loop.
Repeat steps 4.1 through 4.4 to the end of the row.
These four rows form the pattern repeat. Work them for as long as you like to make a lovely scarf with the elongated lace pattern.
If you knit all stitches instead of purling them in rows 1 and 3, you will get a reversible fabric that looks a lot like crochet mesh stitch. This stitch is perfect for summer tops, beach cover-ups and airy wraps.
The most interesting (and mischievous) feature of this stitch is that this texture will keep any crafter guessing – is it knitted or crocheted? Be kind and tell them the truth. Or better yet, share this stitch pattern with them. Happy knitting!
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This and 41 other in-depth tutorials are part of Knitting Collection #3.
