The Design

“We heart charts!”

Even newer knitters enjoy using the simple two-color charted motifs found in traditional Northern European knitting designs. Knitting one into a stockinette-stitch project is a fun way to add a little pizzazz. Or you can work your chart in duplicate or cross-stitch after the fact to spiff up your own or store-bought knitted items. The possibilities are endless! You can even use charts for tiny cross-stitch on linen.

Once you understand how to use a chart, you can turn any graphic into a chart by “painting with pixels” (as Karen calls it) on graph paper. The possibilities are endless! You won't look at graphic motifs the same way again.

Where to use colorwork charts:
We’ve used charts on many of our Churchmouse At Home and Classics patterns. Some ideas, from left to right:
We knit adorable hearts into our Hot Water Bottle Cozy pattern, using Rowan Kid Classic in color Nightly for the background and Cherry for the hearts.
Our Scottie dog Seed Stitch Cozy is shown in Lamb’s Pride Worsted yarn in duplicate stitch with a button ball.
We duplicate stitched a single snowflake onto our Turkish Bed Socks.
We used Fair Isle to knit a snowflake pattern into our Hot Water Bottle Cozy.
We duplicate stitched and centered a snowflake on our Basic Christmas Stockings cuff.

On our Hot Water Bottle Cozy we knit in pairs of Scotties front and back in stranded two-color knitting adding 2 more stitches between the Scotties' noses and 8 more at each side.

KNITTER'S NOTES

How to use colorwork charts:
You can use the whole chart or just parts of a chart. You can add one solo motif or repeat the motif. You can create an all-over pattern or create a border. While we’ve used shaded boxes for the motif stitches and white boxes for the background, remember that you can also use a dark background and a light motif yarn.

We prefer knitting in the round when using charts, so our chart rows are always numbered up the right side. If your project is knit flat, read Row 1 (and all subsequent right-side, odd-numbered rows) from the right; read all even-numbered, wrong-side rows from the left.

If you are working the chart as stranded colorwork, be sure to keep your floats nice and loose across the back. When inserting a band of colorwork into an otherwise plain piece, we often use a needle one size larger than our gauge needle. Once chart rows are complete, remember to change back to smaller needles. Blocking will help even up your stitches.