Week Nine......of the Super Stitches Knitting Project

This week's challenge was...
1) Vertical Caterpillar Stitch
2) Harris Tweed Stitch
3) Diamond Seed Stitch

Woooooo apologies for the pictures, my friends. I'm doing this post late at night and have no natural light.

SWATCH 1: Vertical Caterpillar Stitch
This is the pattern I was most dubious about when looking at the page. Who would ever want a knitted garment with fuzzy yarn caterpillars running down the front of it? A few weeks ago, when working the Horizontal Dash Stitch swatch, I felt the same way. But this time I was pleasantly surprised.

Vertical Caterpillar Swatch

Not with the final swatch, you can judge that for yourself (I personally can't think of a thing I'd want to use it for) but the actual knitting part. I loved working this pattern. So much that I'm going to have to FIND something to make with it. Maybe a purse or something. On its own it's not delightful; it rolls along the edges and the reverse side has very little charm. Yet somehow- maybe because of the simple design, or because it was so easy to find my place, or maybe I secretly like caterpillars after all- it was nice to knit.

SWATCH 2: Harris Tweed Stitch
I love me a reversible stitch pattern. Truly, I do. And I'll be honest, I usually just think scarf whenever I meet one, but Harris Tweed is different. I want to make him into a washcloth. Strange, I know. I'm not really a washcloth knitter. I've made a few, but somehow the whole finished object high doesn't come for me when all I made is a square. No matter how cute that square (or circle) is. I've made a lacy flower shaped one, and a few square ones with different stitch patterns, but haven't really had much pull in the washcloth direction. But I think that Harris Tweed would make a nice one.

Harrison Tweed Swatch

Especially if I could work some interesting color changes in there, either with striping on each after-rib section, or maybe even just with some colored peaches n cream. This stitch pattern, too was very easy to work. Simple to find my place in the pattern, I was able to wander off for a while and still know just what to do. The swatch stretches in both directions nicely, and I think would do well with multicolor yarns. And yes, I also think it would make a nice scarf.

SWATCH 3: Diamond Seed Stitch
I'll be honest, even in the photograph this swatch lacks zip. You can kinda tell what's supposed to be going on, but only if you know what you're looking for and probably only because of the beautiful color choice. I think the smoothness of the yarn might also have something to do with it. At any rate, in my swatch? Well... I think it just looks like I'm a beginner knitter that hasn't quite figured this whole thing out yet. Like I'm trying and failing to do something. Which, if I didn't have the picture in front of me, I'd probably just think that's the case. But it's not. I swatched this one twice. It's just not a very attractive pattern.

Diamond Seed Swatch (Looking more attractive than in real life- it's that bad)

 I could imagine using this to liven up a stockinette sweater and also to pull in a wee bit or to draw attention to the waist area. The reverse, I think, is much prettier than the right side. You can actually see the diamond shape, for one thing.

Anyways tune in next week for..........
A recap of the entire first section of the book, including my favorite stitch patterns, least favorite, errors, and inexcusable defects.
I'm going to take some time to pretty up my swatches (i.e. block them) and pose them all for a big family photo. I realized that I'd have to take an extra day to pretty up the swatches when I realized that I'm going to have to do lace later on and I'd really like to have the same sort of procedure the whole book through. Also, I may be scared to start on the vertical patterns.