Knitting Patterns: the branching pattern

I know, I know, I’ve been promising this pattern for a few months at this point and for some reason have just been incapable of posting it until now. I also have a few other little things I want to talk about, so I’ll go through those first and then post the pattern at the end of the post.

I taught someone to knit! I’d met her through Bumble BFF, and she was really excited about learning knitting. So we met again at a coffee shop, but this time we both came prepared with needles and yarn. I got her through casting on, knitting, and purling before she had to leave, so hopefully those stick and she can pick up casting on and other more advanced stuff from YouTube or other sources. She promised to send pictures ^_^ and with all these “stay at home” orders in place, I can’t think of a better time to pick up a new skill like that.

Speaking of picking up new skills, I taught myself / took a class on two-color brioche and brioche plaid respectively. There was a conference nearby called Stitches West that I went to a few weeks ago; part of it is simply giant trade show with tons of yarn, needles, and other knitting and crochet accoutrements, but alongside that there are a wide variety of classes offered. One of the ones I signed up for was “Brioche Plaid” by Xandy Peters, and with it came a prerequisite that you bring in a swatch or finished project of two-color brioche. Well, I had never heard of brioche stitch before, much less made anything with it, so I spent the days leading up to the conference trying to cobble something together (I had only just heard of the conference from one of my other knitting/crochet Bumble BFF acquaintances). There were quite a few videos on YouTube, and quite a few posts on blogs and whatnot, so I was able to bring in a swatch. It was clearly still very awkwardly done, and the edges looked horrible, so through the class the teacher helped me more with the two-color brioche itself rather than advancing straight to the plaid. But I collected enough tips and such to hopefully be able to figure out the plaid from the class handout somewhere down the line.

The conference was fantastic; I took that class and one on reading Japanese knitting patterns, and loaded up on quite a bit of yarn and some new needles. Hopefully I stocked up well enough to entertain myself through this lockdown.

Another knitting-related bit of news I have is that I made a few projects to send to my Aunt and Grandma in Louisiana as part of a care package that my sister and I are putting together for them (she is making them chocolate truffles!). I made that brioche swatch into a piece somewhat like a short scarf, and a moss-stitch piece that grew out of the afternoon of teaching knitting (it started off as that pink ball of yarn in the featured image). The third thing I made was this tissue box cover in a two-color Fair Isle pattern. I’m pretty happy with how they all turned out; I hope they enjoy them as well.

And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the branching eyelet pattern!

Row 1: K2tog, K4, YO, K9

Row 2 and all even rows: P across

Row 3: K2tog, K3, YO, K1, YO, K7, K2tog

Row 5: K2tog, K2, YO, K3, YO, K6, K2tog

Row 7: K2tog, K1, YO, K5, YO, K5, K2tog

Row 9: K2tog, YO, K7, YO, K4, K2tog

Row 11: K2tog, K7, YO, K1, YO, K3, K2tog

Row 13: K2tog, K6, YO, K3, YO, K2, K2tog

Row 15: K2tog, K5, YO, K5, YO, K1, K2tog

Row 17: K2tog, K4, YO, K7, YO, K2tog

Repeat rows 2-17 until piece is of desired length.

 

The branching pattern

 

The three gifts — the red one is two-color brioche, the pink one is moss stitch. The blue fair-isle piece is a tissue box cover, made from the pattern here.