Dotty Knits at Stitches East

You’ve heard of mosaic knitting. Barbara Walker coined the term to describe a kind of slip stitch color knitting, and she developed a method for charting her designs. She charted many geometric designs that really do look like borders on mosaic floors, with small repeating patterns.

Walker also charted some larger designs, like the curvy “Crown of Candles” in Charted Knitting Designs, and her famous “Jolly Roger.” Those designs opened up a new world of possibilities in my mind, back in the late 1980s.

If I could figure out how to do a mosaic chart, I could make my own really flowy, organic designs for slip stitch knitting. Well, I figured it out and published several afghan designs using the mosaic technique. The cactus motif above was one of the first. I used it for a southwest baby blanket design. The fish on a plate was for a small cat blanket called “Kitty Dreams.” It first appeared in Lark Books’ Cat Crafts, but now you can also find the pattern here.

When you do large-scale mosaic patterns, you end up with lots of dots. That’s why I call my designs “Dotty Knits.” I’ll be teaching a workshop of the same name at Stitches East in October 2007. In the class, we’ll discuss how to read mosaic charts and knit a sample. Then I’ll show you how to chart your own designs.