Every long-term knitter has an upper threshhold and a lower threshold. Above, the aspirational projects. The warrens of cables, the lace extravaganzas, or even their first-ever sweater. Below, the things they think they know how to do and are maybe a little bit bored by. Garter stitch dishcloths, seed stitch baby blankets, and tubes of stockinette. (That last one is a bit hilarious, because aren’t sweater sleeves exactly that? And we’re so proud of ourselves for making sleeves…) My personal brand of lower threshold? Mosaic knitting.
Mosaic is often touted as “cheater” colorwork, with only one color being used at a time, but slipped stitches give the effect of stranded colorwork. It’s supposed to be an easy port of entry to colorwork—easy to execute, easy to frog back. The possible motifs are more limited than stranded knitting, with graphic, geometric patterns being most common. In the last few years I’ve become pretty proficient in stranded colorwork. I’m no Alice Starmore, but that doesn’t stop me from being pretty proud of my two-handed stranding, and it’s a stellar conversation starter. (One caveat: the conversation will last approximately 25 seconds, with the other person yelping “You’re knitting with two yarns at once?” and then falling silent when you geekily sweep in with an eager explanation.) And if you can do stranded knitting, you should be able to do mosaic knitting blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back, right?
As they say in kindergarten, wrongity wrong wrong wrong. At least if “you” is me.
Case in point. I’ve recently started two personal projects, both with mosaic knitting. The first, Alpenglow by Andrea Mowry for a makealong I’m hosting with two designer friends (on which, more below). The second, Autumn Dahlias MKAL by my mentor, Tabetha Hedrick. When picking out both these projects, I didn’t bat an eye. I can handle it. It’s mosaic. How hard can it be?
The main yoke pattern of Alpenglow is stranded knitting, which I do semi-regularly. Not a problem. The motifs on Alpenglow are fairly intuitive and I blew through all the stranding in a weekend, pausing only briefly to admire my handiwork.
This past weekend, I started in on the mosaic section, the little dots. It’s 2×2 squares, the easiest mosaic motif ever, other than 1×1, which I used in my own pattern once upon a time. I noticed I was having a spot of trouble with my floats being too loose on the first round, when I was spreading the slipped stitches as I would with stranding, and then too tight on the second round when I was trying to bring things in just a little. And neither tension wanted to match my stockinette tension exactly. But oh, well. It’s a simple enough pattern and should block out all right.
But (spoiler alert) the MKAL is where things started going sideways.
This mosaic section is much more complex, with a giant chart (and I can tell you, Tabetha makes her charts as small as possible). Every row is different, and the motif forms some kind of fabulous Escher-esque devilry.
I realized pretty quickly that that my tension on right side rows was too loose, with 2 stitch floats that probably could have spanned 3. Yeah, the floats are only 2 stitches long. You’d think I could handle that after the 9 stitch floats I’ve done in my stranded projects…
Then I noticed that my wrong side floats were significantly tighter. Actually, they were the right length. But the overly loose right side floats made an uneven fabric, both in the set of rows I was working and in the next set, when stitches from these rows were slipped. Then there was the fact that my brain forgot how to read a chart all of a sudden and kept getting the two colors mixed up.
As you can see, I’ve pulled myself together and almost finished the mosaic section. I’m still in Clue 1 and Clue 2 came out yesterday. Despite my flailing, I’m deriving high enjoyment from this slice of humble pie. Not only do I love how it’s working up, I have learned a valuable life lesson: never think ya know it all. Chances are, ’tis not the case.
And on the subject of the makealong above, I’m hosting a Budget Sweater MAL with Ruth Brasch and Marcela Chang, in which we’re inviting knitters and crocheters to make sweaters in budget friendly (inexpensive, thrifted, recycled, or stash) yarn, using any pattern. Chat can be found in Ruth’s Discord, or you can use the hashtag #budgetsweatermal on Instagram. You will see me struggle valiantly with mosaic knitting in real time, and see others perform the same technique much more successfully. We would love to make along with you!
