Christel Growth

Little by little, Christel is growing larger.

I took a hint from the Christine Duchrow pattern I knitted in November as the center of this square lap blanket and started making double yarnovers and knitting them off as a single stitch in the plain round.

This added some ease, but not quite enough, so I needled up from my 00 (1.75 mm) knitting needles to the US size 0 (2.00 mm) ones.

Between the big yarnovers and the 0.25 mm increase, now I'm a little more comfortable that this might end up looking similar to the photo in the booklet after I block it.

Here is another interesting structural thing about this particular Niebling pattern.

In the big picture, notice how the stockinette rays make that little bump about halfway up the leaves?

This is what that section looks like folded in half. The bump is where that stockinette ray switches to paired decreases in the center. Not only do the stitches lean, the fabric biases there and makes the knitting bump up.

If I paid attention to this stuff, it should be possible to knit a three-dimensional face/mask using all these little tricks of decreases and yarnovers and biasing . . .