I'm a lazy knitter. Not sloppy lazy; I do insist on neat details. My laziness is more about efficiency. I want to get a lot for my efforts. That's why I love the Waving Rib stitch pattern found on page 15 of Barbara Walker's classic, "A Treasury of Knitting Patterns", Schoolhouse Press, 1998 edition. The photos may be in slightly grainy black and white, but this is the book designers come back to again and again for inspiration. And it's not just the row-by-row instructions, which unhappily are not charted. It's the little narratives accompanying them, indicating how the patterns evolved, how they're related, whether they're reversible, and what they're good for.
All of which brings me to Willingdon, the cardigan pattern I'm writing up this week.
The Waving Rib (which, incidentally I used in my
Cataraqui Socks) happens to be reversible (see the basketweave wrong side in the first photo), but what I really love about it is how it produces a sophisticated texture for so little effort. There are really only two rows, each repeated four times, and that's it. Easy to memorize, soothing to knit, and lovely to look at. So much bang for my knitting buck!
