This mat is quite different from the one I had originally planned. Up until then the Woven Garter diamonds I’d been making fitted neatly into stars as in the Star Riggle Wrugs. I’d made six diamonds with these yarns and they were meant to make a star but they didn’t – the centre angles were too big and the star wouldn’t lie flat. Initially I was disappointed – these were relatively ‘big’ yarns and I knitted them firmly, just right for a floor mat. They could still be part of a mat – just not one of the stars!
There are times when designing and making in this organic sort of way that you have two choices, perhaps three. The first is to stick to the original idea and try to ‘force’ the elements to cooperate. This rarely works out well in my experience. The second is to go with the flow and let the elements, in this case the diamonds, suggest a different outcome, something that they are more ‘fitted for’ as it were. The third choice is to throw the project into the yarn compost corner of your stash, let it sulk for a while, then bring it out later and make a new decision.
Situations such as these usually lend themselves to new learnings, and as my friend Mary says, ‘It’s always a good day when you learn something new.’
This all happened early in my Woven Garter experimenting phase and it was having another look at the yarns that gave me the clue. They were ‘big’ yarns as I mentioned – 12ish ply and I’d wanted a reasonably firm knitted fabric so had used needles in the 4.5mm to 5mm range. I’d visited Christine Sloan from Glenora Weaving and as usual she had a range of yarns that took my eye.
Had I used larger needles the acute angles of the diamonds could well have been closer to the 60º I needed for the central star arrangement. But I pressed on with what I had, made a few more diamonds and matching triangles, moved them around on the sun room floor and came up with a combination that pleased me. On this occasion the sketched design came later and what was to be a star became a cut diamond instead.
Meant to say earlier…………… the basic Woven Garter diamond for this project was 40 stitches wide at the half way point. For further information on making these basic diamonds check out the Star Riggle Wrug page.