I made this first Star Riggle Wrug when our first grandchild Nicholas was ‘on the way’ – it was on the floor of his nursery waiting for him to be born. One morning when he was a toddler, his mother Katherine heard him giggling. She went in and there he was, leaning over the edge of his cot pointing at the Wrug…….. ‘Tar’ he said ‘Tar’. Presumably he’d just made sense of the geometry and had seen the star for the first time. Makes you want to keep knitting doesn’t it!
Materials and Tools: I wanted the wrug to be easy wash, easy dry so I chose a textured maroon polyester Yarn B for the central star and pointer diamonds, and a lemon polyester Yarn B for the hexagon diamonds. The Yarn A s were three ‘different but similar’ multi coloured mohair loop yarns—one had more green in it, one had more brown and one had more ginger. I used about 120gms of the maroon, about 120gms of the yellow, 180gms of the ‘more green’ mohair loop and about 60grms of each of the others. The needles were 4.5mms.
The basic diamond was 35 stitches wide and about 10 inches long. If you haven’t done Woven Garter stitch before, check it out on this link: How Woven Garter Stitch Works.
I started by making 6 diamonds for the centre star and 6 for the pointers using the maroon yarn [Yarn A] and the brighter [the ‘greener’ one] of the Burraweave yarns as Yarn B. Each diamond was made in Woven Garter stitch as follows:
Instructions: Cast on two stitches with Yarn B. Knit the first stitch with Yarn A. Increase in the next stitch by knitting into the front of the second with Yarn B and into the back with Yarn A. Knit each row in Woven Garter [WG] increasing once at the end of each row until you have 35 stitches. Time now to start decreasing. If you want to know more about increasing in WG follow this link to the Useful Technical Tips page.
Knit in WG to the last 2 stitches. Knit two together. Decrease thus at the end of each row till you have only two stitches left. Knit the two together then tie off your ends leaving perhaps 15cms [6 in] or so for sewing up later or using for some interesting finishes.
I stitched six of the diamonds together with flat seams to make the central star and saved the other six for the pointers to be added later.
The diamonds for the hexagons or ‘blocks’ between the pointers were all made with the lemon Yarn B—18 diamonds all together. I used the yellow yarn double because it was a finer weight than the maroon yarn. Six of the diamonds were made with the ‘more green’, six with the ‘more brown’ and six with the ‘more ginger’ Yarn A s. I made each of the six hexagons by stitching three of the different diamonds together, again with flat seams. When I sewed these onto the central diamond I placed them so that opposite hexagons had the same Yarn A coloured diamond facing outwards. Finally I sewed the pointer diamonds in and handed the finished product over to the new family.
Friend, Carole Thompson, made this version of the Wrug. She used three different blues in each of the hexagon blocks and by orienting them round the central star with the darker blue diamonds facing in, she highlighted the star in a different way. She also left braided tails at the ends of the pointers thus adding another highlight.
And this is Louise Blue’s interpretation of the Riggle Wrug. Louise decided to use half diamonds, i.e. triangles, instead of the pointers. She also decided to make the green, blue and red cubes the heroes of the Wrug by making the central star and the half pointers from a paler yarn featuring gentler versions of the three main colours