Knitting is one of the things I cherish most, and it has a long history behind it.
Though it is thought of today as a woman’s craft, knitting was originally done by men – shepherds, in fact, a very long time ago. It turns up in literature too; the most famous knitter has to be Madame Defarge in Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities.
Most knitters begin with simpler pieces – a scarf, a single-colour vest – and then tend to stay with a few well-liked patterns and stitch types, seldom venturing far beyond them.
A sampler afghan is the cure for that.
What a sampler afghan is
A blanket made of squares, where each square uses a different stitch pattern. Cables in one, seed stitch in another, a lace panel, a basketweave, a bit of colourwork.
The result is a blanket. The process is a course in stitch patterns, taken one square at a time.
Why it works so well for learning
Each square is small enough to be a low-risk experiment. If a cable pattern defeats you, you have lost an evening and a small amount of yarn – not a sweater.
And because you finish something every few days, you keep going. A stitch dictionary sitting on a shelf teaches nobody anything; a stitch dictionary being worked through one square at a time teaches a great deal.
You also end up with a physical reference. Years later you can look at your own sampler and see exactly what a stitch pattern does in real yarn.
Planning one that hangs together
The risk with a sampler is that it looks like a collection of unrelated experiments rather than a blanket. Three things prevent it.
Use one yarn throughout. A single colour in a single yarn ties everything together and lets the textures do the work. Multicoloured samplers usually look chaotic.
Make the squares the same size. This is harder than it sounds, because different stitch patterns pull in by different amounts. Cables draw in significantly; lace opens out.
Swatch each pattern and adjust the stitch count so every square comes out the same width. Writing down the cast-on number for each is worth doing.
Add a consistent border. A few rows of garter stitch around every square gives a frame and hides small differences in size.
Choosing yarn
A smooth, light-coloured wool. Texture is the entire point, and dark or fuzzy yarn hides it.
Wool also has the springiness that makes cables and ribbing look crisp. Cotton will work but the textures will be flatter.
Assembly
Block every square before joining. Textured squares come off the needles at slightly different sizes and blocking evens them out considerably.
Lay them all out and photograph the arrangement before seaming. Distribute the busiest squares rather than clustering them, and put a quieter one next to each of the most dramatic.
