Sunday, July 5, 2009

Pooling Streams Stole pattern


I finished this pooling stole last night, and I love love love it! There's an amazing match of the colour of the yarn and the pattern repeat, which is making me think that I really need to swatch out my future yarns and then match the pattern to the yarn colours as they pool.

I've gotten so many wonderful comments about this stole on Ravelry already that I'm rushing the pattern into "print"!


Pooling Streams Stole Pattern
Yarn: Wollmeise 100% superwash, in the Tants colourway.
Pattern: Japanese Feather, from Barbara Walker's Second Treasury.


Using an "e" or backwards loop cast-on, cast on 86 stitches onto a US7 needle. Please see my previous posts about figuring out your own "magic number" for your tension on the needles you've chosen. For this pattern, it's pretty easy to subtract pairs of edge stitches if you need to use fewer stitches to get the pooling to happen.

Knit garter stitch for 6 rows.

Begin chart as pictured below. Row number 1 is the back side.

A tip: Most knitters have a very different tension between their purl rows and their knit rows – my purl rows use up a lot more yarn than my knit rows, so I found myself purling tighter to maintain the pooling. To get around this, I put a US 7 needle on one end of my interchangeable needles, for my knit/lace rows, and a US 6 needle on the other end, for my purl rows.

Please note that I haven't charted the odd-numbered rows, to save space. All odd-numbered rows are the same as Row 1.

The pattern repeat is all of the stitches between the ones highlighted in yellow, except for the final pattern repeat, where you omit the stitch that's highlighted in blue. Don't forget that the edge stitches are garter stitch, so when you knit the back, the first and final five stitches are always knit, not purl.

End with a Row 4 or a Row 18.

Knit garter stitch for 6 rows.

Bind off very loosely using a sewn bindoff, to maintain the pooling.

And here's a close-up of the stole!


As I was knitting up the stole, I debated a few pattern modifications, as I've charted below. One of the really nice things about this stole pattern is the zig-zagging movement of the yarn, and the purl stitch at the edge of the pattern repeat serves to strongly accentuate that shape. You could double that purl stitch and remove edging stitches, as I've charted below.

Also, if you don't like the strong horizontal bar which separates the zig and the zag sections of the stole, you could omit rows 4-5 and 18-19, I've marked "optional" in the chart below.

15 comments:

Dotty said...

Did you take a picture of the skein before you wound it up?

wenat said...

No, I forgot to do that! It's a pretty simple skein, though -- purple/brown/green.

Chris said...

You are SO, SO good at this.

Anonymous said...

This is my favorite one, yet. The pattern with the color layout is perfect! You are rocking this pooling casbah, girl.

geela said...

Hey, Poolgirl. That is gorgeous. So feathery and light looking. I looks like a real pleasure to wear.

knitseashore said...

Your stoles are breathtaking!

Carrie K said...

Gorgeous! I now know how you do the striping and it's astounding how beautifully it comes off.

Kathleen said...

That is absolutely beautiful! x K

Elysbeth said...

Lovely, very clever math.

Life's a Stitch said...

I have to learn how to intentionally pool colours like that. Beautiful!

Anne Berk said...

This is just beautiful! I don't remember seeing you at Sock Summit, and am sorry I missed seeing this in person. I am definitely going to put a Pooling Stole on my To Be Knit List! Good job!

sapphirehorse said...

Beautiful stole. Would love to try my hand at this but am a bit stumped by one instruction in the pattern.

Sorry if the answer is totally obvious - what exactly do you mean when you say to ¨not knit the stich marked in blue¨ in the last repeat? Is this stitch just slipped across to the right hand needle?

Thanks very much.

sapphirehorse said...

Beautiful stole. Would love to try my hand at this but am a bit stumped by one instruction in the pattern.

Sorry if the answer is totally obvious - what exactly do you mean when you say to ¨not knit the stich marked in blue¨ in the last repeat? Is this stitch just slipped across to the right hand needle?

Thanks very much.

wenat said...

On your very last repeat of the chart, you'll only have two stitches left -- ignore the blue stitches on the chart and knit those two last stitches. The blue stitches are only for the first and middle repeats of the chart, to give you the wavy solid line up the middle.

sapphirehorse said...

Thank you! Can´t wait to try. It really is so gorgeous...