Over the last few months, I have been playing with putting woven patterns onto knitted fabric. Originally I was working on 2 colour reversible designs but got distracted and started chasing the argyle motif. This is how I got to an argyle motif that I am happy with.
(#1) Reversible 2 colour fabric with 1 stich wide design elements, tabby weave: The motif on this side was supposed to replicate a houndstooth weave. I didn’t like how it turned out but the diamond shaped sections reminded me of the coloured diamonds on argyle. I used a tabby weave structure (every cable goes over/ under/ over/ under the cables that it crosses).
(#2) One sided 4 colour with 1 stitch wide design elements, tabby weave: This is one sided because I don’t know how to put 4 colours onto one side of the fabric and also make it reversible. This is knit with a marl. It took me a while to figure out how to place the colours — all the colour placement is done in the setup rows.
I see the argyle in this piece but I felt that the lighter colours forming the diagonal lines broke up the diamonds too much.
(#3) One sided 4 colour with 1 stitch wide design elements, tabby weave: This is very similar to #2 but I moved the placement of the lighter colours. I really like this piece but I didn’t think it got me closer to argyle.
(#4) One sided 4 colour with 1 stitch wide design elements, tabby weave: Then I thought that maybe the problem with #2 was the colours that I chose. This one is the same with different colours.
Do you see the argyle in this?
After this piece, I wanted to try a new approach.
(#5) One sided 4 colour with 2 stitch wide design elements, different weave structure: I switched to 2 stitch wide design elements because I thought it would do a better job of hiding the marled background and help the diamond feel more solid.
Instead of having mixed blue/green diamonds, I moved the grey to become a 3rd colour of diamond. The set up row colour placement changed significantly.
The cables no longer use a tabby weave structure (that is, they don’t go over/under/over/under). Instead the cable in the colour of the diamond, crosses in front. Question to weavers: does this weave structure have a name?
(#6) One sided 4 colour with 2 stitch wide design elements, unknown weave structure: I thought that #5 worked well but that the diagonal lines were too dominant. So I increased the size of the coloured blocks and kept the diagonal lines the same (hence the very large swatch).
The other change was that in #5, the grey & purple were worked on the purl rows and the blue & green were worked on the knit rows. As many of you know, I do most of my designs over purlwise garter because this helps the design elements pop more.
So I switched the grey & purple to the knit rows so they popped less.
Thoughts:
I think the 2 stitch wide designs will more closely replicate weaving as it hides the background better.
I had plans to try all sorts of different weave structures but now realize that my knits might be enormous! Each cable on my knits represents one warp or weft thread. I don’t know how weaving gauge is measured but I get only 7 cables over 4 inches using fingering weight yarn.
This kind of knitting is fairly slow. It is extremely heavily cabled. I love cabling so this isn’t a problem but I’m not sure other knitters will have the patience for this.
The fabric is basically super dense cables — super squishy. Quite thick. Because the layers of fabric (like in Fission knitting) are loosely connected together, it maintains a very good drape despite its heavily cabled construction. Scarves & cowls would work well with this fabric but might not be large enough to show the large motifs.
What are you thoughts?:
I am really excited about working on this kind of knitting. It felt really good to write this and document why I did things. I would welcome your input. Would you have tried different things?
I am lacking in weaving knowledge. I welcome all feedback and would especially like to hear from weavers. I wonder if I tried things here that a weaver would know wouldn’t work. I would be also very interested in how a weaver would have approached this.
Thanks for reading this!
Mary W Martin 
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