How to knit a basketweave pattern

January 15th, 2007 at 10:13 pm (Knitting)

I got together last night with some knitting friends to work on a joint project. We’re using up some spare yarn in a collaborative project: we’re each knitting a set of 6×6-inch squares, to be sewn together into a baby blanket that we’ll donate to charity. I’m having a lot of fun with it, since I can experiment with new stitches and it’s okay if they don’t turn out perfectly!

For my first square, I decided to learn how the basketweave stitch is done. This version goes in blocks that are four rows long, so every four rows you change your stitch pattern. But although it looks nice and regular, there’s an interesting trick to it. Each little square does not, as you might otherwise assume, have the same number of stitches in it. The knit ones are only two stitches across, while the purl ones are four! This works out because the leftmost and rightmost purl stitches “bend around” the knit ones, so the overall visual effect is as if they were the same width. But they’re off by a factor of two! Pretty clever.

Here’s the full stitch pattern, to make this particular basketweave (K = knit and P = purl):

Cast on a multiple of 6, plus 4, stitches.
row 1: K4, repeat: (P2, K4)
row 2: P4, repeat: (K2, P4)
row 3: K4, repeat: (P2, K4)
row 4: P4, repeat: (K2, P4)
row 5: K1, P2, repeat: (K4, P2), K1
row 6: P1, K2, repeat: (P4, K2), P1
row 7: K1, P2, repeat: (K4, P2), K1
row 8: P1, K2, repeat: (P4, K2), P1

From “The Everything Knitting Book” by Jane Eldershaw.

Previous:
Next:

9 Comments
5 of 5 people learned something from this entry.

  1. jim said,

    January 15, 2007 at 11:04 pm

    Don’t you love testing :-)

    (newline characters — \n’s — appear after the preview.)

  2. wkiri said,

    January 15, 2007 at 11:05 pm

    Thanks — I noticed this. Fixed now!

  3. jim said,

    January 16, 2007 at 8:40 am

    (Learned something new!)

    I’m a little confused about the “repeat.’ Does “K4, repeat: (P2, K4)”
    really mean: K4, P2, K4

  4. wkiri said,

    January 16, 2007 at 8:42 am

    It means K4, then do P2,K4 until you run out of stitches. Like “K4 (P2 K4)*”, if it were a regexp.

    This notation is non-standard; I made it up. My book denotes this pattern:

    K4 *P2 K4 (repeat from * until end of row)

    but I find that unwieldy. Parentheses are our friends!

  5. jim said,

    January 16, 2007 at 10:16 am

    (Learned something new!)

    Ah, regexps I understand: ^K4 (P2 K4)+$
    Regexps are our friends.

  6. wkiri said,

    January 16, 2007 at 11:45 am

    I was going to use (P2 K4)+ here, but in theory you could do a “basketweave” with zero repeats (just the K4)… so let’s settle for: ^K4 (P2 K4)*$. ;)

  7. Morgena said,

    October 22, 2011 at 8:35 am

    (Learned something new!)

    Is there someone who can explain me how to knit this basket weave pattern ?

    http://www.celtic-sheepskin.co.uk/ladies/accessories-1732/knitted-woven-accessories/statement-scarf/

    Thanks
    Morgena

  8. Jilian said,

    October 28, 2011 at 4:39 pm

    (Learned something new!)

    Thank you so much!! I’m new to knitting and have tried the basket weave stitch and the difference between the squares just wasn’t showing up like it should. Thanks again!!! Now I can make a pretty scarf. :)

  9. erma groves said,

    May 9, 2014 at 11:35 am

    (Learned something new!)

    Thank you for your version of the basketweave stitch. I did learn something, I could see the difference between this pattern and previous ones that didn’t resemble the basketweave at all! I’m not a fresh beginner, nor am I advanced. But I love to knit as well as crotchet. Thanks again for this tutorial.

Post a Comment

I knew this already. I learned something new!