I’ve been thinking about how best to show off all the variations on this stitch, and I decided on basically making what is more or less a sampler.

Which mean I spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time over the last little while creating two big, plain rectangles of fabric (because there’s not room to fit it all in on one), blocking them, adorning them, then blocking them again. And now I’m going to spend a not-inconsiderable amount of time this week taking pictures of the same. You know, assuming the sun comes out and the weather behaves. Which is a bold assumption in February in Maine!

But at the end of all that, I’ll have two, absolutely useless but deeply lovely bits of highly decorated fabric…and a faint sense of amusement at how I elect to spend my time on this earth. And you’ll have an awesome little exploration of this stitch that will let you put it on whatever bit of knitting seems to require it. Which seems like a fair compromise!

This is the two-color version (there are four and six-color versions too), worked in both a tighter and a looser spacing. And then there are a few further explorations I couldn’t resist that I’ll show off here shortly. Because you know as well as I do I don’t know when to stop.