Bird: a free mosaic knitting stitch pattern

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A while back, I encoded the word Bird and made it into lace. For this week’s post, I reworked one of the code grids I made while planning that post and turned it into a mosaic knitting stitch pattern. (I used the process described in this post.)

The nice thing about mosaic knitting is that the charts are similar to the final appearance of the knitting, so I’m not going to provide a swatch this time. Mosaic knitting looks difficult, but it’s really easy to do! Basically, knit two-row stripes, and slip stitches from the row below to make the contrasting pattern. If you can knit stripes, you can knit mosaic patterns.

Here’s a detailed blog post I wrote about how it works.

This is a Barbara-Walker-style mosaic chart for bird. Each row of squares in it represents two rows of knitting (which is why there’s a row number at each end). The square in the column to the right of the row numbers indicates the color of yarn being worked in that line. So in rows 1 & 2, all black squares are knit or purled, and all white squares are slipped with the yarn being held on the wrong side of the work. In rows 3 & 4, all white squares are knit or purled and all black squares are slipped.

Bird: a free mosaic knitting stitch pattern, by Naomi Parkhurst
Bird: a free mosaic knitting stitch pattern chart, by Naomi Parkhurst

Notes:

  • This is a stitch pattern such as might be found in a stitch dictionary. This is not a pattern for a finished object.
  • Bird is a multiple of 12 + 1 stitches and 12 + 2 rows.
  • The non-slipped stitches in the second row of each stripe may be either knit or purled, as desired.
  • Before starting any of these instructions, knit two plain rows in the color represented by the white squares on the charts. (You can use whichever colors you like.)
  • Designers, please feel free to use this in your patterns. I’d like credit but won’t be offended if people don’t give it.
  • If you like my posts like this, please consider supporting me on Patreon or donating with my Paypal tip jar in the sidebar. Thanks!