Garter-stitch Knitting: The Diagonal Garter-stitch Square

Image Gallery Baby afghans are a popular birthday and shower gift, and you can make one using this tutorial. PHOTO: MOTHER EARTH NEWS EDITORS

Many people learn the basic knitting stitch — called the garter stitch — in school, or from friends or relatives, but, once having mastered that maneuver, never go on to further develop their skill. Sometimes this happens for lack of a satisfying project, one that's really good-looking as well as practical. Well, if you can handle the basic knitting stitch and know how to increase and decrease, I think you'll find that the diagonal garter-stitch square is reason enough to get those needles out of storage.

I was taught this easy, attractive design by my mother, who learned it from friends, and right from the start I was impressed by the speed with which it allows projects to be made. In an hour or so, my mother would have a triangle 6 to 8 inches across, on its way to becoming an infant's afghan. The pattern looked delicate, even elegant, yet it was astonishingly simple:

1. Cast on 2 stitches.
2. Row 1: Knit 2 stitches, increasing on the second stitch to make a total of 3 stitches.
3. Row 2 on: Repeat as for Row 1, but knit to the end of each row.
4. When the afghan reaches half the desired size, begin to decrease by knitting 2 stitches together on the second stitch of each row.
5. Continue until there are no more stitches, cast off, and tie in the ends.

As you work, you form a border with the first two stitches of each row. This border can be made wider, if you prefer: Simply make your increase and decrease stitches farther into the row. I found that I could knit as many as seven stitches into the row before increasing or decreasing, and the border looked just great.

Because each half of the diagonal square is a mirror image of the other, and because there's often quite a bit of leeway possible in the final sizes of projects, it's easy to figure the distribution of yarn so that you have no leftovers to worry about: two skeins in, two skeins out, so to speak. This knowledge can be useful if, for example, you fall heir to several skeins of yarn and would like to make a small afghan. Just knit and increase until you've used up half your yarn; then knit and decrease until the square's finished and you have no more yarn left.