THE DIAGONAL GARTER-STITCH SQUARE

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Here's a beautiful, practical design to please the neophyte knitter and the needlework veteran alike.

by Priscilla Homola and MOTHER'S staff

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 up. In an hour or so, my mother would have a triangle six to eight 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.

Baby afghans, as you probably know, are popular birthday and shower gifts. I made the one pictured here with two four-ounce skeins of three-ply yarn and size 10 needles. My favorite project—and the one that went the quickest—was a warm poncho for my one-year-old daughter. I made this garment in two evenings, and it turned out so well that it has become a best-loved piece of winter wear. With a double strand of four-ply yarn to insure warmth, and size 13 needles, I knitted the first half of the poncho using one other jackets to gauge the proper length. At about the halfway point, I measured the poncho directly on her. When it proved to be the correct size, I bound off 15 stitches in the center of the next row—the last increase row—to make a neck opening. In the following row, which was the first decrease row, I simply cast those 15 stitches on again. [EDITOR'S NOTE: To cast on stitches in the middle of a row, just throw a series of half-hitch loops onto the right needle. Since these tend to be rather loose along the bottom, MOTHER'S staffer made our test poncho—shown here—with a crocheted edge on the neck opening, which firmed it up nicely. Our poncho, incidentally, took seven ounces of four-ply pink yarn plus a bit of white for the borders.]