Garter-stitch Knitting: The Diagonal Garter-stitch Square

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.

Baby afghans, as you probably know, are popular birthday
and shower gifts. I made the one pictured in the image gallery with two
4-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 1-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 of her 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.