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Working with the Instant Plaid Pattern

The trick with the Instant Plaid pattern is to wrap the yarn around your needle twice when you go to knit the stitches that will be slipped across the front. The double wrapping give those stitches twice as much yarn so that they won’t pull up the whole base row that they were knit on (which is what occurred in the hexagon block) once they are knitted back into the next base row. The double wrapping is very easy to do.

When you go to knit the stitch, (IN – AROUND – UNDER – OFF) simply wrap the yarn AROUND your needle twice before going UNDER. It will look like you made two stitches on your right needle, but you haven’t. On the next row when you go to slid those stitches you can just drop that extra wrap off the needle, leaving you with one large loop.

This is another block that would be fun to work up with several different background colors. I definitely want to play with this pattern some more.

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More Blocks in the Series

Learn to Knit Afghan Project

This series covers several different knitting stitches using the Learn-to-Knit Afghan book by Barbara Walker. Whether you are a true beginner or an intermediate knitter, you can take your knitting to the next level working through the blocks in this book. About once a week I will be adding one new block to the blog with some of my notes. If you would like to knit along with us please feel free to leave your comments, questions, suggestions, and links to photos in the COMMENT section. You can also add a photo to our Flickr group or tag a Tweet with #WFAlearn2knit. If you are just joining us you might want to start with the introductory post.

Getting Started Knitting

If you are completely new to knitting you can learn the basics of getting starting with our Newbie Knitting series. Once  you have tackled the first few lessons there, you will be ready to begin your afghan.