Seed Stitch

Lately I've been a little obsessed with knitting seed stitch (and stripes -- can you tell?!)

I realized a few months ago while showing off a few of my hand knits to a friend, that I tend to stick with good old garter stitch and stocking stitch. I've also thrown cables in the mix, like with the Central Park Hoodie. But beyond the occasional ribbing for a sock cuff, I haven't really done too much knitting and purling in the same row.

I love the look of simple garter and stocking stitch and of course cables... but I decided I needed to start venturing into more textured items.  

Seed stitch proved a perfect start.

I started off by making my friend (the one who received the Sheep for her baby shower), a cute cardigan for her wee lamb. I thought the cardigan reminded me a little of the sheep in any case. 

The pattern is from the august edition of British magazine Craftseller.  

I also have a slight magazine obsession. It started when I was a teenager and it's never really slowed down. Besides Artful Blogging, I regularly scour the newsstands looking for all kinds of other magazines. A trip overseas? Don't even get me started. The Sailor is even in on the game. He recently brought home a three-month-old issue of FairLady (my favorite South African magazine) that had to travel through West African waters and then Paris before it finally made it to me.

I do on occasion have to restrain myself. But lately I've been splurging on Craftseller.  

For the cardigan, it only seemed right that I used a British ball of yarn I procured in England several years ago. I carefully calculated the yardage and set off making my cute cream cardi. 

Imagine my surprise when I ran out of yarn at the back of the hood -- I ended up using a bit of brown from my stash (you can kind of see the weird brown splotch at the back of the hood) and then I crocheted trim on the bottom and the cuffs and along the rest of the hood, to try to balance the whole thing out.

Despite my poor math calculations -- I still found the seed stitch super easy. 

However, like all kinds of British versus American terms, seed stitch* is actually referred to as moss stitch in the UK. (American Moss Stitch is something different -- of course.) 

Now that the shawl is finally complete, I'm whipping up a little autumn inspired something... in seed stitch, naturally.

* American Seed stitch or British Moss Stitch: Knit 1, Purl 1 on an even number of stitches on the first row, then Purl 1, Knit 1 on the next row. Repeat these two rows to form seed stitch. There is also an American Moss Stitch, but let's worry about that later, shall we?