Mosaic Knitting

Lately I found lots of information about mosaic knitting on the Internet. But it's an old technique. Barbara Walker mentions it in her Treasury of Knitting Stitches. I have book 2 that has no charts only description. Then I recently bought her Mosaic Knitting book with lots of interesting charts. There is a book by Kathleen Kinder too, that I don't have and a chapter in Susan Guagliumi's Handknits by Machine.
Here is a triangle scarf I made with mosaic knitting.

Mosaic knitting is a tuck or slip stitch technique. There are always two identical rows and yarn changed every two rows. By changing the yarn that had tuck or slip stitches those stitches look as if they were knit with the contrasting color in the row with the other color.
Patterns are drawn in a chart that shows the design, like the following picture.

knitted picture

chart

You read it from the bottom right. Row 1 and 2 are dark color (shown in black) The black dots in a dark color row mean knit stitches, the white dots tuck or slip. Then going up row 3 and 4 are light color rows. Here the white dots mean knit stitches and the black one's tuck or slip. Drawing this in DAK the first 2 rows start on the right side with a tuck stitch, then knit, then tuck, then 3 knit stitches ...

Row 3 and 4 are light color yarn and start with 3 knit stitches, then 1 tuck, one knit, one tuck .....

In DAK tuck (or slip) stitches are the non selected needles, here shown in white, the selected needles shown in black knit.

Here is the DAK stitch pattern.

This looks very different from the mosaic chart on top, but is the correct stitch pattern.

For the triangle scar I made the pattern 400 st x 400 rows, did a horizontal and vertical border with this pattern. For the middle part its just 2 rows tuck, knit, tuck knit, and then 2 rows knit, tuck, knit tuck with the other color. That shows up as vertical stripes.

Here are a few more scarves I made.

Threadlace

Most machine knitters are familiar with the method of threadlace.
MC and L button pushed in on Brother machine

There is yarn in feeder A and a thin yarn or thread in feeder B. Selected needles knit only with the yarn in feeder B, the thread, and non selected needles are knitted with both, yarn and thread. As the thread is so thin the knitting looks like lace.

The yarn in feeder B was 2 strands of serger thread, yarn in feeder A Tamm Estilo. The top as an appearance of a lace top.

But there is more to threadlace.

The next example is a cardigan where thread and yarn are identical. The purl side is used as front side.

The next is only a small sample. Thread in feeder A and yarn in feeder B, again purl side as front. Every few rows the thread is picked up and rehung.

Lace top with skirt

I used a model from Machine Knitting Today, December 1994 and then modified to my liking.  I always draw the shape in Desingaknit, also the lace pattern.
The skirt is stockinette, darts on the waist. Bottom is started with  crochet cast on and then knitted to left. Again crochet cast on behind stitches and knitted to left, a total of 3 times.

Top has beads at the bottom front, back and sleeves.

Sideways knitted top

Sideways knitted top

I got the idea from here: https://www.liveinternet.ru/users/4149161/post364666433/
Translating software is not very good, but the pictures were enough to get the idea.
I used Tamm Perla. The bottom increases and decreases are done with a 20 prong transfer tool, shoulder slopes with 12 prong and neck edge with 6 prong.

Filet lace curtain panel

Filet lace curtain panel

This is the final result knitted on Brother KH940.

To achieve this I used a simple picture without many details.

The lace pattern in the background has 6 passes with the lace carriage and 4 with the knitting carriage. So in order to not distort the picture I stretched it by a factor of 1.5 in Photoshop. Any picture editing software works. Then opened up in Graphic Studio of DAK and transformed to a stitch pattern.

I then drew in the white areas the stitch pattern of the background. First I drew a small stitch pattern for the lace background, then inverted it because it seems I can draw only on the white non selected needle area. But as later for the finished pattern the animals need to be white, non selected, I again had to invert the whole pattern. Maybe there is an easier way, but this worked well.

final lace pattern

inverted lace pattern

and here is the final DAK stitch pattern.

144 st x 804 rows with lace carriage, 562 rows with knitting carriage. I started with a seam and ended with a seam to be able to hang it with a rod. Yarn was Bonita 100% mercerized cotton, finished size 22 x 37".

Here another set of curtains

Short rowing to achieve geometric shapes

Will do a demo tomorrow for my knitting club about short rowing geometric shapes, spirals and miters.

I got the idea from an article by Susanna Lewis in Machine Knitter's Source Jan/Feb and Mar/Apr 1998 called "Split Miters". She also describes the method in her book "A Machine Knitters Guide to Creating Fabrics"

You get a miter by casting on over a certain number of needles, then short rowing down to a few needles, then adding those needles again in the same intervals. For a spiral you would add all needles at once after the short rowing down.

2-Color Brioche

2-Color Brioche

This was knitted on Brother KH940 with ribber and color changer. This method is very similar to a fisherman's rib. Normal cast on for 1x1 rib, then yarn is changed every 2 rows, and every 2 rows settings are changed on main carriage and ribber carriage. Two rows tuck in both directions on main carriage, all knitted on ribber. Then two rows tucked on ribber in both directions while main carriage knits all stitches.

2 rows tuck on main bed in color 1

2 rows tuck on ribber in color 2

front

front and back

reversible hat

Hat: 140 stitches, 70-70,  1x1 rib for 46 rows, then change to tuck and knit another 90 rows, change back to 1x1 rib for 2 rows, transfer ribber stitches to main bed on needles that already have a stitch, 4 rows stockinette with tighter tension and take off to gather top. did the side seam as flat as possible to make it reversible. the second dark red side shows a few flaws where the stitches were not knitted off the main bed needles completely.

Yarn was a 2/12 acrylic with T=5.