Baby Blanket Beginnings

Well, the voting was so close that Paul had the final vote. Interestingly, all of the fellow knitters who cast a vote, voted for the same pattern. See the reveal after the break...

Its the Lotus Baby Blanket by Shana Schasteen. So far it is off to a very quick start with the embossed center motif complete. It has been quite a while since following a lace pattern that is written out, typically I knit lace from a chart. After the start of this project, I can finally pinpoint exactly why I prefer charts.

With a knitting chart, the knitter gets a grid with symbols representing the actual knit fabric (you can see one in this post). This way you can see the pattern that your individual stitches will be creating as you work. Typically, the first row or round takes some trust, but after that you can see which decreases lead into other decreases, and which yarn overs lead to other yarn overs. It just gives a second level of data and information to check that you are on the right track. 

With a written pattern (you can see Shana's whole pattern on her blog) you have just a series of abbreviations listed in order almost like a sentence. Both methods bring you to the same final result. For my own process, I noticed that I did not have the same double-checks that I do while knitting from a  chart. Yes, I could count the total stitches between markers to be sure I didn't miss anything huge. However, with a chart I would have been able to see the lines each decrease was creating. 

In fact, I found myself almost blindly knitting. I just knit each line, not knowing where it was going to take me. That's a lot of trust in the little abbreviations used. 

I do know some knitters prefer the written instructions modality, if you are one of them please leave a comment sharing what you like about it. I am now supremely curious about this other method for completing a knitting project.