Devon is very good for observing the rain! I’ve noticed that rain basically just obliterates the horizon at the beach, and has very little discernible texture (e.g. lower middle photo). The upper two middle photos were the only two I could find with any texture due to the different background.
So I feel like I can use some artistic license for the pattern for this square!
As I watched the torrential rain out of my office window one day, the rain was coming down as stair rods with the dark trees behind as background. I realised that rain needs to have the dark background to show any texture.
The right upper and lower photos were taken in March 2020, a pre-lockdown visit with Tara. We walked along the sea wall in Dawlish, miraculously we stayed dry.
This is the first vertical pattern for the blanket, some form of rib seemed natural for a rainy pattern, but I knew I had to break it up a bit to avoid the stitches bunching together. I had to try quite a few different ways of doing this (lower left photo), for example trying alternating broken rib of varying lengths. However, after watching the rain from my office, I decided to go with a pattern that looks a bit like the ‘stair rod’ type of rain, breaking each right side column every 8 rows. This makes a nice pattern on the reverse side too.
I made the patterns in a spreadsheet before knitting up a test swatch. The bottom left photo in the collage above shows the trial patterns I went through before deciding which I liked.
General principles for square patterns:
Repeat pattern horizontally and vertically & simple to knit pattern.
36 stitches x 48 rows for main pattern as these are very divisible numbers.
An 'x' means purl on a knit row, and knit on a purl row to create the texture.
This lower chart is the format I found to be most useful to me:
White = knit row (right side), grey = purl row (wrong side).
An 'x' = purl on a knit row, and knit on a purl row
Written pattern:
See blanket pattern for required needles & yarn.
(k = knit, p=purl)
Cast on 36 stitches
Row 1: k1, p1 to end
Row 2: k1, p1 to end
Row 3:k1, p3 to end
Row 4: k3, p1 to end
Row 5: k1, p1 to end
Row 6: k1, p1 to end
Row 7: p2, (k1, p3) to last 2 sts, k1, p1
Row 8: k1, (p1, k3) to last 3 sts, p1, k2
Repeat rows 1-8 5 times more
Cast off
I have made these patterns available for free but they are ©Blanketscapes, the patterns are not to be copied or resold. I'm happy for you to make and sell finished blankets using these patterns for charitable, non-commercial, purposes only. Please credit @blanketscapes on Instagram or Facebook for your final creations, I'd love to see what you make.