I owe squares...

Remember how I said I'd knit something for a charity (squares for a blanket project) after every time I finished something for myself? Well, I've finished a few things for myself now, with no squares in sight. So I owe some. After I finished the red socks, I consulted the knitters "bible", A Treasury of Knitting Patterns by Barbara Walker, to find some fun patterns to use. And there are plenty... I wanted to try something I'd never used before, and ended up with a nubbly pattern called Blister check:

Believe it or not, this is a very easy drop stitch pattern! And it looks so fun! Here's a nubbly little detail:

See how those stitches between the nubbles have fewer rows than the rest? That's where you drop the stitch over 4 rows and pick it up with the same color as below. So no intarsia or knitting with more than 1 color at a time. Not that I mind doing that either, but this was much faster to knit that I had imagined, because you only do something out of the ordinary every 6th row.

Another one I tried was the fretwork pattern, based on the same idea of only knitting with one color at a time. This one uses slip stitches instead of dropped stitches. The colors are a dark cholate brown and a light greenish blue.

And a little detail shot:

This became my immediate favorite! I'll have to use it in something else, too... hmm... the possibilities...