Something New and Blue: A Wedding Garter

After I figured out that spinning on a drop spindle was really cool, I bought several bags of roving to spin.  Mind’s Eye Yarns had several small bags of silk, from the Drunkard Dyelot, in beautiful blues and greens and purples.  Some of the roving was more variegated than others, but it was all beautiful, and I loved spinning it.  I didn’t have my beautiful Spanish Peacock drop spindle yet, but the one I had, although somewhat heavy, worked perfectly well.  The problem was that there wasn’t much of each bat of roving, and then there was only a little ball of yarn.  Hum.  What do I do with a little ball of yarn?  Apparently, wait a year, forget that I promised to knit my cousin a garter for her wedding, and remember a bare week and a half before the wedding with no idea what to knit for her.

By the way, ‘garter’ is both a piece of clothing, and a knitting stitch, which makes it very hard to google a knitting pattern for the piece of clothing.

This is where the hand-spun blue yarn comes in.

There wasn’t much of it, so I wouldn’t be taking away from another project.  A wedding garter is special enough that I was willing to use my hand-spun yarn.  And it was even blue – new and blue for my cousin.  Also, apparently, the rhyme continues with ‘stick a penny in her shoe’, but this idea was vetoed.  So I spent a day at work figuring out the pattern, and another day knitting most of it up.

As you may be able to see, it’s a variation of my leaf border pattern.

When I gave it to my cousin, I threaded the garter with narrow white satin ribbon in lace of the knitting needle in the pictures.  I should have used elastic, so it held on better, but it looked lovely.  Sadly, I don’t have a picture with the ribbon.  But I do have the pattern.  Cast on 8 stitches and start on row 1.

To space out the holes to lace the ribbon through, you must do a yarn over every second right-side row, one or two stitches in from the right side of the chart.  Since this is a 14 row pattern, this means the first repeat through, yarn-overs happen on rows 1, 5, 9, and 13.  On the second repeat, yarn-overs are on rows 3, 7, and 11.  This staggering of rows is why the yarn-overs aren’t charted above.

Knit until you are very sure the garter is bigger than the leg it will sit on.  Ruching is very pretty.  After finishing a complete repeat, knitchner the end to the cast-on beginning.  String ribbon through the holes, and leave the ends long to tie in a bow.

Now all you have to do is find the leg under all that wedding dress skirts and underskirts and you’re good to go!