Lately, I’ve rediscovered the simple elegance of the garter stitch. The garter stitch is a textured pattern that uses the knit stitch on both sides for flat knitting or knit stitch on one round followed by a purl stitch on the second round for circular knitting. It’s reversible and the edges don’t curl up making it a simple yet versatile stitch pattern. Garter stitch is usually the first stitch pattern we learn as a beginning knitter and then move on to more complex stitch patterns. . As we learn other more complex knit stitch patterns, we end up using the garter stitch pattern mostly for borders and edges of our knits. Yet one can create many beautiful and versatile knits when the garter stitch is combined with lace, shorts rows, or different yarn color variations. Several examples of knits with garter stitch patterns can be found on Ravelry.

Here is my version of the simple and elegant Purl Soho’s Dovetail Scarf pattern. I modified the pattern using a different yarn and a picot bind off. More project detail on this knitting project can be found here. For this project I used yarn left over from a previous sweater project.

So whether you are a beginning or an expert knitter, I invite you to rediscover the simple elegance of the garter stitch. I have and will be using this simple and elegant stitch pattern more this year to create a number of new knits.