Healing Wrap
Like many of my designs, there is a story behind this pattern. It was ‘born’ in the days just after the death of our late Queen, Elizabeth II, which was a huge moment in the life of our country. However, our family had also lost two dearly loved family friends, one of whom died way too soon in his 30’s. All deaths are a huge shock and these two were no less devastating to us all. My elder daughter decided to have a tattoo done encompassing a blue butterfly as a memory of the young man who had died and it was thoughts of this blue butterfly that first stirred my interest in such a mosaic pattern. I played around with lots of different designs whilst watching the various ceremonial services after the death of The Queen and it suddenly occurred to me how much comfort we take from our families, friends and even the wider public when grief strikes. Thus the Healing Wrap (or Ruana, as I’ve been told these types of garments can be called) came to be. And yes, when I was thinking of a name for the wrap I remembered a small village tucked up in the north east corner of Lincolnshire. It has a pretty, little, early 13th century church, where we attended a family wedding, once. The name of this village — Healing!
This jumper is knitted using the mosaic technique. Mosaic knitting is very easy and yet can produce extremely complex looking patterns. It is worked by knitting and slipping (purl wise) stitches on a right-side row and then on the wrong side by knitting again those stitches that have been knit on the previous row, and slipping the stitches that were again slipped on the previous row. It can produce work that looks very similar to two-colour intarsia but most people seem to find the joy of mosaic working is that you only work in one colour at a time and do not end up with long “floats” at the back of the work. You change colour every two rows and the stitches that have been knit in the first colour then become the ones that you slip in the next two rows. Please note that in this design you only work in garter stitch.
To work a mosaic pattern it is vital that the yarn does not obscure the slipped stitch when viewed from the right side. On RS rows the slip stitch is slipped with yarn in back, whilst on WS rows slip stitch with yarn in front.
I have provided a written version for the pattern but I WOULD STRONGLY RECOMMEND that you knit from the chart. I think, from feedback, most if not all the people I have taught to work mosaic knitting have found that, scary as it can look, working from charts is much more easy than keeping you eye on a long line of written instructions. So please, have a go at the chart versions of the pattern. I promise you won’t regret it. One other suggestion is that you might find it helpful to use stitch markers to indicate each pattern repeat.
Please note that in the written instructions there is only the right side row given, the wrong side row is worked in the same manner as the previous right side row. This can be easily seen in the charts.
