Mulberry Design Baby Blanket by Virginia Woods Bellamy

Mulberry Design Baby Blanket

Knitting
January 1952
Light Fingering ?
12 stitches and 24 rows = 4 inches
in garter stitch
US 13 - 9.0 mm
English

See charts of the Mulberry Bush. The first one shows it in 64 units.

Yarn: B; 3-ply baby; 6 oz;
Needles: number 14
Gauge: 6 stitches to 2 inches
Chart: one box= 6 stitches; 2 boxes wide; 6 x 2 = 12 sts.
one box= 6 ridges; 2 boxes high; 6 x 2 = 12 rgs.
To knit: Follow chart.

The principle of color rotation, or the alternate use of two or more colors, produces genuine excitement for anyone interested in mathematical design.

The Mulberry Bush design, enclosing a square within eight others and those nine within a new frame of twenty-five others, and so on to larger and larger frames, makes its own designs for us the moment we apply the simple principle of color rotation. To work backward, in any principle, is a bewildering and stupendous task-like following every line of every leaf, twig, branch, bark and root of an oak tree back to its acorn. But to draw the outline of an acorn is a very simple business, and to begin with it, and let the design unfold is to embark upon the discovery of design. Try it yourself with graph paper and colored pencils or crayons, and you will see that rotating color will produce its own designs.

Four color rotation graphs, as a simple illustration of fore-ordained design, are drawn here on the single Mulberry Bush pattern. The first one shows the design in one color only, outlining the line-design which is the result of moving the divided square counterclockwise, with the inevitable continuation of diagonal lines branching and rebranching in four directions.

Change the color design using two colors as in the second graph, and we have the well-known checkerboard with its diagonal stripes. Change now to three color rotation, such as red, white and blue, and repeating this sequence every three units, we will have the design shown in graph 3.

Four color rotation following the same order of colors every four units, produces the design shown in graph 4. And with every added color the design will shift and change into another color pattern. Yet all we have done is to count from one, to two, to three, and to four, changing colors as we pick up one divided square of. knitting from another.
The two lower designs on the graph page of the Mulberry Bush are numbered 5 and 6, and illustrate an even simpler method of color design applied to this pattern. For the knitter does not have to break the yarn with every unit, but can complete a square framing a square, and change colors only when each new frame is completed. The difference between these two designs is a central difference. No. 5 moves around four central squares, while No. 6 moves around a single square (see photograph XXXI). Once the Mulberry Bush is learned and knitted, it may become a springboard either for the beginner or for the original designer who wishes to move on and around the central idea of number knitting.