This pattern contains garter and lace pine trees with a moss stitch border.

8-9 230 yd skeins

11/5/2020:

Added directions for a Worsted Weight version of the pattern.

Added directions for the slip stitch at the beginning of each row.

Recommendation:
I recommend replacing k3tog with (slip 1, k2tog, psso) in this pattern. This looks better and that’s what I actually did in the photos.

Explanation About How To Avoid Mistakes With Lace Patterns:

When you do a ssk or a k2tog, you are combining two stitches into one stitch. When you do a yarn over (yo), you add a new stitch. When you do a k3tog, you are combining three stitches into one stitch. By the way, I recommend replacing k3tog with slip 1, k2tog, psso in this pattern. This looks better and that’s what I actually did in the photos. When knitting a rectangular lace item like this blanket, the number of stitches added has to be the same as the number of stitches deleted. Otherwise, the rows start getting wider or narrower.

Because of the increases and the decreases, lace knitting is more prone to errors than other types of knitting. That means it is necessary to do more checking of your work. In the beginning counting the lace square stitches is a good idea. The quicker you catch a mistake in lace knitting the easier it is to fix it. It’s usually not having a stitch to knit or having too many stitches that makes it obvious that a mistake has been made. Each lace square should have 19 stitches.

A technique known as reading your work is quicker and identifies mistakes more reliably. Once you understand what is supposed to be happening with a pattern and have made a mistake or two, you’ll also know what to look for to make sure you’re doing it right. I do this at the end of each row for lace patterns. And usually, when I’m starting something new, I’ll check at the end of each repeated section (in this case the lace square) in the row. That helps me catch it sooner. For lace knitting, look for the ssk, k2tog, (slip 1, k2tog, psso) and yo stitches in the knitted fabric. Make sure that for every ssk or k2tog there is a yo stitch. For each (slip 1, k2tog, psso) there should be two yo stitches. Usually, the mistake is to add an extra yarn over or decrease or forget to do a yo or decrease. But sometimes the mistake is that the yo or decrease is done in the wrong place.

Reading your work also means making sure that it looks like it is expected to look. You should see the branches (the decreases) under the eyelets and they should join together at the top of each pair of branches. It should look like the closeup of the lace square in the pattern and also look similar to the pattern diagram.

If I find a mistake, I use one of the safety pin type stitch markers to mark it. The simplest way is to fix a mistake is to unknit the stitches until you get to where the mistake was made. This is done stitch by stitch (see this video). You do not want to pull lace knitting off the needles and pull out the yarn. It is difficult to get lace knitting put back on the needles correctly. With the blanket, you’d be able to rip back to the border rows between squares and get it back on the needles.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xekxKvFQPFM

Another technique that is used for fixing lace knitting is called a lifeline. I’ve used it with lace shawls before. What you do is put a thin contrasting color yarn through the stitches in a row. Then if you can rip back to that row and the lifeline makes it easy to put the needle back in. Doing the reading the work technique actually worked well for me with the blanket though.

http://elizabethsmithknits.com/2021/02/26/lifelines-in-kn...