Picking Blackberries at this time of year?

 

I love knit stitches that give your knitted fabric a thicker texture, particularly if you're trying to use up all that DK weight yarn and can't think of anything else to use it for. That's the case at the moment with Blackberry Stitch which I'm using to knit a scarf at the moment with. 

Blackberry Stitch (also known as Bramble or Raspberry stitch due to the bunched up stitches that fall in nice little clusters as above) is one of those deceptively simple / repeating stitches that gives fantastic results without having too complicated a pattern. 

Worked as a set of 5 rows (with just the latter four rows repeating to form the pattern), it couldn't be easier to knit - even for a complete klutz-thumbed amateur like me. So how do you do it?

Blackberry Stitch

I usually work this in multiples of 6 stitches (with a knit stitch edging) - for the scarf pattern I opted to cast on 40 stitches of DK weight yarn (but reduce the number of stitches to 30 if you're going to knit anything heavier than DK). 

Row 1: Purl all stitches (easy peasy, right?

Row 2: This is where it starts getting 'fun' and where you'll knit your first row of those 'bobbles'. 

K1 (Edge stitch), *K1, P1, K1 into the same stitch (a triple increase I think it's called), Purl the next three stitches together*

* - Repeat this section until the last stitch then: 

K1 (Edge stitch)

Row 3: Purl all stitches

Row 4: K1 (Edge stitch), *Purl 3 stitches together, K1, P1, K1 into same stitch (triple increase again)* (this is like Row 2 but you're swapping around the increase and the bunched together stitches so your 'berries' will sit nicely in rows as shown in the header image). 

* - Repeat until last stitch then: 

K1 (Edge stitch)

Row 5: Purl all stitches. 

For the patterm, repeat rows 2-5 above. 

You'll very quickly start to see the pattern emerging, which is immensely satisfying because a lot of knit stitches only seem to emerge over time. Even after 5 rows you'll start to see your wonderful textured fabric emerging. This is the perfect stitch to knit for just about any use, purely because it's so easy to fit around other stitches and pattern elements and looks really great when knitted up. 

Enjoy, and happy new knitting / crochet year!