Quadruple Helix by Frank H. Jernigan

Quadruple Helix

Knitting
November 2021
DK (11 wpi) ?
21 stitches and 28 rows = 4 inches
in Four-Row Texture Pat
US 4 - 3.5 mm
US 6 - 4.0 mm
3.5 mm (E)
1960 - 2695 yards (1792 - 2464 m)
S (M, L, 1X, 2X)
English

The pattern is available here after you join TKGA.org for $35 per year, possibly the best deal in the knitting world.

I’ve been wanting to explore helical color knitting because it is so easy and since only one color is worked at a time, yet it produces interesting stripes. I was especially interested to see if it would work to use as many as four different colors helically, rather than the usual two. After starting a baby-sized pattern to test the concept, I determined that it did indeed work and the helical path of the colors did not produce any noticeable slant to the stripes. After working the proof of concept, I then wondered how it would work to incorporate a four-row texture pattern along with the four-row helical coloring. I found the perfect simple texture pattern in the Japanese pattern book titled 1000 Knitting Patterns Book (untranslated). When I worked the Four-Row Texture pattern in a single color and then again using four different colors, I was shocked by how different the two swatches looked. The four-color version looked like a very complicated slip-stitch pattern to my eye, even though is nothing more than knitting one color at a time in all knits and purls! This is one of those patterns that looks very complicated to the untrained eye and yet is very simple to work once you start it.