Ottoman Rib and a Costco Find

Knitting friends, I have a question. I am almost afraid to ask it because I feel like I should know the answer, but I am not coming up with exactly what I want. I am tempted to shoot off a note to Lily Chin, because I am pretty sure she’ll know what I’m talking about, but maybe someone else knows.

Around the same time that I was publishing Twists and Turns, there was another print magazine called KnittingNOW. One of their issues included a pattern for an ottoman rib cardigan. I thought I had every issue, but that particular issue seems to have gone on walkabout. (It is possible I am imagining the existence of this pattern, but I don’t think so.)

Here’s the thing. I cannot pin down hand knitting instructions for anything called ottoman rib. I suspect it is several rows of stockinette separated by a row of purl stitches—making it a horizontal ribbing pattern rather than a vertical one—but it would be nice to have the “official” pattern if one exists. Googling “ottoman rib knit stitch” brings up a lot of vertical ribbing patterns as well as references to machine knitting. The Bosforus Textiles website has this to say about ottoman rib:

Ottoman Rib Knit Fabric is mostly an interlock fabric that consists of two full interlock courses followed by six half-gauge jersey courses knitted on the effect side of the fabric. Ottoman Rib Knit Fabric is characterised by horizontal relief ridges on the effect side. Ottoman Rib Knit Fabrics can also be made on a rib basis instead of an interlock basis, and on a knit-tuck basis instead of a knit-miss basis.

That is clearly machine-knitting-speak. I understand what they are describing, but none of those stitches is identical to what I am remembering as the handknitted version.

The reason this has come up—other than me occasionally wondering what black hole devoured that issue of KnittingNOW with the cardigan pattern—is because I was watching a Minerva video the other day that featured the Meet MILK ottoman rib fabric Minerva carries. It looks luscious and comes in lots of wonderful colors. Go look:

And it got me to thinking about that pattern again. JC, is there anything in the Stitch Maps database? Or maybe someone has that elusive issue of KnittingNOW? Not that I would actually knit myself a cardigan when I could buy some of that fabric and sew myself one . . .

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You know you are an adult when you find something new and exciting at Costco and it makes your entire day:

I love Better than Bouillon. I haven’t seen this one before and I think it will make a nice addition to the pasta e fagioli soup I make.

I finished quilting the cream-and-white top yesterday morning. I’ll trim it today and figure out what I want to use for binding. The top has bits of gray fabric in it so I suspect the binding will be gray as well. I am happy to have that done and looking forward to getting some smaller projects quilted now that the bottleneck has cleared.

Our local community organization is hosting a kids’ Christmas Gift Workshop this weekend and Susan asked me for some of my knit fabric scraps. I was only too happy to pass along a large bag of them.