Faggoting

It has been another hectic day, it doesn’t help that the temperature is rising, I don’t mean mine, I am talking about the mercury levels, in Australia we are running around in shorts and t’shirts and the fire bans and water restrictions are in full force – gee can’t even hose the kids to cool them down, oh well beach here we come.

Talking about mercury rising and listening to bushfire alerts, reminded me of a very unique knitting technique to create an open weave effect which is called faggotting. I was thinking about the carnage after a bushfire, how branches and sticks where bundled together and stacked for clearing.

Ok you might have your own interpretation for faggot, or faggoting but here it is according to Wikepedia.
Faggot or fagot may refer to:
Faggot (epithet), a derogatory term for a gay or effeminate man
Faggot (wood), a bundle of sticks or branches
Faggots (novel), a novel by Larry Kramer
Faggot (unit of measurement), an archaic unit of measurement
Fagot (pronounced with a silent T), the NATO reporting name for the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 airplane
Faggot (food), a British pork meatball
Fagot(to), the name in many languages of the musical instrument bassoon


Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faggot"

It is a shame that Wikipedia hasn’t included information on the term faggoting and how it applies to knitting.

Ok how does this all relate to knitting - faggotting is a true lacy knitting stitch, in which increases and decreases occur on every row (as opposed to a lacy knitting stitch, in which rows containing increases and decreases alternate with knitted or purled rows).
One common form of this effect when worked in the flat takes only two stitches and two rows for the entire repeat. Row 1 would be an endless repeat of the (YO, SSK) unit. The accompanying Row 2 would be an endless repeat of (YO P2tog).
Ok I hear you asking what does this stitch look like.

Here a very nice pattern to using the faggot stitch to knit a scarve


Abbreviations:K=knit, YO=Yarn Over, k2tog=knit 2 sts together


Instructions:Cast on 18 stsBegin Faggot Stitch Pattern:Row 1 and all rows: *K1, YO, k2tog; repeat from * to end.Continue this same pattern until you are almost out of yarn, bind off loosely.


If you wish to make the scarf wider or narrower, do so in units of 3 sts (i.e. 21, 24 etc)
Why not try it out for yourself