This past weekend my sister was in Philadelphia. She had to visit a chemical plant in K of P for her job and extended her stay a few days to spend time with us. While she was here, taught me how to knit brioche. She is an expert at it and has made many beautiful cowls and scarves.

Brioche knitting was a mystery which I did not really want to solve, but my mom insisted that I have her teach me. I am glad our mom insisted.

To teach me, my sister had the patience of Job as she fixed my many mistakes! At one point, she even ripped back most of what I had done to correct an error. She reknit in 20 minutes what had taken me 2 hours to knit.

In brioche knitting, the basic idea is that you use two colors and knit each row twice. First you knit with a dominant main color; then you push all the stitches back and knit the same row with the other color. To achieve the distinctive rows of pattern on each side, you have to yarn over a certain way.

It does take some getting used to. She had to write out the directions for me so I would know how do the yarn overs correctly when knitting or purling with each yarn.

I made so many mistakes which she corrected patiently.

One mistake I did not want her to correct was the paired lines of knitting blue stitches running up one side. That looked nice but it was a mistake I made repeatedly. But I guess I should really call it a variant at this point since it shifted from a flaw of execution to a desired design element.

Below are a series of videos to help me remember what I did — and if anyone else is interested.

Notice that the blue yarn is the dominant yarn and each row starts with it first.

Step 1: beginning of pattern row with blue yarn. Click here for the video.

Step 2: end of pattern row with blue yarn. Click here for the video. 

Step 3: beginning of pattern row with grey yarn. Click here for video.

Step 4: end of pattern row with the grey yarn. Click here for the video. 

Step 5: Beginning of non-pattern row with dominant blue yarn. Click here for video.

The yarn that I am using is Malabrigo. It was a gift from a student (class of 2017). She chose just the perfect present for her teacher as a thank you for writing her letter of recommendation for college. She actually noticed and remembered that her teacher knits.

Anyway. I think it is appropriate that I use this student’s gift. She always challenged and pushed herself in class and now I am pushing myself in the field of knitting using her yarn.