The St John’s wort stitch is a traditional lace knitting stitch. It combines a 3 to 2 decrease on the right side of the fabric, with a strategically placed yarn over increase on the following wrong side of the fabric. Because of this, you’ll see that the stitch count decreases on the right side rows, and increases again on the wrong side rows. As far as lace patterning goes, this one is pretty intuitive to knit: The yarn over always has to be worked between the 2 wrapped stitches of the 3 to 2 decrease. This makes it pretty easy to read the knitting, and see which stitch needs to go where.
The stitch pattern requires a multiple of 6 + 2 stitches, and is worked over 4 rows. Please note that I’ve added 2 edge stitches in garter stitch on both sides of the swatch. These are not included in the stitch pattern description.
Materials used
Yarn: Paintbox Yarns Simply DK, a good value, good quality 100% acrylic yarn, in the color Marine Blue.
Needles: This is a pair of straights that I picked up at the second-hand store when I started knitting, brand unknown.
Stitches used
- k – knit
- p – purl
- psso – pass the slipped stitch over
- RS / WS – right side / wrong side
- rep – repeat
- sl – slip the indicated stitch knit-wise to the right-hand needle
- st(s) – stitch(es)
- yo – yarn over
St. John’s Wort stitch
Row 1 (RS): K1, * (sl 1, k2, psso), k3; rep from * to 1 st before end, k1.
Row 2 (WS): P1, * p4, yo, p1; rep from * to 1 st before end, p1.
Row 3: K1, * k3, (sl 1, k2, psso); rep from * to 1 st before end, k1.
Row 4: P1, * p1, yo, p4; rep from * to 1 st before end, p1.
Repeat rows 1-4 for pattern until desired length.
In the below pictures, you see the patterning first from the right, and then also from the wrong side of the fabric:
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