It's a Stitch Up

Daedalum was created for our 2019 Yarn Advent Calendar and is designed especially for miniskeins, but it’s also an ideal scrap-buster project, using up to eleven shades of sock-weight yarn.

This colour extravaganza draws inspiration from Luminaria created by Architects of Air. A Luminarium is an immersive sculpture people can enter, and experience intense, radiant colour that comes from daylight shining through its fabric structure. Daedalum is the name of a recent work which toured the UK in 2019. Another source of inspiration for this design is the zoetrope, an early animation device with rotating discs. The original device was invented by William Horner in 1934, and Dædaleum was its name.

Sizing

Size A (B, C) – adult S (M, L), for head circumference 52-54cm (55-57cm, 58-60cm)

Skills required

Suitable for knitters comfortable with knitting-in-the-round using circular needles, simple stranded colourwork/Fair Isle and following charts. The stranded rows are two-colour, with floats spanning seven stitches or fewer.

Yarn

• It’s a Stitch Up Favourite Sock (100g, 365m/400 yards, 100% Merino wool), or
• It’s a Stitch Up Favourite Sock Minis (20g, 73m/80 yards, 100% Merino wool)

Suitable for any 4 ply/sock/fingering weight yarn with a springy quality.

This pattern uses up to eleven shades. We recommend dark shades for the main colour(s) (MC1, MC2 etc), and light or bright shades for the contrast colour(s) (CC1, CC2 etc).
It is not necessary to use full the number of shades suggested – you could choose to work the design in just one main colour and one contrast colour, or to change shades for the contrast colour only.

Quantities are specified for Size A, with Sizes B and C in brackets.

• Main colour(s): 103 (118, 133)m/113 (129, 145) yards total, or 34 (40, 46)m/37 (43, 50) yards for MC1 and 19 (21, 24)m/
  21 (23, 26) yards each MC2-5
• Contrast colour(s): 69 (78, 87)m/76 (85, 95) yards total, or
  13 (14, 16)m/14 (16, 17) yards each CC1-6

Needles & equipment

• For colourwork: 3.25mm (US 3) circular needle at least 100cm/40 inches long (or size needed to give correct tension)
• For brim: 2.75mm (US 2) circular needle at least 60cm/24 inches long (or two metric sizes smaller than that used for colourwork)
• 8 stitch markers or loops or scrap yarn, one of them unique to denote the start of row
• Yarn needle

Tension/gauge

32 stitches and 34 rows over 10cm/4 inches in stranded colourwork using 3.25mm needles, after gentle blocking.

Banner image: Katena by Architects of Air, photo John Owens