(If money is tight and you’d like to knit this pattern, drop me an email at lljcomposition@googlemail.com and I’ll send you the pattern for free, no questions asked xx)

This is a pattern for a knitted square depicting the scene outside Bethlehem on the night of Jesus’ birth.

The square is knitted top down and is perfect as a Christmas placemat, or, if knitted in a cotton yarn, would work well as a dishcloth - great for a quick Christmas gift!

The pattern is suitable for intermediate knitters, or adventurous beginners! As well as the basic knitting stitches (K, P, K2tog, SSK, YO) the pattern also uses more unusual stitches to create the different textures, such as star stitch, wrapped stitches and dip stitch, but these are fully explained in the introduction.

This pattern uses roughly 30 - 50 grams/75 - 110 metres of DK weight yarn. A solid colour would be best; slightly tonal yarns would also work but anything more variegated than that will obscure the textures in the pattern. Use whichever needles you would normally use with DK yarn (3.75mm or 4mm). Additionally, three stitch markers would be useful to help keep track of where you are in the pattern.

GAUGE
The suggested gauge is approximately 21 stitches/30 rows per 10cm square. If knitted at this tension the finished square will measure approximately 28 - 30 cm square when blocked.

NB: this pattern contains just written instructions for each row; no charts.

I’d like to send big thanks to my lovely sister-in-law Louise, for her initial testknit, and to Maggie, Caroline, Julie, Sue, Janice and Angela for subsequently testing the pattern and offering suggestions/feedback.
And much thanks and love to Helen, for editing/formatting the document for me and generally sorting out all of my technical incompetence! Xxx