Garter Stitch Snowflake

I've always wanted to do a big lacy half-circle shawl all in garter stitch. This doily started out as a test piece for that kind of shawl. However, I liked the small piece quite a lot, so I tried to figure out how to do it in a seamless full circle – and here it is. 

This doily consists of diamonds that stack up to be triangles which in turn form a (slightly angular) circle. It starts with a provisional cast on and is finished by grafting in garter stitch (just before knitting and binding off the last stitches). It is NOT A BEGINNER PATTERN.

The knitting pattern is available via

• Ravelry 
• Loveknitting 
• Payhip 

The pattern PDF is 12 pages long and contains

• written row-by-row instructions for knitting this piece – including 6 photos
• schematic of the construction, i.e. how the diamonds stack up to create the whole piece
• chart(s) of one diamond
• short photo tutorials for the following techniques
• provisional CO with a crochet hook and undoing it
• grafting in garter stitch
• short rows with wrap and turn and picking up the wraps 
• crochet CO (at the edge of a knitted piece)
• backwards loop CO

To knit this piece you need the following materials

• about 250 metres of light fingering weight yarn (for the blue piece in the photos I used Creative Melange Lace by Rico Design, colorway 011 - here's the yarn's Ravelry page, the red one is made with Wollmeise Lace, colorway Allegria - here's the yarn's Ravelry page)
• 2.5 mm knitting needles 
• a crochet hook of a similar size (I used a 2.5mm hook)  
• scrap yarn
• a tapestry needle – for grafting and to weave in ends

Knitted in light fingering weight yarn the finished piece has a diameter of about 42 cm.

I did not knit a swatch, but measuring from the finished piece, 13 sts give about 5 cm in width.