Monica Knits

The lily of the valley pattern is a little trickier to knit with lace weight yarn than fingering weight because it is easy to miss picking up one of the 5 loops or to accidentally pick up an extra loop. The middle of the 5 stitches in the nupp is sometimes tight or hidden behind the other loops. The other potential error is to accidentally pick up 6 sts, since for many of the nupps, the next stitch is a yarn over, which is easy to unwittingly pickup with a 3.25 mm needle. A small diameter, contrast colored dpn is used to ensure that 5 and only 5 loops are picked up. Read more ... for additional photos and discussion.
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The following three images show how to prevent two possible errors in creating the 5-nupp stitch used in the Lily of the Valley shawl.

1. The 1.75 mm (blue) double pointed needle (dpn) points to the 5 sts of the nupp on the purl (wrong) side of the work.
2. Pass the blue needle through the 5 sts of the nupp and count them to make sure no loops are left behind.
3. The regular 3.25 mm straight needle is then guided along the path opened up by the 1.75mm (blue) dpn. Once the 3.25 mm needle is in position, the blue needle is withdrawn and the 5 loops are purled together.

Image 1 Image 2 Image 3