Ballintemple: In-depth Techniques

ballintemple back detail

As we are all getting started with the Cosy Knits KAL, I thought I’d run a series of tutorials running through different techniques used in the patterns. I’m going to start with Ballintemple as this was the pattern I designed and I’m more intimately connected to it! I’m going to talk through the construction with a few images to make it obvious what I’m doing.

Let’s start by taking a look at how the yoke is constructed. Below is an image of one section, with lines drawn where you have short rows and the bottom line showing the division of the cable. When you work a row you ‘turn’ before you reach the end of the row and work back in the other direction. This means that the neck at the left of your work is smaller as you work less rows than for the bottom.

yoke section

Drawn out it looks like this:

neck shaping

So this is the short row ‘wedge’ and to create the complete yoke you repeat that ‘wedge’ over and over again. If you want the neck to be smaller then you would need to add an extra short row for each repeat of the cable so that there were 2 less rows at the neck for every repeat of the wedge. In the yoke I use German Short Rows as this is the tidiest method I’ve found for working short row in Garter Stitch.

Once you’ve completed the upper yoke you then pick up stitches around the bottom of the yoke. This allows us to shape the body and sleeves as you normally would so you have a lot more control.

The image above is a close up of the short row buttonhole. It’s one of my favourite methods of creating a buttonhole as it’s very adjustable, tidy and lies neatly along the edge of the work. I-cord edging creates a very professional edge to your work and also performs an important function; garter stitch is very stretchy and the I-cord helps to stabilise and hold it in place.

At the top of the work the I-cord has been worked at the same time as the side-to-side yoke so you’ve got one edging already done as an integrate I-Cord. In order to ‘turn’ a corner you’ll work unattached standard I-cord for a couple of rows, along the other edges you uses applied I-Cord/I-Cord Bind-Off and when you want to work a buttonhole you create an I-cord buttonhole by working a few rows unattached and binding off the stitches on the edge of the work.


So now that you’ve got lots of details on the techniques used in Ballintemple you’ve no excuse not to join the Cosy Knits KAL!

If you still need a copy of Cosy Knits you can find the print version here and the digital version here or on Ravelry.

If you want to join the KAL you can find us all chatting over here, what are you going to knit first?

Added March 25th 2021: The individual pattern for Ballintemple has just been added to my shop here. Also you can find yarn kits for it here.