Men Who Knit Promoting and inspiring the art of knitting amongst men.

I have recently been really interested in the lace aspects with yos and k2togs and all that stuff, but I guess that isn't a specific stitch. I really do like Aran Leaves.  Any one have any lace patterns to suggest for me to try?  I am very open to challenging techniques, and other things

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I suppose I would say King Charles Brocade. I haven't learned to cable yet. K C B is the most complex pattern of stitches I know how knit. If it is done with a garter stitch border, it incorporates stockinette, seed or moss stitch and garter stitch. I find the outcome very pleasing to the eye and very satisfying to the mind.

Cable seems to be winning the race.....I love it too....I have to admit I have only done it a few times, so I'm still pretty slow with it, but it is magical. And Enterlac would be a close second, again more of a pattern rather than a stitch, but the effect is awesome.

Yes.  I love cabling too.  They are a never-ending source of delight.  I'm fasinated by the tiny and intricate cables used in Bavarian and Austrian socks and stockings. These are mainly done by also knitting into the back of the stitch which increases the relief of the cable and the fine wool for socks seems to also add to the effect.  I was recently confronted in an folk Museum in Innsbruck by one of the staff who wanted to know why I was only taking pictures of the socks on the costume dummys (There were loads - I had a field-day).  She'd spotted me on CCTV and thought she'd got another nutter loose in the place.  "We have other lovely things as well!" she said, so I had to explain my fasination both for knitting and cables.

If anyone is interested, do get Lisl Fanderl's 3-book set of 'Bauerliches Stricken'.  Packed with masses of patterns and examples as well as local history of the patterns.  They are stocked by either Amazon.de or Barnes and Noble.  A cabler's dream! They are in German but easy to follow and there are some excellent free on-line translation services if you get stuck.

A friends mother in Ballybunion on the west coast of Ireland  knitted Arans professionally - all different and without a pattern.  So instead of imagining the pattern going backwards and forwards in rows as she knitted and trying to remember where she was with each different bit of cabling,  she imagined each cable pattern going up the garment, as it were.  This way she had only to visualise the look of the different patterns at any point in order to knit it.  Mrs Doyle - eat your heart out! Oh, and incidentlly, depite the view that Arans are ancient celtic patterns with clan variations,  they were a commercial gimmick devised in the 1930s and very succesfully too.