Thread Traveller: Personal assessment piece part 3

This PAP is now well on the way, a little overdue my original hope of finishing it by the end of January, but It's getting very exciting seeing it evolve. It's a bit disconcerting too as every new addition seems to look wrong until it's embedded in with subsequent rows and pulls itself into place by its own weight.

I'm still looking for inspiration for the beach theme of support/entrapment so here are a few shots I took in Suffolk.

pap/1

I really like the little trapped floats in this and thought maybe I might be able to find something to interpret them with and add to the knitting.

pap/2

pap/3

This next shot shows the piece from the knit side, which is the tidy side, I don't know which I prefer yet.

pap/4

And now to the purl side.

pap/5

I've tried various ways of inserting the patches, trying to find the best solution. These 2 were inserted by crocheting the bottom of each patch to the knitting stitches, which gave a nice clean finish. I then knitted up the sides of each one separately picking up stitches from the patch as I went. The patches had been previously stitched with buttonhole stitch to give a loop to stitch into. The problem I found when I did this previously was that every stitch I picked up increased the row length.

pap/5a

I then decided to try several ways of decreasing the extra stitch after making it, but none of the methods gave a clean tight finish.

pap/6

pap/7

These patches have been added by knitting around the patch till there is enough flexibility to incorporate it onto the main knitting needle.

pap/8

I really like the way this patch worked out with the open piece in the middle.

This pic shows how the bottom right forms a frame for the patches as it hangs, not intentionally done, but I like the effect.

pap/9

These last pics show the the details, mainly to give Sian a better idea of the construction of the piece, so I hope they won't be too repetitive to anyone else who visits.