Pillsbury

Photos by the wonderful QuixoticPixels.

 

Pillsbury is a beanie style hat with cables and purls on a stockinette background.  The pattern is written for worsted weight yarn on US #6 and US #7 needles and includes both written instructions and charted instructions. Best yet, it's available for free!

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My wonderful models are my good friends Jessica and Cara. I think they did a great job!

Quick Gifts to Knit: Cowls

Here we are two weeks from Christmas, firmly ensconced in Hanukkah, and I bet you're frantically knitting away at gifts. Am I right? Well, if you've finally realized that all those socks for every family member knit on size 1 needles aren't going to knit themselves you're probably looking for alternative gift ideas. Here we go- these are some of my favorite free fast cowl patterns

I'll start off by tooting my own horn. My GSZ cowl is free (see the sidebar at right) and is super quick to knit in one skein of Malabrigo Rasta. Finish time for one of those bad boys is between 2 and 4 hours. Toot!

Last year I knit the Gaptastic Cowl out of two skeins of Cascade 128 Superwash for Little A's teacher. Two shortish evenings of knitting and I had a cowl just long enough to loop around for extra warmth. The beauty of this cowl is that you just knit seed stitch until you're almost out of yarn and then bind off so it's easily adjustable for both length and width.

The Burberry Inspired Cowl is a nice cabley pattern without being overly fussy. This cowl is knit flat lengthwise and then seamed. I knit mine with two skeins of Malabrigo Twist but you can easily alter the pattern to use up more skeins or less, like my friend Jen.

A perpetual favorite is the Dolores Park Cowl knit in one skein of Malabrigo Chunky. This is pretty much as simple as it gets. Chunky yarn, stockinette in the round, and a few increases make this cowl totally doable for newbie knitters or those of us in a time crunch.

This final pattern is one I've been stalking on Ravelry as of late - the Understory Cowl. It's a nice combination of pretty lace and aran weight yarn knit on size 10 needles. I think it would be easy to adjust circumference-wise once you figure out the number of stitches in the lace repeat. But really, I like the bold lace pattern with the heavy yarn. It looks extra squishy and toasty but pretty, too.

There you have it. Five free cowl patterns knit in heavy-ish weight yarns that could make it under the Christmas tree this year. Happy knitting!

FO: Cupido Cowl

 Last month I went to a yarn garage sale where several women were de-stashing yarn and fabric. I picked up several great yarns (Plucky Knitter Primo Worsted!) including a ziploc bag with several skeins of Rowan Kid Classic. It just so happened that the previous evening I was looking up this particular yarn on Ravelry to knit the Cupido Cowl so I snapped up the bag of yarn for...ahem, two whole dollars, and brought it home.

Pattern: Cupido Cowl by Hiroko Fikatsu

Yarn: Rowan Kid Classic (approx. 1 1/2 balls)

Needles: US #8 Hiya Hiya Sharp Interchangeables

Mods: I cast on 132 stitches since I had extra yarn in my cast on tail (the pattern is a 4 stitch repeat) and knit until I was just about out of yarn. This yarn is one of the nicer mohair blends that I've knit with and it has good stitch definition while still looking fluffy  and soft.

Cuteness for Boys

Knitting patterns for baby girls abound. There's a whole lot of lace and smocking and tiny mary janes out there to knit but what does a person do when confronted with knitting for baby boys? Research. Ravelry has made it pretty easy to advanced search for just about anything but I went to my queue to search and found the perfect thing. There aren't any baby boys coming into my corner of the world but I felt like knitting something decidedly boyish and found that perfect balance between pattern and (stash)yarn.

Pattern: Candy Cardigan from Pickles
Yarn: Dale of Norway Baby Ull in nondescript beige & Sundara Sock Yarn in Bronzed Sienna
Needles: US #5 & US #6 Addi Turbo
Mods: I knit the body on the smaller needle since the slip stitch pattern of the yoke pulls in a bit. I added stripes of the contrast color to the edgings for a bit more color and bound off on a smaller needle to help the garter stitch edges from flaring out.

Designer

Do you remember this? Eons ago I had a passing thought to add it to Ravelry as a free pattern. Guess what? I finally got around to it! GSZ Cowl is now available as a free Ravelry download so you can knit your very own. I knit mine in a few hours and just under one skein of yarn. If you haven't knit with Malabrigo Rasta I highly recommend it. Using a US 15 needle makes a lovely, squishy fabric and really lets the loftiness of the yarn come through. Enjoy!