Free Knitting Patterns, Instructions, Projects & Designs.

What do kaleidoscopes and knitting have to do with each other? I’ve come to find out that the beautiful patterns we all enjoyed as kids looking through kaleidoscopes and the yarn colors we use as knitters today come together through a nifty gizmo that KnitPicks calls a Teleidoscope.

The Teleidoscope is a simple cardboard tube.

The clear ball lens at one end distorts whatever you’re looking at – in this case yarn. You look through the other end, down through mirrors that crate a kaleidoscopic effect.

I’m embarking on another stranded knitting project. It will – I hope – help bust a bit of my stash. I knew I wanted to use a teal-ish blue I have on hand, plus a creamy white. But I needed some accent colors to jazz it up. How would they look all together? This is where the Teleidoscope came in. Here are the two main colors as seen through the the Teleidoscope:

As you look through the Teleidocsope you add and subtract yarns to see their effect on each other, including the proportions of one color to another. I tried a variety of accent colors, and here’s how a mustard looked added to the original:

I kind of like it. But the pattern I’m using calls for “bright, multi-colored ribbing.” Hmm…. it needs more. I threw in a bit of brown I have left over from a scarf. And then tossed in a coral from another project. Here are how the five balls of yarn looked through the Teleidscope: 

I’ll use all five of these colors in the ribbing for my new project – fingerless gloves. The colorful stripes will make a nice accent to the teal and white hand, and will maintain the pattern’s ethnic tradition. I can hardly wait to swatch!

Just (barely) in time for Christmas knitting, I have finished designing the Christmas Smock Top Socks. This is what the Mystery Sock decided it wanted to become. I love the way the smocking stitch lends a quilted, cozy look to the sock’s cuff. It took some trail and error to come up with the right number of stitches and rows to form an appealing look once the cuff is stretched out over the leg. I’m happy with how the proportions turned out.

I chose Regia 4-ply sock yarn for its crisp stitch definition. In the pattern I call for 9 sts per inch rather than the 7.5 sts on the ball band. I just hate walking around on too-loose knitting. It feels like some kind of couture torture involving twine! At 9 sts per inch, the Regia make a smooth, kind-to-the-feet fabric.

The sock is knitted from the cuff down. An important design consideration was that the cuff must be knit flat so the smocking’s horizonal bars meet up properly. Trying to knit the cuff in the round wouldn’t work because the rounds are really spirals. The “rows” would never match up.

Once the cuff is completed, the yarn is joined and the rest of the sock is knitted in the round. I hid some ribbing under the cuff to make sure the sock stays up through all the Christmas day festivities.

If you like the way Christmas Smock Top Socks truned out, you may want to check out the Pattern Store.

…and red. I just love Christmas, which may explain the Mystery Sock’s morphing into a holiday design. Jimmy the Vicious Attack Cat doesn’t care about seasonal matters. He’s just glad to have a project to curl up near.

So I’m working on a new sock pattern. For now I’m just calling it the Mystery Sock, since it’s a mystery to me why I can’t get the design written faster.

I’m using Regia 4-Ply. I am SUCH a stickler for sock soles, I always end up knitting on a smaller needle than called for to get a tighter fabric. There’s nothing worse than taking the time to knit a sock, then have it feel like you’re walking around on twine when you wear it. 

The ball band for Regia 4-ply indicates 7.5 st per inch. But even at 8 st the weave seemed too loose for me. So I stuck a stitch marker in my work, reduced the needle size, and got 9 st per inch. You can see that the stitches to the right of the marker have that “stringy” look, while the fabric to the left looks nice and smooth, like something your feet will appreciate.

Knitters should be able to obtain this gauge on #1 needles. As I work through the design process, I hope that when people knit up my patterns their feet will be glad for the tighter gauge I suggest.

This is where it all started. I suppose I could have put an end to it at the first hint that I was going to get obsessed. Again. But I ignored that inner voice which cried “Stop while you can!”

Three skeins of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock yarn. That’s all it took. (Plus a visit from my friend Mary, who has so much creativity that apparently she left some behind for me when she went back to Ohio.)

I didn’t mean to design a sock. I certainly didn’t mean to design anything in fair isle. But the shmooey yarn with bright spring colors drew me in and demanded I grab some needles. A design snuck into my mind as if it were a gremlin….  

With the help of the Stitch & Motif Maker software, here’s how the swatching process evolved for Mary’s Garden Socks.

A lot of trail and error, ripping out, starting over, and here is the final product:

 At a later date I’ll post more on the Stitch & Motif Maker, but you can imagine how helpful it is to be able to plan this sort of design out on a just-the-right-proportion grid.

If you like this sock you can find it my Original Designs in my Pattern Store. I find knitting it to be a nice dose of fair isle fun, and I hope you do to!