Free Knitting Patterns, Instructions, Projects & Designs.

 Hmm… What on earth is this pile of knitting?

And why is Shannon Okey smiling?

I’m excited to tell you that the Really Big Project I’ve been alluding to over the past bunch of months is my book on reversible scarves. It will be published by Cooperative Press. I’m very grateful to Shannon Okey, of Knitgrrl fame, for giving me the opportunity to be published!

A few weeks ago I hauled all the scarf samples down to Shannon’s studio in Cleveland. I learned a lot, watching her sort the scarves into groups in preparation for photography. She then showed me the programs she uses to edit the Cooperative Press books. A fascinating process!

If you’re like me, and are tired of sorting through scores of scarf patterns to find the ones that look good from both sides, your wait will soon be over. My book uses a variety of techniques, and plenty of suggestions for customization – enough to keep you knitting gifts and accessories for years to come.

The book is in its infancy, and I’ll be sure to keep you posted as it makes its way toward actual book-dom!

For the beautiful yarn that Adrienne spun, I turned to one of my all-time favorite patterns from Candi Jensen’s book Knit Scarves. The Woven Knit pattern uses slipped stitches to form a fabric that looks, well, woven.

I like both sides of this scarf. And need I say more about the colors? Adrienne tells me the roving is called “Alpine”, by Mountain Colors.

Many thanks to my amazing nephew Neil for taking these photos. If like photography, you can check out Neil’s Flickr photostream. You’re in for a treat!

Adrienne can be found on Ravelry as Truffle. I feel lucky to have such a talented, kind and interesting friend as a co-conspirator in all things knitterly!

Kari’s scarf is done. Hooray! I enjoyed everything about this project. The Cables & Lace Rib pattern is from knit1 Magazine‘s Winter 2007 issue. I love that the pattern is reversible, with both sides being pretty.

Just as the name suggests, one side features cables with lace ribs on the other.

Call me fashion backward, but it took me a while to get used to brown being such a popular color. Now I love it! I used Mission Falls 136 Merino Superwash. I always admired Mission Falls’ 1824 Wool, and am so glad they came out with this great DK weight in the same fiber. It’s soft, holds the stitch definition well and drapes nicely. It comes in so many beautiful colors, I’m tempted to start right in on another project. Another scarf? A nice top? (Daydreaming away….) Ok, back to the scarf…  I used US#5 needles for the project, and it ended up being 6″x71″.

   Merry Christmas and lots of love to Kari!

I’m making this scarf for my wonderful niece Kari. She pored over my scarf patterns and selected one from Knit1 Magazine’s Winter 2007 issue. It was part of a nifty article by Charlotte Quiggle about reversible patterns. Kari chose the “Cables and Lace Rib”.

I duly cast on to play with the pattern. Which brings me right away to the head-banging issue of finding errors the hard way. I always think its me. I hope that it wouldn’t take you as long as it took me to figure out that 4 does not equal 5. The pattern says the pattern is a multiple of 9 st + 4. But the ending stitches clearly have to be 5. I just couldn’t make it work! I went online to see if they published a correction. When I couldn’t find one, I still had doubts about whether 4 = 5. After an embarrassingly long time, I altered the pattern and voila! it has been a joy to knit ever since.

Here’s the cable side:

Here’s the lace side:

And here it is in its reversible glory:

A footnote is that I let knit1 Magazine know about the error I found. The publications and/or designers are ususally grateful to find out their boo-boos so they can post corrections.