New pattern: Braeburn Mitts

Fellow colourwork lovers, this one’s for you! I’ve designed the Braeburn Mitts to show off three colours of Appledore DK, and I couldn’t resist naming them after my favourite variety of apple, which is always one of the first things I buy when I fly home to New Zealand. Because you only need a small amount of each colour, these mitts are a perfect project for mini skeins and odds and ends. The pattern includes three sizes, and options are included for shorter or longer cuffs.

Stranded colourwork mitts in two colour combinations with autumnal pinecones and a red apple
Amy is wearing a yellow and green fingerless mitt and holding up an apple

Inspiration & design journey

This is one of those designs that all started with the yarn. I had a shade card and some little samples of this lovely woolly heathered yarn, and I decided a pair of colourwork mitts would be the perfect way to show it off. I wanted to use three colours instead of my usual two for extra richness, and I wanted to use a smaller motif to make it easy to include multiple sizes. After a lot of charting and swatching with my samples I had a motif I loved, of highly stylised little trees. The next puzzle to solve was the thumb gussets, which went in a few directions before I settled on a pattern of clean vertical lines branching out from the increases along the edge.

Yarn requirements

To knit these mitts you will need small amounts of three colours of light DK or sport weight yarn suitable for colourwork. For my two sample pairs I used mini skeins of Appledore DK, a blend of 40% Devon Closewool, 40% Romney, and 20% Exmoor Blueface wool, with 68yds/62m per 25g mini skein. For the smallest size you will need one mini skein of each colour, and for the two larger sizes you will need two mini skeins of the MC or background colour and one each for the contrast colours CC1 and CC2.

The Appledore colour names are wonderful, and are all taken from apple varieties. My samples feature the shades ‘Hangy Down’, ‘Whimple Wonder’, ‘Golden Knob’, ‘Foxwhelp’, and ‘Pig Snout’!

A small grey cat is playing ferociously with skeins of woolly yarn

My little yarn-thief Miss Tiny had a great time wrestling with my mini skeins before I managed to rescue them! She loves a good woolly yarn.

A pair of stranded colourwork mitts in autumn colours

Special techniques

The pattern includes a few of my favourite tips for knitting beautiful colourwork, including on colour dominance, swatching, and managing tension. One additional trick, which you may have used before when knitting stripes, is ‘carrying up’ each colour until you need it again instead of breaking the yarn and having a daunting number of ends to weave in. I found I had nice tidy colour changes if I twisted my CC colours together every couple of rounds.

Using mitten blockers is another great trick for nicely finishing your mitts - I made my own out of takeaway container lids using this tutorial by designer Åsa Tricosa: Glove & Mitten Blockers in 10 min.

Braeburn Mitts features:

  • Fingerless mitts in stranded colourwork featuring stylised tree motifs and bold corrugated ribbing

  • Three sizes are included, to fit 5.5-6.5 (7-8, 8.5-9.5)”/14-16.5 (18-20.5, 21.5-24)cm palm circumference with -0.5”/1.25cm to +0.5”/1.25cm ease, and options are given for shorter or longer cuffs

  • Requires 66 (79, 104)yds/60 (72.5, 95)m of MC or background colour, 30 (36, 50)yds/27 (33, 46)m of CC1, and 30 (36, 44)yds/28 (33, 40)m of CC2 in light DK or sport weight yarn (shown in John Arbon Textiles Appledore DK)

  • Size 2 shown in MC ‘Hangy Down’, CC1 ‘Whimple Wonder’, & CC2 ‘Golden Knob’, with short cuff, and Size 3 shown in MC ‘Foxwhelp’, CC1 ‘Golden Knob’, & CC2 ‘Pig Snout’, with long cuff

  • Choose a wool or wool-blend yarn suitable for colourwork, in colours with sufficient contrast

  • Dimensions, relaxed after blocking: 6 (7.5, 9)”/15.25 (19, 23)cm circumference, and 6.75 (6.75, 7.5)”/17 (17, 19)cm total length with short cuffs for Sizes 1 & 2 and long cuffs for Size 3.

Hands wearing knitted mitts in green and yellow, holding a pinecone

Find out more about my Braeburn Mitts pattern, including Ravelry and Payhip purchase options.

New patterns: Herb Garden Hat & Cowl

I’m continuing my obsession with botanical shapes in knitting with a colourwork hat and cowl duo, featuring lush leaves framed by delicate linework. The Herb Garden Hat and Herb Garden Cowl are named for the sensory delight of a garden overflowing with herbs, humming with bees, and bursting with culinary possibilities. I have a little pot of herbs on my balcony which provides rosemary for roast potatoes, thyme for sauces and pizzas, and flowers for visiting bees. I’m planning to add some basil and mint to my collection this summer!

Inspiration & design journey

Like my Cat’s Eye Cowl, this design started off with me messing around with geometric patterns, shuffling elements around and rounding the shapes until I had something satisfying-looking. I noticed it had a leafy feel to it, and I tried to bring that out further as I kept playing around. Once I was happy with the leaf elements, I added geometric lines to frame them and bring the ribbing into the design. This framing also has the benefit of reducing the need for long colourwork floats while knitting.

While I was working on the hat, I took a couple of attempts (as usual) to get the crown decreases right. I wanted them to look nicely balanced with the ring of colourwork leaves while giving me the fit I wanted - not too slouchy, and not too close-fitting. I used a lifeline while knitting my second sample so I could make any final tweaks to the design without ripping back further than I needed to. It’s definitely possible to rip back without using a lifeline, but colourwork makes it tricky!

In this one I’m doing my best to look like a Dutch painting.

Yarn requirements

I knit each of my samples using 2 skeins of Vintage Purls Superstar, a blend of 70% New Zealand polwarth, 20% tussah silk, and 10% black New Zealand merino at 415yds/380m per 100g skein. I chose the undyed ‘Natural Talent’ shade for the contrast colour for both hat and cowl, and the main colour ‘Zosma’ for the hat and ‘Carina’ for the cowl. The new Vintage Purls Tannahill yarn would also be ideal for these designs, as it’s a woollen-spun merino especially recommended for colourwork.

Special techniques

The Alternate Cable Cast On suggested in the patterns gives a nice tidy edge, but feel free to use your favourite cast on for 1x1 ribbing. The Long Tail Cast On and Tubular Cast On would also look great. Both patterns include a few of my favourite tips for knitting beautiful colourwork, including on colour dominance, swatching, and managing tension.

Sasha wanted to be involved in the photoshoot - who could say no to that face?

Herb Garden Hat features:

  • A beanie-style hat featuring an all-over stranded colourwork pattern of foliage and geometric linework

  • Three sizes are included, to fit 20 (22, 24)” / 51 (56, 61) head circumference

  • Requires 75-94yds / 69-86m (MC) and 99-145yds / 91-133m (CC) in fingering-weight yarn (shown in Vintage Purls Superstar 4ply)

  • Choose a wool or wool-blend yarn suitable for colourwork, in colours with sufficient contrast

  • Hat dimensions, relaxed after blocking and unstretched: 16 (18, 20)” / 40.5 (46, 51)cm brim circumference, and 8.25 (8.75, 9.25)” / 21 (22.5, 23.5)cm length from cast-on to crown. Sample shown in medium size on my 22” / 56cm head.

Herb Garden Cowl features:

  • A cowl knit in the round featuring an all-over stranded colourwork pattern of foliage and geometric linework

  • Two height options are included, and the circumference is easily adjustable to your preference

  • Requires 136 (256)yds / 124.5 (234)m (MC) and 212 (335)yds / 194 (306.5)m (CC) in fingering-weight yarn (shown in Vintage Purls Superstar 4ply)

  • Choose a wool or wool-blend yarn suitable for colourwork, in colours with sufficient contrast

  • Cowl dimensions, relaxed after blocking and unstretched: 24” / 61cm circumference, and 9.75 (16.25)” / 25 (41.5)cm height from cast-on to bind-off. Sample shown in taller 16.25” / 41.5cm height.

Find out more about my Herb Garden Hat and Herb Garden Cowl patterns, including Ravelry and Payhip purchase options.

It's Giftalong time!

The ninth annual Indie Design Giftalong has just begun! If you haven't joined in before, here's a quick introduction: the Giftalong (or GAL) is a multi-designer craft-along held in a Ravelry group with dedicated threads for different project types, chat threads, games, and more. You can also join in on Instagram by taking part in our photo-prompt challenge and/or using the event hashtags - @indiegiftalong on Instagram has all the details.

Each designer has a selection of their patterns on sale during the first few days of the GAL, but projects made using any and all of their patterns can be entered in the project threads and FO thread. Just be sure to use a paid-for pattern if you have your eye on the grand prizes.

The GAL runs from now until midnight on the 31st of December. It's a big, busy event but you can participate as much or as little as you like - enter a project (or several!), discover fabulous new patterns and designers in the searchable bundles, dip in and out of the chat threads, play the games, join the Instagram challenge, etc etc. I’ll be co-hosting the Hats thread in the Ravelry group as well as making a project or two - this year I'm going to try to stick to smaller things instead of adding to my collection of large WIPs, but temptation may strike! We have a number of new-to-the-GAL designers this year with really spectacular patterns, and I’m having such a hard time deciding what to make first.

New pattern: Cat's Eye Cowl

I’ve been wanting to design some cat-inspired knits for a long time. This year, when my cats have been such wonderful little distractions through lockdowns and uncertainty, has turned out to be the year! The Cat’s Eye Cowl is a tribute to my beautiful kitties Sasha and Katya, who always like to keep a close eye on me in case I might be about to hand out cat-treats or a new cardboard toy. The cowl is a short loop knit in the round, with an all-over stranded colourwork pattern featuring gleaming feline eyes and strong geometric lines.

Cat's Eye Cowl 1
Katya, age 2

Katya, age 2

Sasha, age 2 & 1/2

Sasha, age 2 & 1/2

And Mitzi, Mum & Dad’s feline friend

And Mitzi, Mum & Dad’s feline friend

I usually begin my colourwork designs by filling in squares in an Excel spreadsheet, which allows me to quickly copy & paste and go through a lot of variations quickly. This colourwork pattern actually began life as a moon-and-stars design, and as I played with it over time I decided the moons should be cat-like eyes instead. Not much remains of the original idea in the present pattern, except for the glints of starlight in the centre of each eye and the shading towards their outer edges. As is the case with many of my knitting ideas, simplifying the design over a number of iterations made it much stronger and also much more ‘me’.

Cat's Eye Cowl 2

The yarn I used for my sample is John Arbon’s Yarnadelic (100% Falklands Corriedale Wool; 364yds/333m per 100g skein), one skein in Sunflowers in my Garden for the main/background colour and one skein in Indigo Dust for the contrast colour. Yarnadelic is a multi-plied yarn with a bit of a woolly halo which helps the colourwork stitches ‘stick’ together, and the colours are beautifully rich and complex.

Two height options are included in the Cat’s Eye Cowl pattern, 9”/23cm and 11.5”/29cm, and it’s easy to alter the 24”/61cm circumference by working additional repeats if you prefer a longer or double-wrapped cowl.

Skills needed to work this pattern include the Long Tail Cast On (or your favourite cast on that will work with 3x1 ribbing), working stranded colourwork in the round, and following a colourwork chart. Tips on colour dominance, tension, and swatching colourwork in the round are included in the pattern. I would also recommend going down a needle size when you work the ribbing, which I wish I had done! You can see in the photos below the bottom ribbing has flipped up. It laid flat just fine after blocking, as you can see in the non-modelled photos - up until I put it on and moved around. I think it actually looks ok, but that wasn’t supposed to happen…

This blog post from Felicia of The Craft Sessions has a few more tricks to help avoid flippage: How To Stop Your Knitted Hem From Flipping Up.

Cat's Eye Cowl 3
Cat's Eye Cowl 4

Cat’s Eye Cowl features:

  • a short cowl knit in the round, with an all-over stranded colourwork pattern of cat’s eyes and geometric elements

  • two height options are included in the pattern, and the circumference is easily adjustable to your preference

  • requires MC (Main Colour): 127 (169)yds/117 (155)m + CC (Contrast Colour): 185 (228)yds/170 (209)m in sport or heavy fingering-weight yarn (shown in John Arbon Yarnadelic)

  • choose a wool or wool-blend yarn suitable for colourwork, in colours with sufficient contrast

  • cowl dimensions, relaxed after blocking: 24”/61cm circumference, and 9 (11.5)”/23 (29)cm high from cast-on to bind-off. Sample shown in 11.5”/29cm height.

Cat%27s+Eye+Cowl+Sketch
Cat's Eye Cowl 5

Find out more about my Cat’s Eye Cowl pattern, including Ravelry and Payhip purchase options.