Another year means another roundup of costume-related projects and tutorials! With almost 3 weeks left until Halloween you’ll still have plenty of time to make any of the projects below.
I’ve been waiting so long to share this wonderful project with you, and I’m delighted that I finally can, because the book is officially out today!
Harry Potter: Knitting Magic – The Official Guide to Creating Original Knits Inspired by the Harry Potter Films
Featuring more than 25 projects, the 192-page book includes patterns for clothing, home projects, and keepsakes pulled straight from the movies – and even includes a few iconic costume pieces as seen on-screen.
There are projects designed with the movies’ actual costumes in mind, like the House Scarves:
…and the Beauxbatons students’ capelet:
…as well as projects inspired BY the movies like this gorgeous sweater based on Hermione’s time-turner:
…and this adorable hanger featuring the Sorting Hat and the animals that represent each House:
Even the staging and photography of the book is incredible- I mean COME ON-
This entire Umbrage scene is perfect!!
The book also includes fun facts, original costume sketches, film stills, and other behind-the-scenes treasures.
The book has already gotten really good press reviews (Martha Stewart, The Nerdist, Mental Floss, House Beautiful, Apartment Therapy, among others) and I’m seriously honored that I got to be a part of it, and thrilled to finally present my pattern: The Order of the Phoenix Lace-Knit Throw Blanket.
It’s a circular blanket knit from the center out in alternating strands of a beautiful orange/red hand-dyed yarn that reminded me so much of Dumbledore’s cherished phoenix Fawkes.
The center of the blanket features flames to represent the phoenix’ fire, and is separated from the next section by a jagged dividing line that is actually Harry’s lightning bolt scar.
The middle section proudly proclaims the title of the fifth HP book (and blanket inspiration) in an eyelet font.
Anyone who’s knit my Lullaby blanket pattern can attest that while it might seem daunting, the text charts are really easy to follow and work up pretty fast.
Finally the border section features Fawkes’ feathers, elongating in rows until finally ending in individual feather tips.
I loved every aspect of designing, swatching and knitting this blanket, and I truly hope you enjoy it too.
It’s official! And it’s also OFFICIAL! As in – it’s THE OFFICIAL HARRY POTTER KNITTING PATTERN BOOK, licensed and everything!
And now that it’s in pre-order status, I can finally tell you all (a little) about it!
I’m so excited to be a part of this gorgeous book, and beyond thrilled that my pattern was one of the ones chosen for the cover! There will be 28 patterns in total, 208 pages, and includes costume replicas, projects inspired by the films, film tidbits, behind-the-scenes info and more.
I can’t wait to share more info and pics as it becomes available, but in the meantime here’s the lovely cover.
It will be released on January 28 2020, and for those of you interested in pre-ordering, you can do so here.
It seems like everywhere you look online these days, people are taking stock of 2018 and setting goals for moving forward. The first few days of the new year tend to be all about making resolutions, and to that end- here’s one of mine:
I resolve to turn the following 19 wips (works in progress) into FOs (finished objects) before the end of 2019.
I’ll write at length about each project when I finish (and post) about them, but for now here’s a short blurb for each:
1. FO Project Jars
I need to rip out all the individual lengths of yarn (1-10 yards long, each), match them up with what project they were from, and put the separated yarn into jars designated for each year.
2. Harvest Moon Pullover – crochet
I started this sweater on November 25 2016 as a way to use my adored Noro Silk Garden limited stash on something for myself. Limited yarn + crocheted pattern with big holes = a sweater that might fit… right?
3. Granny Rectangle Blanket – crochet
I started this blanket on August 9 2015 as a way to use up random sock yarns I figured I’d never get around to using for, y’know, socks. Figured out how to make granny squares as rectangles and then alternated with white for… some reason.
4. & 5. Ralph and Black Sheep’s Sweaters – sewing & cross stitch
I started these sweaters for the boys’ favorite stuffed animals a few nights before Christmas 2016. They were intended to be little surprises for them but instead they’ve sat in a bag ever since. Sadly Jakob is no longer as into iHasCupQuake as he used to be, so I’ll need to rip out the stitching on the front of Ralph’s sweater and hope it doesn’t leave gaping holes in the fleece. Then I’ll have to figure out new designs to personalize the fronts, find where I put the sleeve pieces, and sew the little sweaters together.
6. Drops V-Neck Pullover – knitting
I started this deep-v sweater somewhere in 2015 or 2016. It’s slouchy and soft and I want to wear it already.
7. Fluffy Shawl – knitting
I started this shawl on April 6 2015. It’s been sitting untouched in a bag since roughly that Fall. I love how the colors blend together (black Sandes Garn Sisu and purple/green Noro Kureyon Sock) and would like it to be done and hugging my shoulders.
8. Comfy Socks – knitting
According to myself, I started these socks 2 FULL YEARS AGO. They’re supposed to be my ‘take along’ knitting but because I haven’t finished designing the pattern, I never take them with me to work on. I need them done so I can reclaim the needles and portable hanging knitting bag and start being more productive again.
9. Fun Fur Vest – knitting
I started this Bergere de France vest in 2012(!!). My Ravelry projects page has it listed as completed on Feb 10 2015 but clearly it isn’t. No ends are woven in, it might need armhole cuffs, and I think I was debating overdying the entire thing black.
10. Doodle Fusion Marco Raffiné Page – coloring
This page from Doodle Fusion was started last summer (I think) using only my set of Marco Raffiné oil-based colored pencils.
11. Grimm Fairy Tales Alice Page – coloring
This page from Grimm’s Fairy Tales was a test to see if I could get good results using dollar store colored pencils. I’ve since moved the pencils somewhere else and want to finish the image so I don’t need to dig them out any more.
12. Grimm Fairy Tales Little Red Page – coloring
Those of you who follow me on Instagram would have seen this page from Grimm’s Fairy Tales back when I started it in June. I love how it’s turning out and want to see how well I can complete it.
13. Imagimorphia Eagle 2-Page – coloring
This double-page spread from Imagimorphia was started in the Fall of 2016. I loved coloring the tiny rainbows and then lost steam.
I honestly don’t remember when I started this page. Luckily I’d blogged about it!
15. The Time Garden Quilt Page – coloring
I don’t recall when I started working on this page in Daria Song’s The Time Garden either but judging from other posts about it I’d made in April 2016, I’m going to guess it was about that time. I have NO idea, however, why I stopped it so close to being done.
16. The Princess Bride Fred Savage 2-Page – coloring
This page was blogged when I first started it, way back in March 2017. I don’t want to move on to another page in the book until this one is done, though, so I need to make the time to finally get it finished up.
I’ve never shown these before, except for the odd glimpse in the background of Instagram pics. I started this trio of plastic canvas portraits when I moved in August 2017. While I love how they look in black and white (and blue), I designed them to be in full color and I’d love to see them complete.
Think I can do it? Want to play along? Use the tag #19WIPtoFO2019 so I can see how many you get through!
ps: As I’m about to post this I just realized that 19 projects means committing to completing more than one per month. Months that are already pretty busy with Becket, work, kids, commissions and all the new projects I want to work on and might come up over the year… Wish me luck- I’m gonna need it!!
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Halloween is in two weeks, so you know what that means- time to start scrambling for (not quite) last-minute costume ideas! To help out, here are some costume-related projects from my archives that are short enough to get done before the 31st. 🙂
Ugghhhhh. Is February really almost over? Is that a thing?
Sigh. When there’s nearly 4 weeks of everyone in your household getting back-to-back gastro, time can really get away from you, y’know?
I’m obviously behind on these little compilation posts of mine, so rather than upload a bunch of weeks’ worth of recaps in quick succession here’s an overview of the non-own-post-worthy stuff that happened during these last few weeks:
Knitting
Comfy Socks
My travel knitting socks have become my sit-on-couch-watching-Supernatural socks because I’ve only been back to work part time as yet and there hasn’t been much need for a travel project. No pics, but the first one is about mid-foot.
V-neck sweater progress
The sweater was moving along at a great pace, as stockinette projects tend to do, until I was nearly finished the front. You split the front at the v-neck, working each side individually. I’d finished one half and held it up against me to see how it was gonna look…and noted that the v-neck began roughly in the middle of my rib cage. I’m not one to shy away from a low-cut top but that’s a bit much to wear without an under layer, even for me.
I calculated the height I wanted it to start at and ripped back, making notes so I could add that many rows before the split. I have ripped this yarn back so many times I’m surprised it hasn’t fallen apart by now!
Crochet
Kitchen soap cozies
As part of my massive cleaning kick (see ‘other stuff’ below) I threw together these liquid soap bottle cozies for my kitchen.
The counter used to be a giant mess (pic censored to spare your eyes) and the cleaning supplies weren’t hideous but the kids (and I) had a hard time remembering which pump bottle I’d refilled with dish washing liquid and which one was hand soap. The ‘dish’ one used to say ‘DISH’ in scrawled black Sharpie but it kept wearing off the bottle.
I didn’t use a pattern. It took longer to keep casting on, starting then ripping to get the correct number of stitches than it did to actually work the two pieces. In the end they took 30 sts, and I worked 4 rows of single crochet for stability, followed by 3 of double crochet (so it wouldn’t take as long to make), then 3 more rows of sc to have a more closed-in area to embroider on, another 2 rows of dc and then finished with a row of sc to stabilize the top. I embroidered the words and then sewed the cozies together in place on the bottles. They do stretch enough to be removed and since they’re dishcloth cotton when they get dirty or covered in soap drips I can wring them out a few times and they’ll be good as new.
I’m not going to keep showing the coloring for each day… I tend to do them in batches as the images can start getting repetitive and I’m not always in the mood to work on them. I’ve got them mostly completed through til February 12th or so, but I haven’t taken pics of them all yet so here are the last few I did photograph:
The Princess Bride coloring book
I have been ADDICTED to the new coloring book my brother got me for Hanukkah.
This book is gorgeous. It’s the entire movie in coloring book format! No matter what your favorite scene from the movie might be, there’s a page ready for you to get to color it!
I always use the pages in the back of the book to swatch the supplies I plan to use. I knew the pages were thick enough to allow water applications for my Inktense, but the little swatch sample I keep with the pencils is on beige paper. I want to try to go for screen-accurate colors when possible, so I decided to swatch out ALL the Inktense colors.
I gridded it out with a ruler then scribbled a tiny bit of color on one side of each cell. Once it was dry I added the color numbers next to each but didn’t photograph that.
I’ve since begun working on some of the pages. I’m going in order and have 4 pages in various states of completion. It’s become my reward each night after I get the kids settled and tidy up and do laundry or whatever. Chores done = coloring time LOL
Other Stuff
Cleaning!
Oh. So. Much. Cleaning. (…she says, pretending it wasn’t her own craft supplies making the mess in the first place!) The house is long overdue for a big, thorough clean, and the first thing I’d tackled was the hutch in our dining room. As you can see in the ‘before’ pic below, it was a massive jumble of an ill-organized mess, so crammed full of unnecessary things that there was no room for the things we DID need to store there. During the brief lull between the kids’ gastro sessions I revamped the storage to better handle the things we needed. My cake decorating supplies are still there, with the closed containers now spanning the top sections, and the open boxes and packages hidden inside the center. Now the unit has become more of a central home art hub, with my drawing and coloring supplies on the left, and all of the home’s coloring and instructional drawing books on the right. I’d grown up leafing through drawing books from a very young age and I didn’t want the boys to miss out just because mine were hidden away in my office. The center square thing has become a homework depot (rather than homework remaining piled on the table or chairs during the week) with space for their binders and duotangs, as well as now being pre-stocked with construction paper, looseleaf, bond paper and cardstock, and the horizontal storage unit is all set up for them with glue sticks, scissors, erasers, sharpeners, etc. All of their colored pencils and markers and such are in the top drawer right under the coloring books, so whether they’re up to some crafting or sitting down to homework, everything they need is right there.
I also did a similar complete overhaul to the den (I think that was between mine and Yannick’s bouts… ughhhh…), and am currently on a break with the kitchen about 85% complete to work on my office. No pics of the rest cus there’s only so much of my mess I want to make public LOL
My hair 🙂
In the middle of all the illnesses I returned to work for the first time since roughly August. Finally getting to be around people again was reason enough to treat myself to a little salon time, and I redid my crazy colors once more.
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After finishing the Sierra Socks last week I immediately cast on for a new pair. It wasn’t so much that I needed new knitting as I needed new knitting to be ready ‘on hold’ in my purse in case I ever needed it in the future. Except for very few exceptions, I knit all my socks toe-up, with a short-row heel and toe, from a pattern I’ve long-since memorized. I’ll refer to past project notes to know how many stitches to work up to depending on if it’s a sock for Yannick or for myself, but otherwise the rest of it is pretty much pick-up-and-go. I knit without looking so the only parts of the sock that require my attention are the toe and heel. For that reason, I like to knit the toe before I stash it away in my project bag, so it’s ready at the ‘just knit’ part.
(I’m still loving the personalized travel knitting bag Maaike made for me!)
This sock is going to be an experiment. I’m using Regia Softy Color yarn that I got at a guild stash exchange a year or so ago, and I’m going to be knitting a heel-less sock. I get cold at night so I sleep with socks on, usually fuzzy ones from the dollar store. But then I get hot so I kick them off… and then my toes get cold again so I put them back on. A happy middle ground has been to push my socks off down to the pads of my feet, so my heels are exposed to the cool sheets but my toes are still kept warm. Therefore I’m going to see if a heel-less sock gives me the same effect. If it does, it’ll be a fun way to work through my fun-fur stash.
Coloring
Creative Coloring Throughout the Year page-a-day calendar
Some mornings after getting the kids off for school I got a chance to do some coloring. I don’t have any need to get the calendar pages ‘right’ in any way, so it was fun to pull out a bunch of coloring supplies and just apply color to the pages. I’m usually a lot more strict on myself when it comes to color placement… or adding highlights or shadow… whereas with these pages I’m not giving myself any restrictions to match any preconceived notions of what the resulting pages ‘should’ look like.
While I was at it I finished swatching my latest batch of gel pens – a 60-count set by Top Quality that I got on Amazon. There were a few duplicate colors to ones I already had, but also a lot of new shades. For the price I’m quite happy with the set.
I did want to differentiate between these colors and my Lolliz and other ones, so I used a Sharpie to mark an “L” on the caps of the Lolliz ones and “TQ” on the Top Quality ones (the other brands showed their brand names on the caps or pens). Then I followed that up with a layer of a clear nail polish topcoat to help prevent the writing from rubbing off too quickly as I used the pens.
I grew up playing Rummikub (we called it ‘Rummy-Q’), and I have fond memories of being my kids’ ages and playing with my Bubbie, so on Saturday afternoon after the kids had finished homework and had lunch I taught them how to play. We did one open game where I gave them a few pointers but then played two full games with our tiles hidden, and they’d picked it up perfectly! In fact- Jakob won the open round as well as one of the closed ones! It was awesome to see them playing the game that had given me so many good memories with my grandparents, and to spend technology-free time with my kids.
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Last week felt so productive, and yet I don’t have much in terms of photos to show for it (yet). The primary reason for that is because those pics are being saved for individual posts, so here’s what else happened:
Knitting
Sierra Socks
I looked at my records and they showed I started these in July 2015. I thought that was a typo until I remembered I’d been knitting them during the Neil Patrick Harris gala with Maaike during the Just For Laughs festival…in 2015. D’oh. Guess I haven’t been carrying my travel knitting around with me as much as I should have been.
(Photographic evidence of when the first sock was but a wee babe)
It’s always so satisfying when the strips line up perfectly.
I do make note to cast on each sock at the same place in the yarn’s repeat, so it should line up… but there’s always the chance of finding something a bit ‘off’. (Though I suppose that’s more of an issue with hand-dyed yarns vs machine-dyed commercial yarns like Regia).
I’ve worked on them off and on over the year and finally cast off the last stitch last week. Now my travel bag is free to take on a new pair of socks. 🙂
Over the holidays we’d received this Create A Treat Hanukkah House set from my mom. The decorating was done right before New Years’, but this week I finally threw out the remaining pieces after the boys finally got to smash it to gobble it up, so I figured I’d share some of the decorating process.
They had a really good time decorating it! Yannick and I took turns applying the icing in small sections, and then the boys took turns putting candy on before the icing had set.
Going in, I was doubtful that there’d be enough…of anything, really. I fully expected to run out of icing and had a small tub of Wilton’s Fluffy White on standby just in case. I’d also opened up about 20 packs of Rockets (if you’re Canadian…’Smarties’ if you’re American) into a little bowl but honestly I needn’t have bothered.
There was so much leftover icing that I was able to cover the entire board the house was icing-glued to, and even blob it up to make small bushes. I used up all the leftover snowflakes to cover the ‘ground’ but still have nearly half the little blue candies. I included it in this post because while we didn’t DECORATE it during this week… we did SMASH AND EAT IT muahahahahaha. It was surprisingly tasty…for a cookie that had been sitting in a box for who knew how long and then on our table exposed to the air for about two weeks!
3Doodler Start
Henri received this 3D pen for his birthday, and we spent a fun afternoon trying it out. I’ve got a full review about it coming, and will update this post once it’s up.
2017. Wow. I can’t believe I started this blog roughly 13 years ago, nor that some of you have been around since the very beginning. Whether you’re one of my original few hundred subscribers or one of the couple thousand who discovered my site when looking for my most popular Halloween DIY, hi there, happy holidays, and happy New Year! I’ve got a lot planned for this little blog over the upcoming year, so if you’re an old friend- thanks for sticking around… and if you’re new- I hope you’ll pull up a chair and stay a while.
Some of you may note that I’ve slowly made changes to the type of content that I post. I’ve never been a mono-crafty person, and the blog will always adapt to whatever creative pursuits I’m into at the time, whether they’re knitting or crochet, cosplay or cakes. Coloring books are going to have more of a showing on the blog, as will as a variety of crafts beyond the yarn-based ones. For the last two years I’ve taken step-by-step photos of all the projects that I’ve made with the intent to focus more on sharing helpful DIYs, tutorials and tips going forwards, instead of merely showing off whatever I’ve made. I’m going to have more reviews coming up, both sponsored and non, and while there might be affiliate links popping up at the end of some posts, I can promise you that my reviews will always be strictly my honest, unbiased thoughts.
Another feature I’m going to add is a weekly roundup, to both keep track of and hold accountable to the projects I’ve got ongoing. Not everything needs to wait for a finished reveal, and sometimes quick projects or small pastimes get lost in the shuffle of the day-to-day. To that end – this is my first Crafty Compilation. I plan to post these on Sundays and to cover the previous week’s goings-on, but this first one is being posted on Thursday because life LOL. Amazing how, even when one is off work in post-op recovery, when it comes to crafting, there still isn’t enough time! This first CC will cover some stuff worked on over the holidays, as well as last week.
Knitting
Gift knitting
Over the holidays I knit a special baby hat. One of Yannick’s closest friends had a baby girl just before the holidays, and when he showed me the gifts he planned to bring for the friend and his other young daughter, I told him I knew just the thing to make for the new arrival. The little girl’s dad has similar geeky tastes as we do, and I thought this pattern would be perfect.
I’ve knit it once before, back in 2013, as part of a Hallowe’en costume for a baby girl aptly named Leia. This was a pic of Jakob trying it on for me at the time:
and this is a pic of the little sweetheart in her full costume. Cutest Leia I’ve ever seen!
The pattern is very well written and it’s a pretty quick knit, even with all the icord. The hat and the ear puffs each took a night’s worth of knitting to work up, then the assembly took barely an episode of Elementary.
Forgive the bad pics, it’s hard to take hat pics without an appropriately-sized head! 🙂 I’m really pleased with how the hat came out, even though I’d knit it before and expected it to look the same. One thing I love about this pattern vs others out there is how it incorporates ‘bangs’ and the center part (not clearly visible in these photos but seen better in the one of Leia wearing it above).
Drops v-neck sweater
I also completely frogged a sweater I’d been working on. Back in September I’d started a garter-stitch oversized sweater with a lovely gray yarn from my stash. I’d thought it would be perfect ‘no-look’ movie or tv knitting but after measuring a sweater I own that had the fit I wanted, I realized that what I was making wouldn’t have the proper shape. Plus I’d been having a nagging feeling that the garter stitch was eating up too much of my limited yarn. So I frogged it one evening last week and began this pattern instead. I’m pretty sure I’ll have enough yarn, and if not I’ll work the neckband and/or cuffs in something contrasting.
So far I’m at about 32cm of the 34cm I need to be at before splitting for the low v-neck.
Coloring
Doodle Fusion ‘Christmas Tree’
A few weeks ago I’d taken a page from Dede Willingham and done color washes across a bunch of my coloring book pages. From what I’ve seen she primarily uses acrylic paints, but I mixed it up a bit, using not only paint, but also my Neocolors(seen previously here, in imagimorphia) and my Inktense(last seen here, also in imagimorphia). This particular page, from Zifflin’s Doodle Fusion, seems to deliberately invoke a Christmas tree, so that’s how I decided to approach it. I colored over the whole image with the Inktense in shades of green. The first pic is immediately after wetting the pencils, and the second is the next day, after the page had dried.
My plan is to color the characters in colored pencil over the Inktense, keeping them muted and dark, but to color all the eyes and anything round-ish in bright gel pens, so they’d (hopefully) look like bright ornaments on the tree. If you squinted at it. Maybe.
This was after my first pass with the gel pens. I think I got all the areas I’d wanted, but I’m sure as I work on the figures I’ll find more. I’m looking forwards to coloring the characters now in dark tones to really make the gel pen pop.
PS- this book is crazy, and I love it. I’ll be showing a lot more of it in future posts.
I finally finished a page I started coloring back in November in the Disney Villains coloring book Yannick had bought for me, but as this post is getting long I’ll save them for another. That’s another excellent coloring book that I’ve been working in quite a bit.
While the boys were off school for Christmas break I tried to keep them occupied with more than just Minecraft, Little Big Planet, or their new Skylanders Imaginators. Every few days we had ‘technology-free’ time during which we’d color, or do pencil puzzle books, and during one of those afternoons I taught them how to make their own stuffies. However I took a TON of photos and so I’ll share the step-by-steps of their work in another post
Alright, that’s it for this round-up!
This post may contain affiliate links. This means I might make a small commission on purchases made through the links, at no cost to you.
Update: see end of post for information about a downloadable pattern pdf
With my upcoming surgery looming in the near future, I decided to make the most of my time and get a head start on this year’s holiday teacher gifts. I still make the Christmas and Hanukkah gifts for my kids’ teachers, lunch ladies and daycare workers, and, not knowing how much I’d be up for a long bout of down-to-the-wire crafting post-op (since I somehow always end up working til 4am the night before the last day of school), I was smart and started early.
I decided to make dish/washcloths again. It’s been a few years since the junior campus staff got regular square washcloths, and I haven’t made them for anyone on senior side yet, so I wasn’t worried about being too repetitive. I dug some favorite Bernat Handicrafter Cotton from my stash and pulled up the most basic, well known, standard dishcloth pattern Ravelry had to offer – a plain old, diagonal-knit garter washcloth.
Plenty of yarn, plenty of time, and a well-worn pattern. This, I thought, would be a breeze. I was even optimistic enough to think I’d have the Xmas gifts ready before November!
Heh.
My troubles started early on. After completing the first washcloth, actually. I had finished it and set it down flat on the table and noticed the lower edge immediately curl upwards. I smoothed it flat but it quickly rolled inwards again. It wasn’t terribly noticeable, and – let’s face it – this is a dishcloth. If used properly it would end up scrunched and rolled and pulled and would sag and ease out of shape quickly. But I was annoyed at how it looked and poked around at it a bit trying to figure out why the top half was fine but the lower half curled in. The top half, by contrast, lay beautifully flat. I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong.
Finally I realized it wasn’t my fault – there was an inherent flaw with the pattern. It was the kind where you increase into the second stitch of every row. That type of increase pulls imperceptibly on the outer stitch, eating up the slack between the first two stitches. When this is done at intervals one would hardly notice, but when it is done at the beginning of every row the result was edges that curled inwards. This didn’t occur on the top half of the diamond because that was the decrease half and I wasn’t using any of the previous row’s slack at all.
I could smooth it flat and I could have blocked it but come on… blocking washcloths? No thanks. I’d rather figure out how to knit it without the flaw.
The main thing was to figure out what increase to use. Any increase which went into the prior row, including a standard ‘make 1’, would cause the same inward tugging. Yarn-over increase patterns didn’t have that problem, but I didn’t want eyelets dotting the sides of my washcloth. I wanted these cloths to look less dainty, more ‘rugged’, if that makes sense. I decided to work YO increases but to close them on the subsequent rows by knitting them through the back loop.
Once I was tinkering with the pattern I also added a plain row at the max width point before transitioning into the decreases. Diagonal patterns always seem to have you go from wide to narrow without any plain row in between and I find that the extra row tugs less on those points of the diamond. The result is a lovely garter washcloth which has wonderful drape and lays flat beautifully, and is now my go-to knit washcloth or dishcloth.
I’ve knit 9 of them so far… sadly not anywhere near how many I need, but enough to know I’m really happy with how it works out, and I added it to Ravelry tonight.
The yardage listed is for a dishcloth knit to 41 sts, which results (at my tension) in a 9” x 9” square. You can easily make them larger or smaller. If desired before binding off you can create a strip to fold over and sew down for a hanging loop by either knitting about 4” of garter on those 3 sts or knitting them into a 4” long 3-st i-cord.
This pattern would work equally well for baby blankets or throws, continuing to increase until whatever max diagonal is desired before working the plain row and then beginning the decreases.
Directions
CO 3 sts
row 1- k across
row 2- k1, yo, k to end
inc row– k1, yo, k to previous row’s yo and knit it tbl (to close the hole), k1
Repeat inc row until diagonal of cloth is at desired widest point (I stopped at 41 sts)
Next row- k to previous row’s yo and knit it tbl (to close the hole), k1
dec row– k1, k2tog, k to end of row
Repeat dec row until cloth is back down to its original number of sts
This pattern is provided for free above, but if you’d prefer an easy-to-print version, I have made it available here for a very small fee. The PDF includes the full instructions, an easy to read layout and full color images.
*Updated January 2020
This post may contain affiliate links. This means I might make a small commission on purchases made through the links, at no cost to you.
jeloca.com 