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Craftwork, the Octopus. Free Knitting Pattern.

New knitters like a project they can show off their brand new skills, so I created a beginner knitting pattern for you to try.

I would like to introduce you to Craftwork The Octopus.

Craftwork The Octopus

It’s a sweet little octopus to help people learn how to Cast On and Bind Off fearlessly. Knitters are always worried that they are working their stitches too tightly or loosely, and this project lets you do either and the results are that the tentacles simply curve and sway making your octopus look unique.

Practice, practice, practice.

And it’s a free knitting pattern for you to try.

>>> Click here to download <<<

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Introducing Shuffle

  a fun new pattern
♣   each row is decided by the draw of the cards
   every project is unique

Shuffle

The idea came from knitting the “Nuvem” shawl by Martina Behm. I wrote a blog post about it. I had two lovely skeins of yarn, one with twice as much yardage as the other. I racked my brain for a way to distribute the colors evenly without doing regularly spaced boring stripes, but I also didn’t want to run out of the pretty multi-colored yarn before I got to the ruffle edge. Pacing around my home (yes, I truly paced while thinking about this), I spotted two decks of cards on my shelves and, voila, perfect: an easy to carry, easy to randomize, easy to count way of controlling which colorway to knit the next row with.

I have a list of design ideas I am getting out into the world. My first labor of love was the police box shawl, but Hoo*bert is NOT necessarily an easy knit. So I really wanted to get a fun accessible pattern out there next. I used the two to one idea that I knit my Nuvem with, but I wanted to add different stitch patterns depending on the face value of the card. The test knitters all said they had fun knitting it wondering which card would come up next and how it would look next to the previous row. Shuffle can be done with solid colors, or you could knit it with a solid and variagated, similar shades or bright contrasts, it all works. My first shuffle was done with solid worsted weight from Harrisville Designs (they liked it).  My second Shuffle was knit from the two ends of my slowly changing color Loop handspun, and I kinda love it.

What will your Shuffle look like? 😊
Keeping knitting fun,

Heather

P.S. Join my email list to get a $2 discount code. Link is above.

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my first project, the Italy scarf

The Italy Hat and Scarf. My first knitting project. 2004

I went on a group ski trip to Italy and got sucked into knitting when I saw all the beautiful yarn they had there. I bought a few skeins, then spent 45 minutes in my hotel room trying to remember how to cast on. I had tried to learn how to knit the year before, but what I came up with I don’t consider a project… so this is my first.

This yarn is so soft. I had enough left to have a go at the hat. I didn’t know at the time that stockinette stitch would curl, so I ended up with a roll up hat, which I’m still not happy with. I bought some white Lamb’s Pride bulky yarn locally to go with the Italian yarn.