Poplar Leaf Embossed Dishcloth

by Kelly

For quite a while now, I've been working on an afghan using embossed dishcloth patterns as afghan squares.

I'm using autumn colors (red, orange, yellow and browns) and patterns for leaves, including a maple leaf and an oak leaf. But then I got bored, and couldn't find another leaf pattern that I liked. So I made my own!

I wanted to use yellow yarn, so I did a Google search for yellow leaves, and found elm leaves and poplar leaves. The elm leaf design I drew up looked even more boring than more maple leaves, so I tried the poplar, and was much happier.

Poplar Leaf

 I made my squares using Caron Simply Soft in Sunshine and size 8 needles. I love this yarn - it comes in gorgeous colors and is wonderfully soft and shiny, and machine washable since it's acrylic.
So here's the pattern. I don't have anyone to test knit this, so keep an eye out for any mistakes or typos. If you find any, please let me know in the comments and I'll correct the pattern. Thanks!

Don't sell or reproduce the pattern except for personal use. If you'd like to make and sell items using this pattern, please feel free. After all, you'll be doing the hard part - the actual knitting.

Here's the link to the pattern. This will send you to Scribd, which is hosting all our PDF's.

Peppermint Hat and Scarf Set

by Kelly

Here's a hat and scarf set that I made for this year.

The pattern for the hat was one I found on The Midnight Knitter, but the scarf design is my own. If you haven't been to The Midnight Knitter site yet, I really encourage you to pay a visit. Her knitting and crochet patterns are fun, contemporary, and sometimes free.

The scarf pattern is easy peasy. It's just stockinette stitch (knit one row, purl one row) for four rows, then purl one row. The final purl row makes a 'purl stripe' across the front of the fabric. There's no border because I wanted it to curl up naturally into a tube so that it looked more like a peppermint stick.

I used super bulky acrylic white yarn, some ancient variegated red, white and green yarn, and size 13 needles. I managed to get that neat 'peppermint stripe' look by purling the final row of the above pattern with both yarns held together. At the end of the 'purl stripe row', I dropped the variegated yarn and went back to knitting only with the super bulky white.

When I made the hat, however, I ran into a problem - I was knitting with different yarn and different needles, so the hat came out far too lacy (full of holes, in other words) to actually be useful as a hat. I mean, any poor kid who walked around in the winter with this hat on would just be asking for a terrible case of the flu.

So I did some online searching for a solution. Here's what I found: 

                                        Thrumming

Thrumming is basically a way to add a felt backing layer while you're knitting. This would work equally well for crochet. There's a great tutorial showing this at hello yarn. However, thrumming requires loose wool or wool roving, and I didn't have any of that.

                                    Double-Knitting

This would have been great if I had started from the beginning, but not so great to start in the middle of a project.

                                    Adding a layer

Buy fleece or some other warm material, or even a cheap off the shelf beanie, and sew it inside the knitted hat.

And then the best solution became pretty obvious. So I bought an off the shelf hat from Ebay and sewed it into my hat as a liner.

That's not cheating, is it????

All in all, though, I had some fun, learned a lot (most importantly, that a hat should not be full of holes) and sold the finished project. Not a bad outcome, really.

Daisy Ruffle Scarf

by Kelly

Here's something I made last year for a local Christmas charity that supplies hats, scarves, and mittens to kids. I knit it using Daisy Stitch and two colors of yarn and ended up with something surprisingly cute. After I donated the first one, I made another because I had just enough yarn for one more...and anyway the scarf is really adorable and fun to make.

And since I don't happen to need any more scarves at the moment (I think five is enough for one person, don't you?) I've listed it for sale in our shop.

I used  size 8 needles (U.S.) and worsted weight yarn. Half a skein of pink and half a skein of white (about 180 yards total) makes a scarf about 48 inches long.

I added the ruffles on the ends because I’m not good at fringe (or cutting my own hair, either - in both cases the ends are uneven), and found out that the decrease (k3tog) at the end of the ruffle gives plenty of space between stitches, making the daisy stitches easier to work than they normally are.

Here’s the pattern, such as it is. I haven't had anyone test knit this, so please, if you find a problem, comment on this post so others know. If you have any problems, there's a great YouTube video by iknitwithcatfur on how to work Daisy Stitch.

Make ruffle -
Cast on 3x the amount of stitches you’re using for the main body of the scarf. I wanted my scarf to be 29 stitches wide, so I cast on 87 stitches in color A

Row 1:. knit to end
Row 2: purl to end
Repeat these two rows for the desired length. I used 12 rows total. The ruffle tends to curl quite a bit at the edges, so make sure it's long enough.
Row 3 (final row only) k3tog to end (29 stitches on needle)

begin body of scarf  in Daisy Stitch pattern (multiple of 4 + 1)

Rows 1 (RS) : in color A, Knit to end
Row 2:  K1, *p3tog and don’t drop them off your needle, yo (wrapping yarn completely around needle), p same 3 together again and drop them, k1; repeat from *
Row 3: change to color B, Knit to end
Row 4: K1, p1, k1, *p3tog and don’t drop them off your needle, yo (wrapping yarn completely around needle), p same 3 together again and drop them, k1, repeat from * end  with p1, k1
Repeat these four rows until the scarf is desired length (mine was 45 inches at that point (from the edge of the ruffle to my needle)
end with color A
Row 5: Knit to end
Row 6: Purl to end
begin final ruffle
Row 1: Knit in front and back, yo; repeat from to final stitch, knit 1
Row 2: purl to end
Row 3: knit to end
Repeat rows 2 and 3 until this ruffle is equal in length to the other one. Cast off and weave in any loose ends.

Here's a PDF version