A Year in Stitches Week 44

Rolling right along, our year of stitches may have gone astray for a bit, but we are making up time. 

Charts will again come to the rescue.  With imagination, a single chart can be utilized with astonishing results for both knit and crochet.   This chart is for crochet.  How would you interpret it to knit?

All these lovely post stitches in the lower chart, I can see them as ribbing with a garter stitch background.  Can you?

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween to all who celebrate.  For those in the US, I hope your kids stay safe during trick or treat.

A Year of Stitches Week 43 Happy Halloween

Yes Halloween is immortalized in Fair Isle again.  Others are better at thinking Halloween than I yet again.  It's not really one of my favorites.

Let's see what you do with this.  Will you follow it blindly?  Will you incorporate texture with the color?

Will you use it twice over for a bag for your child to collect candy in?  Pillow cover?  Done in super bulky yarn and made into an afghan?

A Year in Stitches Week 42 Happy Halloween!

Here's a chart for you to choose how to use.  It can be knit or crochet.  You can use color work or stitch work.  It's large enough to be done twice for a treat back or once for the treat bag (sewn to a canvas bag the same size) or used as a pillow for those who decorate for this holiday.  This is 2/3 of the whole chart.  You can see where the center is by the pumpkin and the two cats staring each other down.  This is a very nice chart.  Have fun with it.

A Year in Stitches Week 41

Now let's venture a little further afield in the chart world.  Here is a chart for a cable.  It's fairly easy to work it for knitting.  That's what it's designed for.  Try making it in color work?  How did you choose to do this?  Let's see your choices.  But how do you choose to use this chart in crochet?  Let's see your choices.  For the knit version, the blank boxes are purl.    For the crochet version, the boxes with the | are the single crochet on the back.

Here is the chart to work from. 

A Year of Stitches Week 40

Zooming right along, we can still utilize the same charts from the last few weeks and do something different with them.........  Let's combine the colorwork with the changes from last week.  Hmmmm...  This could be fun. So for the knit swatch, choose to knit or purl the background stitches in color A.  Then use the opposite stitch and a contrast color for the accent color.  How do you like this?

For the crochet swatch, still using bobbles, use color A for the background doubles and color B for the bobbles. 

A Year of Stitches Week 39

Let's switch things up this week.

Here's a make ahead for Christmas.  Do you hang stockings for gifts?  Do you hang them for ornaments?  For an ornament size, try fingering weight yarn (size 1 on the ball band) and a size 2mm needle or 1mm size hook (this dips down into the steel hooks).  Want it for gift giving?  See suggestions below.

Instead of color work, let's do knit and purl stitches for the knit swatch.  Instead of crochet Fair Isle, let's try bobbles.  What do these 2 changes do to your work?  What do you think of it?  Are you able to keep the front and back rows straight in your mind?  Did you use stitch markers?  Good for you if you did.  Tools are there for our benefit.  Didn't need to?  Great for you too.