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.

Katya, age 2

Sasha, age 2 & 1/2

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’.

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 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.

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

New pattern: Heartwood Cowl

Getting this pattern from the idea stage to its final form has followed a similar path to my Beanstalk Hat from earlier this year - a long and meandering path! At first I intended to design a DK-weight hat with columns of heart-shaped cables, but I couldn’t find a solution I liked for the crown decreases that resulted in a well-balanced-looking hat. Eventually, after a lot of ripping-out of hat crowns, I realised a cowl would work beautifully with the heart-cables flowing in and out of 2x2 ribbing. One more swatch in fingering-weight yarn, and I had my design all planned out.

(Note: Just recently I came up with another idea for the disagreeable hat decreases, so a matching hat just might be in the cards!)

I started knitting the sample for the Heartwood Cowl back in early August, at the beginning of the second Melbourne lockdown. It’s an absorbing knit which requires concentration, and between the warm comforting colour and the slightly fiddly cables it’s been the perfect lockdown project for me. The cowl’s pattern of intertwined cabled hearts is a slightly on-the-nose design element in honour of my loved ones back home in New Zealand, who I hope to be able to see next year if all goes well in the world.

The delicious brown yarn I used to knit the sample is a fingering-weight merino from Happy Hank Co - Classy Fingering (100% superwash merino; 437yds/400m per 100g skein) in the Cinnamon colourway. The combination of a fingering-weight yarn and densely-cabled texture produces a squishy and substantial fabric, with a little more drape than you might get from a heavier yarn. When choosing the yarn for this pattern, look for a smooth, multi-plied, worsted-spun yarn for a similar effect. I recommend choosing a solid or near-solid colourway to show off the texture.

I’ve included three height options in the pattern, the shortest of which uses only a single skein. The circumference is also easy to adjust to your preference by adding or subtracting repeats. Some of my wonderful test knitters even adapted the pattern to different yarn weights for their projects, including DK, worsted, and aran weights. If you’d like to use a heavier yarn, I’d recommend planning for fewer repeats - for example you might cast on eight 24-stitch repeats instead of the original ten.

Skills needed to work this pattern include the Long Tail Cast On (or your favourite for 2x2 rib), working in the round, and working 2-over-2 cables. There are also a few six-stitch cables in the mix, confined to three rounds per pattern repeat. Both charts and full written instructions are included.

Heartwood Cowl features:

• a cowl knit in the round from the bottom up, with an all-over texture of cabled hearts and ribbing

• three height options are included in the pattern, the shortest of which uses only a single skein, and the circumference is easily adjustable to your preference

• requires 351 (496, 641)yds/321 (453, 586)m of fingering-weight yarn (shown in Happy Hank Co Classy Fingering)

• choose a smooth, multi-plied, worsted-spun yarn in a solid or near-solid colour

• cowl dimensions, relaxed after blocking: 24”/61cm in circumference, and 7.5 (10.75, 14)”/19 (27.5, 36)cm high from cast-on to bind-off. Sample shown in 14”/36cm height

• charts and written instructions are both provided in full.

Find out more about my Heartwood Cowl pattern, including Ravelry and Payhip purchase options.

New pattern: Beanstalk Hat

Sometimes it takes me a while to get a particular stitch pattern out of my system, and I’ll keep playing around with it even after a pattern is published. Last August I published the Beanstalk Shawl, which was an offshoot of my Ensata designs, and as it turns out I still wasn’t done with leafy lace and half-twisted ribbing! The Beanstalk Hat features the same lace pattern as the shawl, flowing out of the brim’s half-twisted ribbing and easing gracefully into the crown decreases.

You may be wondering why there are three versions of the hat pictured with varying levels of lace-coverage, and the honest answer is that there was a lot of trial and error involved in getting this design finalised, which resulted in three different versions of the hat. I love all three, and rather than publishing them separately, I thought you might enjoy a ‘pick a path’ pattern. The Beanstalk Hat pattern allows you to choose whether to knit a single panel of the lace pattern, all-over lace, or no lace at all. For ease of following your chosen path in the pattern, I’ve named the three versions Spring, Summer, and Winter according to the amount of lacy foliage.

‘Spring’ (single lace panel) in smaller size, ‘Summer’ (all-over lace) in larger size, and ‘Winter’ (plain half-twisted ribbing) in larger size.

For each of the three hats I used a fingering-weight yarn with wonderful stitch definition: Knitcraft & Knittery’s sustainable Australian merino 4ply in the colours Missy Z (muted pink), Sandilocks (rich gold), and Silver Fox (speckled greys). As I was knitting, I really enjoyed how satisfyingly soft the non-superwash-treated merino felt in my hands.

For the two lace versions of the hat I recommend choosing a solid or nearly-solid colour, as the lace pattern can easily get lost otherwise. We (me and a few of my test-knitters) confirmed this after giving more variegated yarns a try, and we all ended up frogging the lace. But because I loved how the speckled Silver Fox colourway looked in the ribbing, I decided to keep going and include a plain ribbed version of the hat as a bonus option.

Skills needed to knit this pattern include the Long Tail Cast On (optional), working lace stitches from charts or written instructions (both are included), working a small circumference in the round, and working twisted decreases in the crown of the hat - I have a tutorial on How to work twisted decreases if these are unfamiliar. Two sizes are included in the pattern, as well as suggestions for customising the length.

Beanstalk Hat features:

• a beanie knit in the round from the bottom up, with optional leafy lace pattern

• choose between a single lace panel, all-over lace, or plain twisted ribbing

• requires 157 (248)yds/143.5 (227)m of fingering-weight yarn (shown in Knitcraft & Knittery Fingering Weight Merino)

• the two lace versions look best in solid or near-solid colourways, while the plain version also suits variegated yarn

• hat dimensions, unstretched: 14 (16)”/35.5 (41)cm brim circumference, and 8 (9)”/20.5 (23)cm length from cast-on to crown, to fit 18-20 (21–23)”/46-51 (53.5-58.5)cm head circumference

• charts and written instructions are both provided in full.

Find out more about my Beanstalk Hat pattern, including Ravelry and Payhip purchase options.

New pattern: Fledgling Hat

I’m often drawn to stitch patterns in the shape of feathers or leaves, and I find it oddly satisfying that I can see both in my new colourwork pattern, the Fledgling Hat! I watch a lot of nature documentaries (Springwatch and its seasonal counterparts are a favourite), and the annual unfolding drama of birds raising their chicks never gets old. This colourwork pattern reminds me of both the feathers of the intrepid birds and the leaves of the trees and hedges that conceal their nests. I named the pattern after fledglings, which are young birds on their way to independence, just beginning to venture out of the nest and learning to fly.

I took the initial idea for the stitch pattern from the image below of a Roman floor mosaic. The feathery ‘halo’ just screamed out to be translated into some kind of colourwork pattern, and I was especially drawn to the 3D effect created by the alternating light and dark elements. After a certain amount of tinkering with the scale of the motifs, I decided to add diagonal strokes to the feathers - this has the practical advantage of keeping the colourwork floats nice and short, at four stitches or less (except for one round in the decrease section). The short floats make this hat a fairly quick and straightforward knit, because there’s no need to worry about trapping floats as you go.

Head of Medusa, from a Roman era mosaic tepidarium floor (Museum of Sousse, Tunisia). © Ad Meskens / Wikimedia Commons

With its short floats and simple crown shaping, the Fledgling Hat is suitable for those new to stranded knitting and willing to give an all-over pattern a try. You will need to be comfortable following a colourwork chart, as well as working a small circumference in the round. I’ve included quick tips on tension, swatching, and colour dominance in the pattern.

For more information on these techniques, I have a couple of tutorials which may be helpful: Swatching in the round and Magic loop: yes it is!

I used Brooklyn Tweed’s Loft for both samples, and used a little less than half a skein of each colour per hat. The colourways I chose are Woodsmoke for the main colour for both samples, and Artifact and Homemade Jam for the contrast colours. Because you only need a small quantity of each colour, this could be a good project for using up leftovers - in fact, the Artifact shade was a partial skein left over from my Kea shawl (Ravelry link).

Two sizes are included in the pattern, to fit adult head sizes with 20-21 (22-23)”/50.5-53.5 (56-58.5)cm circumference. Each size is shown in the photos on my 22"/50.5cm head: the smaller size (in green) is quite fitted on me, and the larger size (in red) is slouchier. If you prefer a slouchy fit, you may prefer to work a larger size.

Fledgling Hat features:

• a stranded colourwork beanie knit in the round from the bottom up

• all-over stranded colourwork pattern inspired by abstract feathers, and a contrast-colour brim

• requires 90.75 (102)yds/83 (93.25)m of the main colour + 114.5 (140)yds/104.75 (128)m of the contrast colour in fingering-weight yarn suitable for colourwork (shown in Brooklyn Tweed Loft)

• suitable for heathered, semi-solid, or solid colourways

• hat dimensions: 18.9 (21.25)”/48 (54)cm circumference and 7.9 (8.25)”/20 (21)cm length, to fit adult head sizes with 20-21 (22-23)”/50.5-53.5 (56-58.5)cm circumference

• pattern includes charted stitch patterns only.

Find out more about my Fledgling Hat pattern, including Ravelry and Payhip purchase options.

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This pattern is my contribution to the Operation: Social Justice fundraiser, which unites over 180 fibre businesses raising money for charities supporting equal rights. From 15-31 March I will be donating 20% of sales of this pattern to two charities supporting LGBTQ+ youth: New Zealand's RainbowYOUTH, which provides support and resources to queer and gender diverse youth and their communities, and Melbourne's RCH Gender Service, which provides care and support to transgender young people and their families.