Smitten

Smitten

As one who regularly trolls through Ravelry (it’s my professional duty to all of you) I can’t help but be taken but new projects that are constantly popping up for all of us.  In the past week, a number of new projects have caught my eye and a few of them stand out from my normal aesthetic.  They are so adorable, I just had to share.

Espace Tricot recently published ANOTHER stellar pattern and made it available to the world for free (thank you, Espace Tricot!), and it’s another piece that you’ll want to snuggle up in.  Flying Solo is a ribbed cowl has a split hem at the shoulders, so it can really get in there to keep the chill out on a cold day.  The pattern calls for 3 colors of fingering weight yarn, held double, to create an ombre effect.  This is a fun way to play with color and be creative.  However, for someone feeling less creative, I’m a big advocate of picking up a kit of Katia’s Ombre and working straight through this set.  All you’d do is pull yarn from the inside and outside of the ball, holding each color double.  When you’ve run out of color #1, you move on to the next one, and so on.

Alpine Meadows is a new hat pattern from Heidi Kirrmaier that features striking bobbles across a stark background.  Kirrmaier’s description of the bobbles as “big dabs of thick paint” really calls to me, and makes me feel antsy to be a part of a creative process like this little hat calls for.  It also happens to be a fun way to play with a few bobbles.  Alpine Meadows calls for worsted weight yarns like Brooklyn Tweed’s Shelter, but try this fun project in anything like Spud & Chloe’s Sweater, Pure Bliss’s Falkland or any other favorite worsted weight yarn!

Milla’s Sweater was just published as a free pattern (until the end of 2017) and it is thoroughly delightful.  This children’s sweater is knit up in a worsted weight yarn as a simple, bottom-up, seamless construction.  Adorable motifs depicting a story about “Milla” are added with a simple duplicate stitch technique, so you get a lot of fun look without the intarsia work.  This adorable sweater is meant to compliment a story (written and illustrated by the designer) about Milla who is searching for her lost grandmother.  The backstory of this design is as adorable as the piece itself, and I highly recommend that you check it out yourself.  Meanwhile, pick a yarn that is soft and easy to care for (kids clothing people!) like Spud & Chloe Sweater, and with colors that don’t have a ton of variation, so you can easily see the duplicate stitch motifs throughout the project.

The Zarah Necklace is a quick and fun little project from Ambah O’Brien – a necklace no less.  This project takes a minimal amount of fingering weight yarn in two colors (think two Unicorn Tails) and incorporates a little bit of i-cord and a little bit of mosaic knitting into a fun, quick and satisfying little project!  I don’t have too much to add about the technicalities of this one.  I do think it’d be an incredible little diversion for a night of knitting – and what a great gift!

Ilam by Sarah Hatton is my last, most recent obsession.  This oversized scarf is worked in three colors of Rowan’s Brushed Fleece (which I’m in love with), and it’s worked sideways.  Interesting and graphic stranded color work runs the length of the scarf, and is framed by chunks of color.  Yes, this piece is incredibly cozy and promises to be wonderfully soft, but it’s also an interesting way to experiment with color work (and to notice the difference in gauge between normal stockinette and color work).  I also love that this piece could be easily modified to make it smaller, for someone who wants a snuggly scarf that isn’t so dramatically large.