Earlier this summer I started making cowls while traveling around in our camper. I brought lots of balls of Knit Picks Palette yarn and worked on small projects while camping in Oregon and Washington. I tried several sizes of cowls to get a fit I like. The first cowl pattern I put out was Ozette Cowl which is 7 inches tall. Bonney Lake Cowl is 10 inches tall so it is a bit more ample.

Sometimes choosing colors for a project is time consuming and other times it just clicks and I know what I want. I usually make my patterns on the computer using a gray scale or just black and white then add in the colors. With Bonney Lake Cowl I knew right away which colors I wanted and I was happy that I had enough on hand.

Here’s the free knitting pattern for anyone who wants to make it. I do not care if anyone links to my free pattern BUT it’s not ok to take the pdf and use it for commercial purposes. This happened to me this week and I’m not happy about it. I’m trying to figure out what to do in the future so my work isn’t used for someone else’s gain. Even though my patterns are free I consider them my intellectual property. I ask for no money but I do want proper credit for my designs. Enough said. Here’s the download for Bonney Lake Cowl. Enjoy!

So many of my designs lately have a flower motif. This kick started a while back when I notice I had so many greens in my yarn collection I decides to use them for leaves. That’s how I came up with the design I called In the Weeds.

In the Weeds has 9 color changes for a busy colorwork project. I recently had a comment on Ravelry about this hat and they called it “controlled chaos” which I took as a great complement because that was the effect I was going for!

Excuse my rambling about an old project. This post is really about a new project called Blyn. (Named after the town Blyn, Washington. I was camping there when I was knitting this hat.) Blyn came about because I decide to use something other than green for the leaves. Why be so literal, right? I started using a color called Bittersweet Heather from Knit Picks and it gave me the effect I wanted–dark leaves.

Here is the Free Pattern for Blyn. Enjoy!

I’m excited that fall is around the corner. It’s time to start publishing my patterns! My plan is to put out a pattern a week until I work my way through all my summer projects. I’m currently knitting baby sweaters and they should be done later in the fall too. I’m happy to have all this pattern writing part of my hobby to work on. I have a shoulder injury and have to take it easy on all repetitive movements–so no epic knitting sessions for now.

Floretta Mittens have quite a few color changes and a fancy thumb. This is the most complex project I worked on during the summer so I’ll start here. I personally enjoy lots of color changes—that’s why I do color work! But these mittens might take more time to make compared to a 2-color project. I figured if someone wanted to make them for this winter/fall you could start now and get it done.

I love fancy thumbs and have recently designed several mittens where the pattern continues up the thumb. Yes, it’s a little fussy to change colors in such a small space, but it’s worth it in the long run. You will end up with a really cute thumb—and who doesn’t want that? I use shorter needles for thumbs and it goes pretty fast. Regular length DPNs will work just fine too.

Here is the Free Pattern for Floretta Mittens. Enjoy!

My abundance of green colored yarns inspired my newest design: Alpinia Hat. This pattern calls for 8 colors: a main color for the ribbing and back ground, 4 greens for the stem/leaves, and 3 flower colors. I made the “blooms” with red and oranges but you could use any scrap colors you have around. For the bloom colors you only need 11 yards of 3 colors each. With the 4 green colors, you only need 20 yards of each. The flowers could be in pinks or yellows or lavenders–any colors really. When substituting colors, consider keeping the values/shades close to the original pattern.

This is a basic charted pattern using fingering weight yarn. Only 2 color strands are used at a time. There are lots of color changes though and if you make this hat you will enjoy it more if you know (or learn!) how to weave in ends as you go.

Here’s the free pattern for you to enjoy. If you make this hat, please share a photo of it with me or post it on Ravelry.

There are many colors in my yarn collection that I consider “accent” colors. Yellow, orange, red, and bright peach are a few colors I rarely use. This time, however, I used them all at once. Except for the dark gray color, the rest of the palette for this hat is BRIGHT. This is how I came up with the hat I call Foreign Accents.

For me personally, this is the best fitting hat that I’ve made. I used smaller needles (size 2) for the corrugated ribbing which makes the hat fit nicely. I used my balloon trick for blocking: soak the hat, squish out the water, fit the hat over a balloon that measures 1 inch less in diameter than your head. Let it dry like that.

I’ve written up the pattern and I’m sharing it here for anyone who would like to make it. My advice for knitters using this pattern is to learn to weave in your color changes as you go. There’s lots of ways to do this and the internet is full of tutorials. I know we all have different techniques that accomplish the same task, that’s why it’s only a suggestion. Maybe there’s a person who LIKES to weave in all the ends at the end of a project, but that’s not me.

Here’s the FREE pattern for Foreign Accents Hat:

You may know that I love wool and knitting but rock climbing is also at the top of my list. My local craig is Lime Kiln Canyon in Northern Arizona. I live in Nevada but I’m right on the boarder of Arizona and I’m a stone’s throw from Utah. We chose this place to live because it’s close to all our favorite rock climbing areas. We get really great weather here this time of year but if it’s a little cold a nice wool cap will make the hike up to the craig comfortable. But enough about climbing! Let’s talk knitting!

I designed these hats as a way to use up small amounts of yarn. Quick draws and ropes come in all kinds of bright colors so I thought it would be fun to put together a pattern that used up these tiny bright scraps. I used fingering weight 100% wool yarns by Knit Picks.

The first hat I made for myself and I used my favorite dark blue color as the base. After I made my husband a dark green hat I decided it was a slightly better color combination so I used his for the creation of the actual pattern that I wrote. Of course if you make this hat you can use any colors you like.

Here’s the Free Pattern for Rock Climbing Hat. Enjoy!