Start the new year right! Use up those scrap yarn to make room for new ones! :D

And get some knit­ting looms! So you can make this hap­py scrap­py loom-knit­ting sweater! :D

*Dis­claimer: I have not received com­pen­sa­tions for any knit­ting loom man­u­fac­tur­ers* (but maybe I should…)

I just… love the sim­plic­i­ty, the rus­tic fish­er­man look, the dou­ble thick, super warm fabric.

So! If you have a knit­ting loom, or if you’d like to get one and try your hands on loom knit­ting, here’s how this raglan sweater was made. 

(Haven’t tried loom knit­ting much but want to tack­le a sweater project? No fear! I’ll have video tuto­ri­als through­out to show you dif­fer­ent stitch­es. I did start with mak­ing hats and head­bands first but the sweater real­ly isn’t much harder.)

I used:

A 41-peg round loom (the largest in the set). I got mine in a set by Loops & Threads at Michaels (for medi­um to bulky yarn). It was about $20 and I had a 55% off coupon so it end­ed up being quite affordable.

Worsted weight yarn. I knit­ted with 2 strands of yarn held togeth­er through­out. I had a large ball of over 1000 yards of for­est green (I can’t remem­ber what brand and lost the label) that I used through­out, then just added dif­fer­ent colours of scrap yarn as I went. 

6 mm cro­chet hook for cast­ing on. Small­er hook for weav­ing in ends.

Yarn nee­dle (that came with the loom set).

Siz­ing:

The size I made was 33″ around. I would have liked it larg­er. Giv­en that I’m on the small scale of humans, I’m going to write the pat­tern for 37″ so it might work for more peo­ple. 37″ is the largest size the loom can make, for this pat­tern. Below are the approx­i­mate mea­sure­ments, with 2 stitch­es = 1″ and 3 rows = 1″. The actu­al mea­sure­ments for your sweater may vary depend­ing on the kind of yarn you use.

Pat­tern:

Notes: 

Knit with 2 strands of yarn held togeth­er through­out. I used one colour con­sis­tent­ly and just added dif­fer­ent colours of scrap yarn. To change colour, I sim­ply cut the work­ing yarn and tie on a dif­fer­ent colour. Very high-tech ;)

The pat­tern con­sists of 4 pieces: front, back, 2 sleeves. They’re sewn togeth­er in the 4 diag­o­nal seams from under arm to col­lar, then sleeves are sewn togeth­er under the arm, and the sides are sewn together. 

Wher­ev­er “knit” or “k” is indi­cat­ed in the pat­tern, it means the e‑wrap stitch.

Front/Back (make 2):

Cast on all the pegs around the loom using this chain cast on method with a cro­chet hook, but don’t join in the round. I tend to cast on quite tight­ly so that the edges are as neat as pos­si­ble (41 sts.)

Work k1 p1 rib for 6 rows. (video tuto­r­i­al for k1 p1 rib here)

Con­tin­ue knit­ting using the e‑wrap stitch (e‑wrap video here) until piece reach 13″. 

Now we begin decreas­ing towards the col­lar (yoke).

Yoke row 1: In the next row, decrease 1 by mov­ing the loop on the last peg to the one next to it, e‑wrap and knit off the 2 bot­tom loops on peg. Con­tin­ue knit­ting until 2 stitch­es remain. Move the loop on the last peg to the sec­ond last peg, e‑wrap and knit off the 2 bot­tom loops on peg. Decrease done! Sim­ple, right? (Here’s a decrease video to sum­ma­rize the action)

Yoke rows 2–3: Knit 2 rows even.

Repeat yoke rows 1–3 eight more times, then work yoke row 1 (decrease row) once more. 28 rows in yoke alto­geth­er, 21 stitch­es remain.

Work k1 p1 rib for 5 rows. 

Bind off (bind off video here).

Sleeves (make 2):

Chain cast on (same as front/back) 19 sts. 

Work k1 p1 rib for 5 rows.

Sleeve row 1–7: Knit 7 rows even.

Sleeve row 8 (increase): knit 2, make 1 (m1), knit until 2 stitch­es remain, m1, knit 2. (make 1 video here — the per­son in the video uses a dif­fer­ent knit stitch method but you can con­tin­ue using the e‑wrap for this)

Repeat sleeve rows 1–8 sev­en more times — 64 rows alto­geth­er, increased to 35 sts.

Now we decrease for shoul­der.

Shoul­der row 1: knit 1 row even.

Shoul­der row 2: decrease 1, knit till 2 stitch­es remain, decrease (see yoke row 1 above).

Repeat shoul­der rows 1–2 thir­teen more times, 28 rows alto­geth­er in shoul­der, 7 stitch­es remain.

Work k1 p1 rib for 5 rows. Bind off.

Assem­bly:

With wrong side fac­ing, and using one strand of yarn only (to reduce bulk), sew raglan seams togeth­er con­nect­ing sleeve pieces to front and back pieces. Sew sleeve togeth­er under the arm and con­tin­ue sewing togeth­er the sides. Repeat with oth­er sleeve/side.

Voilà!

And! I got this incred­i­ble t‑rex wood­en sculp­ture from a dear friend :D Isn’t it the most awe­some thing?

If you do give it a try do drop me a line! Cheers to a fan­tas­tic roar­ing year! 

  

 

It’s my lat­est craze! I can’t seem to get back to the nee­dles at the moment… I’m sure I will, but right now I’m just look­ing for all kinds of things to loom knit. I saw some real­ly cute cro­cheted and knit­ted tea cozies in the shape of plum pud­ding late­ly, and I thought I could prob­a­bly loom knit one! So here it is :D

I’ve actu­al­ly nev­er had plum pud­ding, but always thought it’s the cutest-look­ing Christ­mas-relat­ed thing! The light­ing in my apart­ment is quite poor espe­cial­ly in the evening, but here’s a bet­ter look at the tea cozy.

I thought I’d share what I did here, in case you’re a loom knit­ter and want to give it a try, or if you also want to try your hands on loom knit­ting (it’s so much fun!), and for myself to remem­ber when I need to make one or a few more next year :D 

I used this 31-peg loom, it came in a set of 4 by Loops and Threads at Michaels. I bought it because it’s afford­able, espe­cial­ly with the week­ly Michaels coupon, for my first try with loom knit­ting. I’m not sure why this par­tic­u­lar loom has an odd num­ber of pegs, because I thought all round looms have even num­ber of pegs… but it worked anyway.

I used:

Worsted weight yarn in brown and white, with 2 strands held togeth­er throughout

A bit of worsted weight yarn in green and red

3.5 mm cro­chet hook

Yarn nee­dle

How to:

To begin, cast on using chain cast on (I learned using this video) with brown.

Then, using e‑wraps (here’s a tuto­r­i­al), work 8 rows around. The tea cozy uses e‑wraps throughout.

We now sep­a­rate front and back pieces.

Front:

Work 16 stitch­es back and forth (to cre­ate a flat pan­el) for 7 rows (video on how to make a flat pan­el here).

Then, incor­po­rate white using this chart.

Start with the bot­tom row. Work two stitch­es of brown. Make a slip knot with white and put on next peg, and work this stitch. When wrap­ping the next peg with white, make sure that the brown work­ing yarn is lay­ing on top of the white work­ing yarn, thus car­ry­ing the brown yarn along. Con­tin­ue fol­low­ing the chart, car­ry­ing the brown when wrap­ping with the white, and vice versa.

After fin­ish­ing the chart, work 10 rows back and forth in white. (My teapot is a bit on the tall side stand­ing at 6.5″ includ­ing lid, so if your teapot is small­er, you can prob­a­bly omit a few rows.) Cut yarn.

Back:

Attach brown to the first unworked peg at row 8. Wrap and knit the remain­ing 15 unworked stitch­es for 7 rows. 

Fol­low the chart for the next 3 rows. If you have the same loom as me you would need to omit either the far left or far right col­umn of the chart.

Work 10 rows in white (or the same num­ber of rows on the oth­er side). 

Work 5 rows in the round. Tie and secure the yarn tail when you get to the peg where the yarn was cut at the end of the front piece.

Leav­ing a long tail, cut yarn. Thread yarn tail in nee­dle, weave nee­dle through each stitch while tak­ing the stitch off the peg, gath­er and cinch the stitch­es togeth­er, turn piece inside out, weave the nee­dle through the gath­ered stitch­es a few more times and tie off. Weave in all the ends. Turn piece right side out. 

Here’s close up of the com­plet­ed icing chart…

Hol­ly:

Leaves (make 3): Leav­ing a long tail for sewing, ch 10, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, through back loop only, *sc in next ch, dc in next ch, ch 2, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, dc in next ch, sc in next ch, dc in next ch, ch 2, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, dc in next ch, sc in next ch*, sl st in next ch. Now work­ing on the oth­er side of the foun­da­tion chain, repeat from * to *, sl st in last ch, fas­ten off, weave in this end.

Berries (make 3): Leav­ing a long tail for sewing, 6 sc in mag­ic ring, don’t join in the round, 1 sc in each sc for 2 rounds (or just work 12 sc’s), fas­ten off. Stuff tail end into berry. Thread begin­ning tail in nee­dle, pull on tail to ensure mag­ic ring is closed as tight­ly as pos­si­ble, pass nee­dle through the mag­ic ring and the berry and pre­pare to sew on the pudding.

Assem­bly:

Sew leaves and berries onto the top of the plum pud­ding with the yarn tails, like so…

Put teapot in cozy, and we’re done! Pret­ty quick and easy. Makes a great gift for tea lovers :)

Have a cozy, hap­py week­end, everyone!

 

 

In an ear­li­er post I talked about try­ing out a dia­mond lace pat­tern for a sum­mer sweater. So it’s final­ly done! 

I used less than one skein of Bernat Hand­i­crafter Cot­ton (large ball, 340g) in Queen Ann’s Lace Ombre. I had start­ed this sweater with the goal of using up the ball of yarn after mak­ing a cou­ple of dish cloths. So I was able to make two dish cloths (one was cro­cheted too! The oth­er knit­ted) AND a sweater out of one ball of yarn. Now, the sweater is of a cropped style and I’m a small per­son, and I did use an extra small skein of pale yel­low for the rib­bing, but still! I was quite hap­py with the ball of yarn :) The strip­ing also worked out quite even­ly with garter stitch. Kind of retro feel.

It’s essen­tial­ly a boat-neck square top. Pret­ty easy to make, and quite com­fort­able, per­fect for mid/late sum­mer evenings, or hang­ing out by the waters where there’s a bit of a breeze. 

This is more of an adap­ta­tion of a pat­tern than an orig­i­nal pat­tern. There is no way I’d have the skills to come up with the dia­mond lace pat­tern. The chart comes from the Dia­mond Girl sweater pat­tern by Red Heart (link­ing to its Rav­el­ry page here, as the direct link to the pat­tern site does­n’t seem to work).

What I used:

One ball of Bernat Hand­i­crafter Cot­ton (large, 340g) in Queen Ann’s Lace Ombre

One skein of Bernat Hand­i­crafter Cot­ton (small, 50g) in Pale Yellow

6mm cir­cu­lar nee­dles (36″)

5mm cir­cu­lar nee­dles (9″ — for sleeves rib­bing and collar)

Tapes­try nee­dle for sewing up seams

Fin­ished size I made: Bust 35″, length 16.5″ (size adjust­ment in ital­ics below)

 

Note: 

The instruc­tion below does require know­ing how to read knit­ting charts.

The sweater starts from the bot­tom rib­bing of front piece, knit­ting body up to neck, bind­ing off a num­ber of stitch­es in the cen­tre for col­lar, then in the next row cast­ing on the same num­ber of stitch­es using cable cast on, then con­tin­u­ing down the body of back, end­ing with rib­bing at bot­tom edge. The side seams are then sewn, then col­lar edg­ing and arm­hole rib­bing are worked using small­er cir­cu­lar needles.

What I did:

1. Down­load dia­mond lace chart. (Try fol­low­ing the link on its Rav­el­ry page, or copy and paste the fol­low­ing link in your brows­er. Click­ing on the link itself seems to only open up the Red Heart gen­er­al site, not sure why: http://www.redheart.com/free-patterns/diamond-girl-top)

2. With larg­er nee­dles and pale yel­low yarn, cast on 65 st. Work 1x1 rib for 9 rows.

The chart is a 16 st pat­tern repeat, the eas­i­est way to size up would be adding 16 st to cast on = CO 81. 16″=approx. 4.25″ in this gauge. CO 81 would there­fore result in 43.5″ around.

3. Fas­ten off pale yel­low, attach main colour yarn, begin work­ing dia­mond lace chart across. Use knit stitch in every row.

4. Repeat chart 4 times. (or more repeats if you’d like a longer sweater)

5. Next row: knit 12 st, bind off 41 st, knit 12 st. (For larg­er size i.e. CO 81, sug­gest knit 16, bind off 49, knit 16.) 

6. Next row: knit 12 st, cast on 41 st using cable cast on, knit 12 st. (For larg­er size i.e. CO 81, sug­gest knit 16, cast on 49, knit 16.) 

7. Next row: knit every stitch.

8. Next row: begin dia­mond lace pat­tern, repeat pat­tern 4 times. (or more times if you’d like a longer sweater, same num­ber of repeats as the oth­er side of sweater)

9. Fas­ten off main colour, attach pale yel­low, work 1x1 rib­bing for 9 rows. Bind off.

10. Assem­bly: Sew up side seams from bot­tom of sweater to under arm, approx. the length of 2 dia­mond lace pat­tern repeats. (or adjust to your measurement)

11. Sleeves: Turn sweater right side out. Using small­er nee­dles, attach pale yel­low to arm open­ing at under­arm seam, pick up and work 1x1 rib­bing even­ly around arm open­ing, for 6 rows, then bind off. Repeat for the oth­er arm open­ing, ensur­ing the same num­ber of stitch­es on each sleeve.

12. Col­lar: Using small­er nee­dles, attach pale yel­low at cen­tre back of col­lar, pick up and knit even­ly around col­lar. Knit one more row around, bind off.

Weave in all ends, and we’re done! :D

Please feel free to leave a com­ment below if you have any ques­tions or need clar­i­fi­ca­tions! Have a hap­py, crafty week! :D