Spring+Summer Knitty is Here!

It’s Knitty time again, and it looks like the spring+summer issue is bringing us lots of great projects to queue, as usual.

My favorite may well be the colorful Easy as Pie Blanket, perfect for the little kid in your life. It’s shaped with short rows and would be a great stash buster if you didn’t mind the circles not matching.

Heading into summer there are lots of tank top patterns here. I like the super-sultry Daphne Tank, perfect knitting for your inner bombshell, and the lace-paneled Etherial Tank, which may actually be going in my queue.

There are several great shawls in this issue, too, to help you make the transition to warmer weather and protect you in the air conditioning. The Nori Shawl is a lovely lace number worked sideways form tip to tip in a sort of zig-zag lace, and it only uses one skein of sock yarn. And then there’s the fun Steps Shawl, which uses tucked pieces worked in different colors to shape the shawl into a spiral. Fun!

See anything you like? I’d love to here what’s going in your queue!

[Photo via Knitty.]

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Santa and Saint Nicholas generally get all the good press, but Central European kids know you don’t want to just be good so you get presents from St. Nicholas; you also want to avoid the ire of Krampus. (He’s depicted as a human-like figure with horns and usually hairy or furry who gives birch rods instead of gifts to kids who are bad.)

If you’re the type to embrace the naughty side (or you just want to scare the children into good behavior over the holidays), maybe you’ll want to knit a Krampus sweater.

This one, from Sofie Amalie Laulund, is a top down circular yoke sweater with Krampus faces at the top and cavorting Krampuses further down the body, with some traditional Scandinavian snowflakes thrown in for fun.

Because of the large motifs there’s not a lot of room for adjusting the fit, but it is available in five sizes (the Ravelry page doesn’t say what the sizing is, and it says its worked with no ease but the photo looks like the sweater has a bit of positive ease, so if you decide to make this one just check the measurements and your own comfort level for ease when picking a size).

It also uses five colors, but there’s very little red and brown so you can probably use scrap yarn for those parts. It calls for DK weight yarn. You’ll want a background color that helps the creatures stand out. You could also work the snowflake bands in different colors if you want to mix it up.

The pattern is available in both English and Danish, and you can find it on Ravelry. This is the designer’s first pattern, which kudos to them because it’s such an ambitious (and fun!) project I’m happy to add to my collection of whimsy-filled knits.

[Photo: Sofie Amalie Laulund]

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