Are You Ready for Some Football Knitting?

I imagine there are lots of knitters who are football fans, or who live with football fans and end up spending a lot of time this time of year watching football.

It either of those is you, designer Michelle Hunter and Skacel have a great project for you. Known as the Scoreboard Knitalong, the project takes all of football season to knit a Stockinette Stitch loop cowl (the official pattern will be released Sept. 3), with each round representing a point scored in a game.

You work it in your team colors, choose one color to represent your team and the other to represent the opponent. Then you work one round for each point (and optional third color breaks up the stripes between games).

The chosen yarn is HiKoo Simplicity, a superwash merino/acrylic/nylon blend that comes in more than 60 solid colors (some suggestions for professional and a few college team color combinations can be found on the supplies page). It’s worked on size 7 US (4.5 mm) circular needles.

This project sounds like a lot of fun and will give you something to do if you’re going to be watching all the games anyway. Just make sure you have another project at the ready for those low-scoring times.

Does this sound like a project you’d like to do? Are you a football fan or is someone else in your household? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo via Scoreboard KAL.]

Getting ready for back to school makes me think about pencil crafts, so let’s take a look at some pencil themed knitting patterns!

I recently made a pencil on a circular knitting machine, and it was a fun, quick, easy project that uses little bits of leftover yarn (and if you don’t have yellow you can make it a colored pencil using whatever color’s your favorite). And if you want to make a bigger version check out this pattern from Orange Olive Road on Etsy.

If you want to knit a pencil pillow by hand, check out Sketchy, available on Ravelry from Shana S. Cohen. This one uses worsted weight yarn and has two size options and the choice to make a pencil with an eraser or a colored pencil.

Pencil scarves seem to be the most popular kind of pencil knitting pattern, and there are lot of cute ones. This one from Cosy Craft UK mostly uses garter stitch, with some welts to add texture and what looks like an I-cord edging. It calls for DK weight yarn.

If you want to go all garter stitch try this version from Emsley Co Creations, which uses five colors of DK weight yarn and just a little shaping to make the point of the pencil.

There’s also this fun, mostly stockinette so it looks like it curls a bit, pencil pattern that looks like it’s worked in chunky yarn from Little Knits Studio. This one uses just a little garter stitch and easy shaping for the point.

If you don’t want a pencil scarf, how about some pencil socks? The No. 2 Pencil Socks from The Yarn Enabler are available from Ravelry and use five colors of sock yarn. They feature wide ribs to mimic the texture of a pencil and have options to be worked from the top down or the toe up.

Needs Sharpening by Alexander Walker is a free pattern on Ravelry that uses five colors of sock yarn to make a sort of shortie sock. The little bit of black at the tips of the toes inspired the name. These, too, can be worked in either direction and are available in three sizes.

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