Calcifer Knitting Pattern

I don’t know if you all know this about me, but I’m a huge fan of the Studio Ghibli movies and the books that inspired them. Calcifer, if you don’t already know, is an important character in the book and the movie Howl’s Moving Castle, which is one of my daughter’s favorites (though she did like the book better thanks to some changes that were made for the movie).

Whether you’ve got a Ghibli (or Diana Wynne Jones) fan in your house or you just want to knit a roaring fire to sit in your fireplace in the off season, the Calcifer Knitted Plushie from Kamila Hernandez Firl is here for you.

This irresistible pattern is super cute even if you aren’t familiar with the story (which I won’t spoil for you, but you should check it out!).

The pattern calls for DK weight yarn in eight different colors, for of which make the colors of the flame, two browns for the log and black and white for details. You’ll also need some black embroidery thread for finishing the details on the face. The project is worked in the round, with the flame and the log worked separately, stuffed and sewn together. The general instructions for the pattern are written, but the color changes (and some shaping on the flames) are shown in chart form, so you should have some familiarity with reading and following charts before you start this one.

It’s well worth learning how to do it if you know someone who loves Calcifer, or even just to make a pretend play “campfire” for your kiddos who aren’t old enough to know who Calcifer is yet. They’ll thank you later.

This pattern is free to download on Ravelry, so go check it out and get ready to stitch up some firey fun.

[Photo: Kamila Hernandez Firl]

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations.

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind.

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca.

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl.

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions.

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic).

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only.

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns.

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

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