Celebrate March Mayhem and Track Favorite Knitting Patterns

This is a thing I would never have the energy to do, but I’m pretty glad it exists.

Mason-Dixon Knitting has put together a bracket of beloved knitting patterns and is allowing knitters to vote for their favorites. It’s not quite set up like a basketball bracket (though they did design one) in that the voting is happening in genres of patterns — sweaters; shawls; head, feet and hands; and home, baby, toy.

The top eight from each section make it to the next round, where each category is narrowed to four, then two, then the winners of each category go head to head (to head to head, I suppose) to determine the overall winner. Bragging rights are all that’s at stake, but still, this sounds pretty fun.

Have you voted? Are you going to? This whole bracket makes me feel like I’ve missed a lot of cool knitting projects because there are quite a few I missed (all but two were published last year, and all but one is a paid pattern, because paying designers is awesome).

[Photo by Mason-Dixon Knitting.]

When I discovered Kate Atherley’s book Circular Knitting for Beginners and Beyond, I wasn’t sure there was enough to say about circular knitting to fill a book. It’s a pretty short book (144 pages) and includes 10 patterns to practice working in the round on small projects, and it provides a decent introduction to the various ways of working in the round.

The book covers using double pointed knitting needles, flexible double points and circular knitting needles with cables. It talks about working using the full circumference of a circular needle and various ways to work smaller circumference projects, such as using DPNs, magic loop and knitting with two circular knitting needles.

In addition there’s a discussion of preventing problems like twists and ladders, swatching in the round without actually swatching in the round, grafting, blocking and weaving in ends.

More specialized techniques likes knitting from the center out, stranded colorwork, helical knitting and jogless stripes are also explored, as well as working pieces like socks or mitts two at a time.

There’s also some information about seamless sweaters, including the different sweater designs that can be worked seamlessly (and why you might want seams in your sweaters) and how they are worked from the top down or the bottom up.

There are 10 patterns in the book, including a basic stockinette stitch cowl and one with a deliberate twist, wrist warmers, mitts and a pair of colorwork mittens, a hat worked in a solid color or in helical stripes, toe up and top down socks and a beret. It would have been nice to have a basic sweater pattern, too, since the book does talk about working larger garments with circular needles, but it’s still a nice collection of basic patterns worked in the round.

If you’re already comfortable working in the round in different ways, I’m not sure there’s much for you to learn in this book, but it is a good reference for people learning circular knitting or who maybe haven’t tried all the techniques yet or need skill building projects to try.

About the book: 144 pages, paperback, 10 patterns. Published 2026 by David & Charles. Suggested retail price $24.99.

Have you read?