Checking out Stitch Maps

If you were around the knitting Internet (yes, there is such a place) at the end of last week or over the weekend you may have already heard about Stitch Maps, a new project by knitting chart enthusiast J. C. Briar. Briar’s book (which I have read but somehow failed to actually review) Charts Made Simple is a really good book for teaching how to use knitting charts of all sorts.

Briar is clearly a visual thinker and knitter, and she has taken visual representations of knitting even further with her latest project.

If you look at that picture up there, which is a version of Feather and Fan, you might think that it looks like a crochet chart. And it does. Crochet charts have always been a more literal visual representation of the work, because it’s difficult to symbolize the difference between, say, a double crochet and a half-double crochet any other way.

But knitting charts have always been flat, I guess because stockinette stitch is flat, or because whoever started charting knitting didn’t think to make the chart look like knitting.

J. C. Briar did. And the result is a little jarring if you’re a knitter, but still pretty darn cool. And it’s actually really logical, because the map can show, for instance, the curving of the Feather and Fan pattern, and how two stitches from the previous row come together in a knit 2 together on this row.

I don’t know if this sort of stitch mapping will catch on, because it also takes up a lot more space in print, and I imagine it might be difficult to represent different sizes of garments on the same chart. But for simply charting out stitch patterns, it’s very cool and I look forward to playing with it some more.

What do you think about stitch maps as opposed to more traditional knitting charts? Would you ever knit from one?

[Photo via Stitch Maps.]

Over the years I have shared a lot of pumpkin knitting patterns, and I’ve knit and crocheted a lot of pumpkins myself. But it feels like there are always more fun things to try with knit pumpkins, so this year I wanted to look a little more beyond basic stockinette or ribbed pumpkins and share some pumpkin patterns with cables, bobbles and colorwork.

In the cable collection we’ve got these cute little basic cable and ribbed pumpkins from Elly Bear Knits. There are two sizes that make a wide, flat pumpkin and a taller round pumpkin. Both are worked in the round as a tube that’s cinched top and bottom when you’re done, and they use bulky weight yarn.

Another cute cable pumpkin knitting pattern comes from Gray Bear Akswokrat. This one is knit flat and it looks like a chunky yarn but you could use other weights to make pumpkins of different sizes. This one also has an I-cord stem and uses yarn to cinch up the sections of the pumpkin, giving it a more natural look.

Add some bobbles to your pumpkins with this design from Autumn Shelter Makes. Also worked in the round in a tube, it features a repeating pattern of bobbles and uses yarn wrapped around the outside to make segments. This one looks like worsted weight yarn to me.

Of course there’s nothing that says your pumpkin has to be a single color, so let’s throw in some colorwork. I love the look of the Cozy Fall Pumpkin knitting pattern from South Stitch Girls. The little leather loop adds a rustic touch but you could also just add a stick. These pumpkins have five colorwork options and are worked in worsted weight yarn in the round.

There’s also the Autumn Fair Isle Trio pumpkins pattern from Equestriann Style, which has three different sizes of pumpkins with four colorwork designs. They are worked in super bulky yarn in the round and look good with high contrast or more muted color combinations.

Have you read?