Knitting

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Free Knitting Pattern: Kaffe Fassett’s Islay

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islay kaffe fassettI have a little bit of an obsession with Kaffe Fassett. The British master of color produces some glorious knits, but so many of them require so many different colors of yarn that you don’t even want to think about how much such a garment would cost, not to mention how long it would take and how much attention it would need to knit it.

(Actually, I did think about it once. The first book of his I ever reviewed, Kaffe Knits Again, includes a beautiful wrap he calls the Stepped Flowers Stole. It’s sort of like the Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt pattern, but in knitting. It calls of 24 balls of 15 different colors of yarn, for a total yarn cost of about $263.)

Rowan has a new free pattern of Fassett’s out, called Isaly. It’s a women’s pullover in multicolored squares and crosses (and another one of those huge-number-of-color projects, this time with 14). It’s a beauty, and the colorwork is not that difficult since it’s all simple shapes, so long as you can keep up with the color changes.

The chart is in black and white, too, so it’s a little dizzying. The pattern is available for free as a PDF (in four languages), but you have to register an account with Rowan (they don’t require a lot of personal information) to access it. Which is probably worth it to take a closer look at this beauty (I’m sure there’s a way to cut down on the number of colors used, too, though it wouldn’t be a true Fassett at that point, it would still be really pretty).

[Photo by Rowan.]

Looking for knitting patterns for knitted Cardigans? Check out these Knitting patterns we found on Etsy.

Looking for pullover and sweater patterns? Check these books out.

Comments

  1. Could easily run upstairs and grab all the yarn I need to make this since there are 3 baskets of small balls. Love it and wish I could afford to buy all of his patterns since day 1.

  2. Could easily run upstairs and grab all the yarn I need to make this since there are 3 baskets of small balls. Love it and wish I could afford to buy all of his patterns since day 1. Just wish I could still read charts but my brain says no these days.

Have you read?

Knit a Log Cabin Blanket with All Your Scraps

I guess I must have had this pattern on my mind, because I had chosen this log cabin blanket recipe to write about, promptly forgot about it and a couple of weeks later started knitting a log cabin blanket using all my pink yarn. 

It might stay pink if it makes it to baby blanket sized, or I might add in some pastel green and blue, too, to make a bigger blanket. We’ll see. I’m also holding several strands of yarn together to make a kind of bulky yarn, which means it’s deeply satisfying how much yarn is used even as the project is still relatively small. 

In Kristen Finlay’s version, DK weight yarn scraps (or fingering/sock yarn held double) are used to make a simple scrappy log cabin blanket that’s lighter weight than my version. Log cabin is a great technique for knitters of any skill level because it’s worked in garter stitch. The only not completely basic technique you need for log cabin knitting is picking up stitches. 

If you’ve never worked a log cabin knitting project before, this is a good introduction, and it is really nice to use all your yarn scraps in one big project you’ll use for years to come. 

If you use a lot of DK weight yarn you can keep building on it whenever you finish a project, or if you use more worsted weight you can do the same thing with it, it will just be a little bigger starting out than the pattern calls for. How big it gets is totally up to you. 

I have really been enjoying working on my log cabin project, and it’s my current sitting at my desk and need a break knit (do you have one of those or is it just me?). 

Ready to start your own log cabin blanket knitting project? You can grab the free pattern from Kristen Finlay on Ravelry. 

Need more log cabin inspiration? Check out more log cabin knitting patterns. 

[Photo: Kristen Finlay]