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Get a Woven Look with This Mosaic Knit Shawl

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When I look at this shawl I just think about fall. I know it’s coming sometime, and on one of those crisp fall mornings it would be great to have a big cuddly shawl to wear.

The Snapdragon shawl from Berroco uses two-color mosaic knitting to make a fun woven effect on the surface of the shawl. It’s a triangular shawl worked in fine weight yarn, and one of the yarns is a multicolor, which brings a lot of depth to the design without making it any more difficult to work. The fringe adds a fun touch and it’s super easy to do: you just drop a few stitches when the knitting is done, making fringe that’s actually loops.

This design does involve reading a chart, so it’s not as easy as mosaic knitting can get, but it’s still not too difficult. You only work with one color per row, and you change colors every row (working across and back counts as a row), slipping stitches as you go to bring the other color up into that row. And once you get going the pattern makes logical sense such that you might not have to rely on the chart much once you get going.

The shawl looks plenty cozy as it is, but I’m also thinking about how a worsted weight version would be for winter. If you don’t alter the design to account for bigger gauge you’d have basically knit a giant triangular blanket, which sounds pretty nice for those cold days that are no doubt coming, hard though that may be to believe right now.

If you’re new to mosaic knitting or just want to try some more patterns, check out my roundup of mosaic knitting designs. Every time I think about mosaic knitting I wish I did more of it because it’s such a fun and effective technique for adding graphical designs to a knitting project.

You can find this free pattern on the Berroco website.

[Photo: Berroco.]

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Pumpkin Knitting Patterns

There are so many great pumpkin knitting patterns out there, and it looks like I haven’t done a roundup of pumpkin knitting patterns in a few years, so it’s high time for another one.

The Lancaster Pumpkins from Cuddle Bunny Knits on Etsy are classic, made with stockinette stitch in the round and using super bulky yarn. If you’ve never knit a pumpkin before, this is a good place to start.

Jazz it up a little bit by knitting ribbing instead of straight stockinette, which gives your knit pumpkin a little more texture, too. This one is form Jessies Knits on Etsy. This one is worked flat on straight needles and there are three size options to choose from.

Or try the Pumpkin Patch pattern from Blue Sky Fibers, which is a free pattern on Ravelry. It’s worked with two strands of worsted weight yarn held together to give your pumpkins a marled look, or you can keep it solid. 

There’s another free ribbed pumpkin knitting pattern at Yarnspirations that is really cute. These are knit flat and seamed, and they come in three different sizes. You can either stack them as a centerpiece to decorate a table or you can leave them separate. Or make a whole pumpkin patch and do some of both! I love that they chose unconventional colors so you can see you don’t have to be limited to orange when you knit up your pumpkins.

Made by Devrie on Etsy has these cute pumpkins with twisted stitches (they look like cables but it’s only moving one stitch at a time) that you can make in any size with any yarn you like.

The Twisted Heart Pumpkin for Etsy seller Percival Makes Things uses cables to make a heart shape on the side of the pumpkin. It’s worked in the round and the cable pattern is charted.

And while I was really sticking to plain pumpkins here, not knit jack o’lanterns, I can’t resist sharing this beaded jack o’lantern knitting pattern from Knit Cole Studio on Etsy. The base pumpkin is simple Stockinette and you can stitch on beads in whatever design you like to make your face, or keep it plain.

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