Honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Knitting

The passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg last week has been emotional for a lot of people, and has increased the popularity of RBG inspired knitting projects.

In case you want to bring a little of her style and dissent to your knitting wardrobe, I thought I’d collect some options for you.

You can also check out these designs on Etsy

Carissa Browning’s Dissent Cowl is available in knit and crochet versions and on Ravlery and LoveCrafts. She’s donating 100 percent of pattern sales until Election Day to the ACLU, which has already come to more than $20,000. It costs $5 and is worked in two colors of DK weight yarn.

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

Knitorious RBG by Park Williams is a fun sweater inspired by an RBG collar with fun puffy sleeves. It uses worsted weight yarn, is available in eight sizes and you can get it on Ravelry for $9.

Then there is Andrea Rangel’s Dissent Sweater, available from Ravelry in a fingering weight pullover and worsted weight cardigan option. Both are $10 and come in 11 sizes.

You can add a dissent collar to any sweater pattern with this chart (also on Ravelry) from Colleen Humphreys. It’s perfect for a circular yoke sweater or cardigan.

If you’d rather knit just the collar, try the “I Dissent” Collar from Camille K. Lewis, which uses crochet thread and uses four different sizes of knitting needles. You can find it on Ravelry for $2.

You can knit a tiny judge robe with beaded “collar” with this pattern from By Tale or History Knitting Designs. It suits an 18-inch doll and is available on Ravelry for $5. The pattern also includes a two-piece suit, shoes and stockings, and you can make a regular lac collar, too.

Make RBG in mitten form with this design from Lotta Lundin. They feature Ruth with and without her notorious crown along with “I Dissent” on one mitten and “Fight for the things you care about” on the other. The pattern is on Ravelry and runs kr.75.00 SEK, or about $8.94.

Max Pfeifer designed a hat with a collar motif in his Dissent pattern, which is available in one size and can be downloaded from Ravlery for $5.

Know any other RBG inspired knitting patterns? I’d love to hear about them!

Check out this Ruth Bader biographical coloring book introduces kids to the crusading Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Thirty carefully researched and beautifully illustrated pages highlight the important milestones in Ginsburg’s remarkable life, from her time as a law professor and her years on the U.S. Court of Appeals to her career as the 107th Supreme Court Justice.

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?