How to Decorate with Fiber Arts

Knitting garments is great, but there’s something really fun about having knit, crocheted, woven, whatever you like to do items around your house. It’s a great way to show your love for fiber arts and a lot of home decor items like pillows and blankets can be great first or early projects when you’re learning a new craft because they don’t have to fit a person.

I was recently asked to contribute my thoughts on knitting home decor items to a post for Porch.com. It covers knitting, crochet and quilting and covers materials, stitches, things to make and more.

I talked about knitting stitches that are great for beginners to use in home decor projects, which reminded me of this great knit wall hanging I have in my office. It’s made with jumbo yarn so it literally takes minutes to stitch and I keep all my buttons and pins on it. So fun!

Do you have knit or crochet decor in your home? I’d love to hear about it!

Next Pattern:

I don’t even know what to say about this amazing knitting pattern. The Bestiary Scarf from Monstra & Mirabilia is so full of details it’s a little intimidating to talk about.

It features, as the designer describes it, an “artistic encyclopaedia of Western mythical creatures.”

The pattern includes a dragon, harpy, Medusa, chimaera, centauress, phoneix, kraken, mermaid, sew serpent, cyclops, wyvern, Pegasus, amphiptere and amphibaena. (It’s a good thing there’s a photo of the proejct with everything labelled because I definitely didn’t know the names for everything.) It’s also designed like a landscape, with water and land creatures toward the bottom ends and sky creatures toward the top.

The dragon is at the center and is worked sideways so it will show as upright when you wear it.

The scarf is worked in double knitting, so the colorwork appears in the opposite colors on the other side.

It’s worked in light fingering weight yarn (on size 0 US or 2mm knitting needles) and the colorwork is shown in charts. The pattern also includes some video tutorials and written instructions to help you along. The designer says the pattern is for intermediate knitters, and “advanced beginners may succeed with patience and the help of the video tutorials.”

When I was an advanced beginner this kind of a pattern would have brought me to tears, but if you love a challenge, and a project that you’ll wear and get tons of astonished reactions every time, this is the project for you. And of course if you have a few double knitting projects under your belt and are comfortable reading charts, this project shouldn’t be hard, but that doesn’t mean it’s fast. But lots of great things take time, and that’s never stopped us before, right?

You can get a copy of this pattern from Monstra & Mirabilia on Ravelry.

[Photo: Monstra & Mirabilia ]

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