Knitting

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How to Make Your Own Ombre in a Knitting Project

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ombre knitting patternsAn easy way to change the look of a knitting project is to knit stripes instead of working in a solid color, and one fun way to make stripes is to use an ombre palette.

Ombre simply means graduated colors, so you might use, say, several different shades of blue in a project (I did this on a pair of mitts in my latest book).

If you’re not sure how to make your own ombre, Red Heart has some great tips on its blog. The sample swatches show crochet, but it works the same in knitting.

The post lays out several options for making color choices and combining them in a project, whether you do solid stripes like I did on my project or work with several strands of yarn at once and change out colors one at a time for a more blended effect. Either way, making a project ombre is a lot of fun.

Have you ever knit an ombre pattern before? I’d love to hear about it!

Looking for more Ombre Knitting patterns? Check these out on Etsy.

[Photo via Red Heart.]

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Comments

  1. I would prefer to buy a skein of yarn already dyed in ombre, rather than having to buy so many different skeins and then having to figure out what to do with all the leftover. Of course, it would depend on what the project is and what kind of effect you want. For a simple scarf, mitts, or dishrag, I would go with a pre-dyed skein.

Have you read?

Knit a Pet Bed on a Knitting Machine

I feel like I haven’t shared many knitting machine patterns lately, probably because I haven’t been using my knitting machines much lately. (I finally made space for them to live on the bookshelf in my office, and now that they have a “place” it’s almost like I forgot they existed for a while.)

But I did recently make a little cat bed, that surely would work for a small dog, too. 

This one uses two different sizes of knitting machine: a larger one (it could be any in the 40-48 needle range) and a 22 pin. 

The larger machine is used in flat panel mode to make the bottom pillow like part of the bed, while the smaller machine makes a long tube that is used around the edges as the sort of walls of the cat bed. 

For stuffing I used a bit of leftover quilt batting for the pillow, and some cut up old T-shirts for the tube. 

You can use any worsted weight yarn you like (I used two colors of Big Twist Pound+, which comes in huge skeins that weigh more than a pound). Acrylic or cotton yarn is nice for washablity, but you’ll be cranking for a while so make sure you use a yarn your machine likes so it’s not too much of a struggle. 

You can grab the pattern for this cat bed over at Our Daily Craft. I’m sorry to report the pictured is as close as a cat has gotten to it so far, but maybe your cats like to be cozy more than mine do?

If you’re looking for more options for cute handmade places for your cats and little dogs to rest, check out this roundup of knit pet beds. I still want to knit one by hand but the machine version was definitely a faster option (especially good since my cats are ungrateful).