Knit a Cowl to Show Your Love of Potatoes

This was meant to be an April Fool’s Day joke, but it’s just like knitters to take something funny and make it into a reality.

I’ve told you before about Jamie Lomax’s doodle cowls and other projects (see also: arctic cowl, holiday doodle hat in this roundup of Christmas knitting patterns), and she, along with the designers behind Fangirl Fibers and Yarnaceous Fibers, decided it would be funny to do an April Fool’s Day set of doodles that can be used on one of her projects.

And what better symbol of pranks and follies than potatoes?

(Actually, I have no idea why potatoes, but I’m going with it. Potatoes are delicious.)

So while the idea was a bit of a prank, the potato doodle charts are very much real, and you can grab the charts to make your own cowl decked out in spuds.

Lest you think there’s just a chart of potatoes here, let me tell you, there are 10 different potato motifs for stitching up russet potatoes, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, French fries, crinkle fries, waffle fries, potato chips, hashbrowns and tater tots. It’s truly a design to make Sam Gamgee proud.

The cowl itself comes in three sizes and you can knit it using sport, DK or light worsted yarn. The charts are mix and match, so you can use all of them in your project or pick your favorites. Make an ode to fries in knit form, or pick the potatoes that best go with your yarn stash.

You can even get a kit from Fangirl Fibers and Yarnaceous Fibers to make your very own potato cowl if you don’t have the yarn on hand.

You can get the free pattern on Ravelry. And don’t miss the great guide to doodle patterns over at the Pacific Knit Co. website, which is a great place to start if you haven’t worked with patterns like this before.

[Photo: Jamie Lomax]

Next Pattern:

There’s just something about stripey socks that makes me smile. It’s not really any more difficult to knit socks with stripes as it is to work in a single color, but for me, the payoff is pretty big in terms of added cuteness. Let’s take a peek at some fun striped socks you can knit.

I have to start with the Rainbow Panda Socks from Sheila Toy Stromberg because I was one of her test knitters and these socks are delightful. Not only do they have stripes on the toe and the leg above the ankle, they also include duplicate stitch panda faces on the backs of the legs and ears you knit into the bind off at the top. They are so cute and fun to make and sized for everyone from infants to adult XL, so you’ve got no excuse not to knit them for everyone you know. Get the pattern on Ravelry.

Those socks are totally ’80s in their coloring, but if you want to step back to the ’70s, try Jeff’s Groovy Socks by Anne Vally. These athletic style socks have a ribbed body and stripes of two contrasting colors on the leg and you can pick one (or both) of the contrasting colors to use for your heels and toes. These come in three sizes for different widths, and you can find the pattern on Ravelry.

If you’d rather have allover stripes, check out the Easy Striped Socks pattern from Knitgrammer on Etsy. These sweet socks can be worked toe up or top down using whatever needle configuration you prefer. Either way you can make a custom fit sock, but toe up makes it a lot easier to fit your foot (without swatching!).

Add a little more color while maintaining allover stripes with the Hunky Guy sock from Long Beach Designs, which adds a contrasting color for the cuff, heel and toe. These are worked in worsted weight yarn for great hiking socks, and despite the name the pattern says it’s sized for adults and teens.

Summer Lee’s sock patterns are synonymous with happy to me, and her Classic Ribbed Socks are a great example of that. They use three colors and I love the bold red and white, which makes them look perfect for spring. And they come in five sizes.

If you want to add even more colors to your socks (or use a colorful self-striping yarn) try the Collection of Columns socks from Nancy Wheeler (on Ravelry). This one is a pretty standard sock with six different charts for “columns” of stitch patterns you can add to make the knitting a bit more fun. There are mock cables, textured stitches and eyelet options, and the sock pattern comes in three sizes.

And we can’t talk about stripes without adding some rainbow stripes, so be sure to check out the Happy Friends Socks, a free pattern on Ravelry from Monika Soltysik. These fun socks use crocodile stitch worked flat for the cuff, which is then joined in the round to knit the body of the sock with two-round stripes. Use any leftover yarns if you don’t have rainbow colors handy.

The Perfect Socks to Knit for Fall

Knit Socks on a Circular Knitting Machine

Learn to Knit Socks with this Easy Ribbed Sock Pattern

Next Pattern:

Have you read?

Leave a Reply