Knit a Patch of Pumpkins for Fall

As soon as there’s the tiniest bit of fall feeling in the air, all I want to do is make pumpkins. I mostly knit pumpkins, but I have a few crocheted ones, too, and I just can’t get enough of them. If you feel the same way, this patch of knitting pumpkin patterns is for you. (And if you need even more, check out these roundups, too.)

Since I have done several posts on pumpkin knitting patterns before, I searched for new pattern on Ravelry, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t shared the Etsy ones before. Let’s get into it!

The Cute Little Pumpkin Patch pattern from Nimble Needlez on Etsy is just what it says. You can knit these little pumpkins individually with little stems or you can make a whole vine with leaves and connect a few pumpkins together to make your own pumpkin patch. The pattern calls for fingering weight yarn but you can try other weights to get pumpkins of different sizes.

The small knit pumpkins from Jordann Cholst on Ravelry are also diminutive, but they use worsted/aran weight yarn so they’ll stitch up all that much faster. The pattern comes in three sizes so you can make a variety from just this pattern.

Ewelina Wojsz’s Pumpkin Number One is a free pattern on Ravelry that’s worked from the bottom up in the round using fingering weight yarn. I love that these are shown in non-traditional colors because once you get going you’ll learn just about any color works for a pumpkin.

Speaking of colorful pumpkins, check out the Checkerboard Pumpkin from Tabetha Moe. It uses DK weight yarn and easy colorwork in the round to give it a rustic checkerboard look. You can find this one on Ravelry.

Another little one is Dena Washington’s Teacup Pumpkin, available on Ravelry. As the name suggests, this pumpkin will fit in a teacup, making it perfect to use as a pincushion or just to add a bit of cuteness to your fall decor. It uses aran/worsted weight yarn.

If you’d rather have a big pumpkin, check out the pattern from Hand Knit Hugs, which offers a 9, 11 and 13 inch diameter pumpkin. That’s 22.8, 28 or 33 cm for our metric friends. The pattern uses two strands of worsted weight yarn held together and is worked in the round.

I love a pumpkin with a cable pattern on it because it just makes it look more like fall to me. Gray Bear Akswokrat on Etsy has an easy pattern for a cabled pumpkin that’s worked flat on two needles.

And if colorwork is your thing, check out the Harvest Hugs pumpkins from Karysha on Ravelry. These patterns use chunky yarn and have a few options for colorwork. The full bundle includes three large pumpkins, a mini pumpkin, acorn, mushroom, mug hug, and leaves and tendrils to make a fall themed garland.

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations.

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind.

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca.

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl.

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions.

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic).

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only.

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns.

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

Have you read?