Knit Yourself a Special Little Something

You know I’m all about finding and sharing patterns that help you use your yarn leftovers. Here’s a sweet little shawl that’s meant to be made with the leftovers from a couple of other projects, as it calls for about half a skein each of two colors of sport weight yarn.

The Garter Smidgen by Fatimah Hinds was designed to be a relaxing knit that’s perfect for using up some leftover yarn. It needs 360 to 400 yards total (or about 329 to 366 meters) and measures 64 inches (162.5 cm) long and 17 inches/43 cm at its widest point. The crescent shape is worked in one piece, with wedges of garter and stockinette stitch broken up by eyelets.

It’s designed to use the amount of yarn you have, whether that’s two partial skeins, some minis or several smaller leftovers (since you can easily make more stripes, or wider stripes, as you like depending on the yarn you have available).

It’s a pretty quick and easy project worked in sport weight yarn, though of course you could use sock, DK or even worsted weight yarn, depending on the nature of your leftovers.

The pattern is available on Ravelry. This is actually the second shawl in the “smidgen” series. Fatimah also has a super cute little sock weight, single-color shawl worked in linen stitch that’s designed to use a single special skein, though here again if you’ve got a smaller skein and some leftovers or mini skeins you could throw in some stripes to make it bigger. (That pattern is also on Ravelry.)

Speaking of mini skeins, if you need even more ideas of what to do with your special little skeins (or lots of yarn leftovers), check out my roundup of mini skein/advent calendar knitting projects. These projects are sure to inspire you to bust your stash in a beautiful way.

[Photo: Fatimah Hinds]

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Stitch dictionaries are a fun way to learn new-to-you knitting stitch patterns or to take a deep dive into a particular technique. Debbie Tomkies offers 100 cable stitch designs and thoughts on how to incorporate them into projects in her Cable Knitting Stitch Dictionary.

Each stitch pattern is shown in a large swatch photo and with written and charted instructions. Any special stitches are included on the page. The stitches are rated on a difficulty scale of 1 to 3, and the pattern notes also indicate how many extra stitches you should add to a project if you’re going to work this cable (since cables pull the fabric closer together you need to compensate for that) as well as how many stitches and rows are in the repeat if you want to design a project yourself.

The cables are arranged into sections: classic cables, combinations, all-over panels, creative cables, motifs and panels and cabled edges and borders.

It’s fun to flip through the designs to think about projects you can add a single cable or two to or make with an allover cabled design. Or you could make swatches of different cables and sew them together into a pillow cover or a throw.

At the back of the book there’s a section on general cable knitting techniques, reading charts, working swatches and avoiding errors (though it mentions working the wrong number of rows between cable turns, it doesn’t share how to count rows between cables to avoid this mistake).

It also talks about how to design your own cables, combine cables in a project, choose the right yarn and needles and determine how many more stitches you need to cast on when working cables instead of stockinette stitch. There’s also a glossary of symbols and abbreviations you may find in cable knitting and other patterns.

The book provides a good overview of things you can do with cables, as well as some fun things you might not have tried like infinity cables and horizontal cables. It’s a great book for a designer who likes to work with cables or a knitter who wants to play with different stitches in their projects.

About the book: 176 pages, paperback, 100 stitch patterns. Published 2024 by David & Charles. Suggested retail price $26.99.

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