Knitting for Holi

Holi is not really a holiday that you hear much about in the United States. It’s a traditionally Hindu holiday that usually falls in March and marks the beginning of spring, as well as reminding people that good triumphs over evil.

The reason this holiday should resonate with knitters is that it is also known as the festival of colors, and one of the traditions of Holi is to throw colored powder (called gulal) or colored water on people. I’m not entirely sure why, but it’s a great reason to break out colorful yarn and fun knitting projects that use a lot of colors.

For instance, the Holi Mitts from Jaya Srikrishnan, which are found in the book Color Style. It’s a super cute slip stitch pattern that actually makes using that many colors pretty easy.

Amanda Jones had a gorgeous cardigan pattern called Holi in The Knitter magazine back in 2011. Even without the pattern to go by, this is a really inspirational project.

Dagmar Reinschmidt has a great set of patterns called Holimoli, which includes a few hat variations, mitts and a cowl. The fingerless gloves are available for free, while the others can be purchased individually or as a set.

Charles Gandy has a pair of colorful socks called Holy Moly that have intentionally made holes in them (but in a really cool way) that I think would also be appropriate for Holi. Or just pull out your brightest sock yarn and make yourself a simple pair of Holi socks.

I also wanted to note that Madeline Tosh makes a colorway called Holi Festival, which is white with colorful flecks, as if it had been hit with gulal. You can check out all the projects that have been made with it on Ravelry for more colorful inspiration. I actually have a skein of this yarn and am now thinking hard about making a Honey Cowl with it because these look so pretty. What would you make with this colorful yarn?

Looking for more knitting patterns for knitted Cardigans? Check out these Knitting patterns we found on Etsy.

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Next Pattern:

As I write this, it’s probably time to start thinking about winter knitting if you haven’t already. And it’s definitely time to think about gift knitting if you have any of that you plan to do for the holidays.

The Dreamy Waves Scarf from Knit Picks, designed by Stacey Winklepleck, would be a great project to go in either category.

It uses two different multicolored yarns and a simple repeating wave pattern to make a project that looks a lot more complicated and dramatic than it is. The gradient look happens naturally just by switching which yarn you’re knitting with.

This pattern uses worsted weight yarn so it’s a pretty quick project even though a scarf is large and this one is pretty wide. It measures 8.5 inches (21.5 cm) wide and 63 inches or 120 cm long. Of course you can make it longer or shorter as you like. As written it takes one ball of each color so it’s a pretty economical project, too.

It’s rated for intermediate knitters but if you know how to do various increases and decreases you’ll be all set. The pattern uses knit 2 together, make 1 left and right, centered double decrease and slip slip knit. All of the stitches are explained in a glossary in the pattern so even if you haven’t done all of them it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.

The pattern also includes tons of options for different colorways in yarn that Knit Picks sells, so you can see how different combinations knit up before you buy the yarn. That’s such a great idea!

Of course if you already have two multicolored yarns with long color runs on hand, you can absolutely use them, too. It might also be fun, but would give you a totally different look, to use a solid color and a bunch of scraps or one multicolored yarn to see how the different colors play together. So many options!

You can grab this free pattern and check out all the color options at Knit Picks.

[Photo: Knit Picks]

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