Practice Your Colorwork with This Fun, Two-Sided Bag

I’m a big fan of knitting with stripes and other colorwork patterns on a small scale because they help you get rid of little bits of yarn that might be floating around your stash. You might not have enough of something — or a lot of somethings — to knit a whole project, but put them together and you can make something really interesting.

This little bag called Tring, designed for Classic Elite Yarns by Talitha Kuomi, provides lots of options for using up little bits of yarn. It’s a two-sided project, with each piece worked separately and then sewn together. One side has stripes and the other a little stranded knitting pattern.

While it looks great in the harmonious, natural tones she chose, it would also be a lot of fun in wild stripes, bright colors or whatever you’d like to use.

[Photo via Classic Elite Yarns.]

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Santa and Saint Nicholas generally get all the good press, but Central European kids know you don’t want to just be good so you get presents from St. Nicholas; you also want to avoid the ire of Krampus. (He’s depicted as a human-like figure with horns and usually hairy or furry who gives birch rods instead of gifts to kids who are bad.)

If you’re the type to embrace the naughty side (or you just want to scare the children into good behavior over the holidays), maybe you’ll want to knit a Krampus sweater.

This one, from Sofie Amalie Laulund, is a top down circular yoke sweater with Krampus faces at the top and cavorting Krampuses further down the body, with some traditional Scandinavian snowflakes thrown in for fun.

Because of the large motifs there’s not a lot of room for adjusting the fit, but it is available in five sizes (the Ravelry page doesn’t say what the sizing is, and it says its worked with no ease but the photo looks like the sweater has a bit of positive ease, so if you decide to make this one just check the measurements and your own comfort level for ease when picking a size).

It also uses five colors, but there’s very little red and brown so you can probably use scrap yarn for those parts. It calls for DK weight yarn. You’ll want a background color that helps the creatures stand out. You could also work the snowflake bands in different colors if you want to mix it up.

The pattern is available in both English and Danish, and you can find it on Ravelry. This is the designer’s first pattern, which kudos to them because it’s such an ambitious (and fun!) project I’m happy to add to my collection of whimsy-filled knits.

[Photo: Sofie Amalie Laulund]

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