Slip Stitches Make Lumaya Knit up in a Flash

I love slip stitch knitting patterns. They’re an easy way to add texture and color to a project and they make your work look more complicated than it is because it looks like you’re using more than one color at a time but really it’s just one color per row.

It also feels to me like slip stitch patterns go faster because you aren’t knitting every stitch on every row. And you get a little something like the fun of working with a striping or self-patterning yarn where you want to keep knitting to see what happens next.

The Lumaya Shawl from Louis Boria uses slip stitches and eyelets on an asymmetrical triangle shape. The eyelet border is particularly striking in a bright color that contrasts the other yarn, but I’m sure it would be lovely in a more tonal or coordinating color as well.

The pattern is $7 on Ravelry.

[Photo: Louis Boria.]

Fall will be here before we know it, and that means there are holidays coming right behind where we might be entertaining at home. It’s always fun to have a hand knit touch in your home for other people to see, and if you’re going to be in the kitchen all day you might as well have some nice knit dish cloths to use.

I love this little plaid hand towel from Darling Jadore. Use a little bit of leftover cotton yarn from another project for the plaid portion. It looks like the horizontal stripes are worked as you knit and the vertical stripes are done with duplicate stitch, making this a quick and easy project even newer knitters can make.

Combine garter stitch and an easy eyelet pattern worked sideways to make the Annette Dish Towel from Cluck Cluck Boots, which is meant to be reminiscent of flour sack towels. It calls for DK weight yarn and you can work it in one color or two (or even three!).

Add a little more texture with this set of kitchen towels from Whileberry Creative. They’re mostly worked in garter stitch with borders in easy knit/purl patterns, and you can work them in sport or worsted weight yarn.

Two of Wands Shop has another cute allover knit and purl pattern they call the Seersucker Textured Tea Towel. It’s an easy repeating pattern worked in worsted weight yarn, and there’s a chart in the pattern you can use, but don’t have to, if you want to practice knitting from a chart.

The Classic Cloth dish towel from Handmade Home by Connie is another one that can use a little leftover yarn in a contrasting color, or you could color block it our use stripes throughout the pattern. This one uses worsted weight yarn and another easy repeating knit purl stitch pattern.

If you like to hang your towel on the oven handle or elsewhere but it’s always falling off, try the Stay Put kitchen towel from Fancy Step Knits. This project is worked in garter stitch and includes a hole partway through so you can pull the towel through itself over a rod or handle. Stripes are optional but a nice addition.

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