Stitch Some Shamrocks for St. Patrick’s Day

St. Patrick’s Day is right around the corner, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have time to stitch a little green. I’m loving this collection of shamrock patterns I found on Ravelry (by the way, they just hit 3 million registered users, which is so awesome!).

Mary C. Gildersleeve’s St. Patrick’s Day Washcloth features a three-leaved shamrock worked in an eyelet pattern and is a free Ravelry download.

Another washcloth pattern can be found at Kris Knits. It uses garter stitch on a ground of stockinette to make the shamrocks stand out.

Vickie Howell has a cute mitered Bejeweled Shamrock pattern on her site that you can make with a scrap of sock yarn. If you don’t have a heat-setting tool, you could sew a blingy button to the center.

Add a four-leaf clover charm to your cell phone with this adorable pattern from Free Cute Knit.

And if you want to try a loom-knitted version, check out this shamrock pattern from Loom Lore.

(And if you’re looking for more St. Patrick’s Day patterns, check out my projects at About; especially the adorable Rainbow Scarf, which is a really quick knit.)

I guess I must have had this pattern on my mind, because I had chosen this log cabin blanket recipe to write about, promptly forgot about it and a couple of weeks later started knitting a log cabin blanket using all my pink yarn.

It might stay pink if it makes it to baby blanket sized, or I might add in some pastel green and blue, too, to make a bigger blanket. We’ll see. I’m also holding several strands of yarn together to make a kind of bulky yarn, which means it’s deeply satisfying how much yarn is used even as the project is still relatively small.

In Kristen Finlay’s version, DK weight yarn scraps (or fingering/sock yarn held double) are used to make a simple scrappy log cabin blanket that’s lighter weight than my version. Log cabin is a great technique for knitters of any skill level because it’s worked in garter stitch. The only not completely basic technique you need for log cabin knitting is picking up stitches.

If you’ve never worked a log cabin knitting project before, this is a good introduction, and it is really nice to use all your yarn scraps in one big project you’ll use for years to come.

If you use a lot of DK weight yarn you can keep building on it whenever you finish a project, or if you use more worsted weight you can do the same thing with it, it will just be a little bigger starting out than the pattern calls for. How big it gets is totally up to you.

I have really been enjoying working on my log cabin project, and it’s my current sitting at my desk and need a break knit (do you have one of those or is it just me?).

Ready to start your own log cabin blanket knitting project? You can grab the free pattern from Kristen Finlay on Ravelry.

Need more log cabin inspiration? Check out more log cabin knitting patterns.

[Photo: Kristen Finlay]

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