Stitch Spring Flowers on This Pretty Cowl

The storytelling that often accompanies recipe blog posts has become a bit of a joke on the Internet, with people who just want the recipe already complaining about the fact that the author tells the whole back story of the dish, their family’s reaction, the history of the herb cilantro, before they share the ingredients.

Of course the reason many people write posts like that is because the algorithms tend to prefer longer posts, and you can get more keywords into a post that has more words in general.

As a blogger I don’t mind the storytelling much, and while this trend isn’t found in knitting patterns as much as it is in recipes, sometimes it’s nice to get the backstory on a meal, or, in this case, a knitting pattern.

I think it’s worth reading the story that comes before the pattern on this one. The Orwell’s Garden cowl by Julie Cameron Gray is lovely by itself — a sock yarn cowl worked in the round, covered with dainty flowers.

But the story behind the cowl gives it a deeper meaning and give us something to think about while we’re knitting. It’s about creating things that last, through the lens of gardening, but knitting is similar in that we make things and we don’t know who might enjoy them in the future, what might happen to them when we’re gone.

And if you’re not into the deep introspection right now, you can just scroll through like you do on those recipe posts.

The cowl uses four colors and the colorwork is presented in a chart. It’s not difficult if you know how to read a chart, but it might be more efficient to do the yellow stitches at the center of each flower in duplicate stitch (or even as a French knot to add some texture) rather than knitting a single stitch of that color in each flower. Grab the free pattern from Taddle Creek.

[Photo: Guy Crawford.]

Over the years I have shared a lot of pumpkin knitting patterns, and I’ve knit and crocheted a lot of pumpkins myself. But it feels like there are always more fun things to try with knit pumpkins, so this year I wanted to look a little more beyond basic stockinette or ribbed pumpkins and share some pumpkin patterns with cables, bobbles and colorwork.

In the cable collection we’ve got these cute little basic cable and ribbed pumpkins from Elly Bear Knits. There are two sizes that make a wide, flat pumpkin and a taller round pumpkin. Both are worked in the round as a tube that’s cinched top and bottom when you’re done, and they use bulky weight yarn.

Another cute cable pumpkin knitting pattern comes from Gray Bear Akswokrat. This one is knit flat and it looks like a chunky yarn but you could use other weights to make pumpkins of different sizes. This one also has an I-cord stem and uses yarn to cinch up the sections of the pumpkin, giving it a more natural look.

Add some bobbles to your pumpkins with this design from Autumn Shelter Makes. Also worked in the round in a tube, it features a repeating pattern of bobbles and uses yarn wrapped around the outside to make segments. This one looks like worsted weight yarn to me.

Of course there’s nothing that says your pumpkin has to be a single color, so let’s throw in some colorwork. I love the look of the Cozy Fall Pumpkin knitting pattern from South Stitch Girls. The little leather loop adds a rustic touch but you could also just add a stick. These pumpkins have five colorwork options and are worked in worsted weight yarn in the round.

There’s also the Autumn Fair Isle Trio pumpkins pattern from Equestriann Style, which has three different sizes of pumpkins with four colorwork designs. They are worked in super bulky yarn in the round and look good with high contrast or more muted color combinations.

Have you read?