Practice Your Brioche Knitting with the Folgate Set

Brioche knitting, also sometimes known as English rib, is a popular way to add a lot of texture to knitting projects. It can be a little intimidating when you’ve never done it before, but once you get the technique down it’s lots of fun to do. And it creates the squishiest, warmest fabric, so it’s great for fall and winter accessories like these.

Mirella Moments has a whole collection of English rib knitting patterns, including the hat pictured here, a headband and an infinity scarf.

These would be super as gifts to knit now and have on hand for the holidays. You can knit all three and give them to three different people, or gift them all to one person, or keep them for yourself. No one is judging here.

All of the projects use worsted weight yarn but they come out looking chunky because of the knitting technique, which involves yarn overs that are worked together with the next stitch on the next round so there’s not a visible hole, it just makes the fabric really stretchy.

You can practice working the stitch flat if you like, but it’s not any more difficult to do in the round. If you’ve never done it before you might want to start with the headband pattern here before moving on to a bigger project.

The hat and the headband both come in three sizes for adults (the small would probably work for a teen) and the infinity scarf is one size but you could adjust it to be bigger or smaller if you like.

These projects are so pretty and relatively easy to do, too, even if you’ve never worked brioche before.

You can find all the patterns, complete with photo tutorials, at Mirella Moments: hat | headband | infinity scarf.

[Photo: Mirella Moments]

I rarely understand why something becomes a trend in crafting. Gnomes and geese are both cute I guess, but I never thought we’d be making them for all seasons. (See, for example, this collection of gnome knitting patterns, or these knit geese.)

Another one I don’t totally understand is sardines or little fish more generally. Sure, they’re cute, and the shape is fun, but I had no idea when I was sharing this pattern for a fish-shaped pouch last year that it would become a hugely popular pattern that people are still searching for on the site. It is pretty cute, though, so if you weren’t around then or don’t remember you should got check it out.

Recently another fishy knitting pattern crossed my monitor: the little knit fish from Classical Songbird Designs.

Just as the name suggests, these fish are little, about 4.5 inches or 11 cm from end to end. They look like little sardines and take about 12 yards of sock yarn to make.

You can even make a two-tone fish and use just 6 yards of each color.

This sounds to me like just about the perfect use for the yarn that’s left over after knitting a pair of socks, or a mini skein or several that have been sitting around unused in your stash.

The fish are knit flat in one piece, which makes it easy to stitch on the eyes with more yarn or embroidery floss before stuffing, and you can stitch up the sides while you stuff (though it’s not a very big piece so you could probably stitch and then stuff, finishing with the end of the tail).

Because I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one wondering, I measured an Altoids box and as the pattern is written the fish are a little too big to fit in it (the box is about 4 inches/10 cm long). But you could make the fish a little smaller if you want to make a box of them. Or just make a fishy bag to put them in!

You can grab the free pattern for the little knit fish at Classical Songbird Designs.

[Photo: Classical Songbird Designs.]

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