Vote for the Best in British Knits

Voting for the British Knitting Awards for 2014 is now open. There are 20 categories ranging from favorite yarns and companies to the best book of the year and favorite designer.

Two new categories this year are Best Brand for British Yarn and Best Yarn Shop Day Experience.

I’m pretty sure you can vote even if you don’t live in the UK, if you happen to be a big fan of British knitting brands. The voting is taking place in a Survey Monkey survey.

To encourage people to vote, Let’s Knit (a British knitting magazine that puts on the contest) is giving one person a £500 stash of goodies from the winning companies to include yarn, needles, books and knitting accessories.

I’m not seeing that the site says when voting is done, but the results will be announced in the November issue of Let’s Knit, which hits newsstands Oct. 24, so vote soon if you want your thoughts included!

Check out the winners from last year.

[Photo via Let’s Knit.]

Next Pattern:

As I write this, it’s probably time to start thinking about winter knitting if you haven’t already. And it’s definitely time to think about gift knitting if you have any of that you plan to do for the holidays.

The Dreamy Waves Scarf from Knit Picks, designed by Stacey Winklepleck, would be a great project to go in either category.

It uses two different multicolored yarns and a simple repeating wave pattern to make a project that looks a lot more complicated and dramatic than it is. The gradient look happens naturally just by switching which yarn you’re knitting with.

This pattern uses worsted weight yarn so it’s a pretty quick project even though a scarf is large and this one is pretty wide. It measures 8.5 inches (21.5 cm) wide and 63 inches or 120 cm long. Of course you can make it longer or shorter as you like. As written it takes one ball of each color so it’s a pretty economical project, too.

It’s rated for intermediate knitters but if you know how to do various increases and decreases you’ll be all set. The pattern uses knit 2 together, make 1 left and right, centered double decrease and slip slip knit. All of the stitches are explained in a glossary in the pattern so even if you haven’t done all of them it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.

The pattern also includes tons of options for different colorways in yarn that Knit Picks sells, so you can see how different combinations knit up before you buy the yarn. That’s such a great idea!

Of course if you already have two multicolored yarns with long color runs on hand, you can absolutely use them, too. It might also be fun, but would give you a totally different look, to use a solid color and a bunch of scraps or one multicolored yarn to see how the different colors play together. So many options!

You can grab this free pattern and check out all the color options at Knit Picks.

[Photo: Knit Picks]

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