Zen Garden Capelet Honors Cat Bordhi

When Cat Bordhi died in 2020, she left a hole in the knitting community and a group of knitters mourning the loss of her innovative designs.

But since her passing some of her notes and projects she was working on have been found, leading those who knew and loved her to work on developing the patterns for others to use.

The Zen Garden capelet is the first community pattern to emerge from that effort. It has been tested by knitters around the world and requires the faith in Cat’s vision that so many of her patterns do.

The pattern uses worsted or aran weight yarn and is worked using short rows. You can decide how many wedges to work to make your capelet bigger or smaller. You can purchase the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo via Ravelry.]

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This swirly square stitch knitting pattern from Studio Knit is a lot of fun, and it looks kind of complicated without being difficult at all.

The swirly nature of the block comes from regularly placed increases, as the pattern is worked in rounds from the center out. Switching between sections of all knit stitches and all purl stitches (which gives you stockinette and reverse stockinette respectively when worked in the round) adds to the off-kilter flair but makes it really easy to knit.

You can work it in a single color or change colors regularly. This isn’t really a change colors randomly kind of pattern just because it looks better if you work a full repeat in a single color, but you know there are no rules so you can do whatever you want.

You can also make it any size you like, and indeed use any yarn you want. This one is blanket sized and used five colors of worsted weight yarn, but you can use any yarn and corresponding needles (you’ll need double pointed needles and circulars of various lengths, depending on how big you want to make your square).

For a start, why not grab some cotton yarn and stitch up a swirly washcloth? You could still use a couple of colors if you want, jsut for fun.

Once you try that, you’ll probably want to make a bigger version, and you could definitely use more colors than Kristen did (or just one color if you prefer), you just need to make sure you change colors at the beginning of the pattern repeat to keep everything looking good.

If you’re ready to start (and I know I am!) you can grab the free pattern and check out a video to help you get started at Studio Knit.

[Photo: Studio Knit]

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