Spring 1

Hello from farmer Laur!

First, I have no idea how I missed this gradient club the first time KnitCircus posted it, but when they re-released it for non-club members I knew I had to jump on it immediately. I’ve put way too many hours into Stardew Valley to not try to design something with a game-inspired gradient!

As per usual, my initial concepts were all way too literal, trying to find stitch patterns that would look exactly like something in the game. Eventually, I came around to the concept of the growing crops, but with more fanciful interpretations.

The growing sections start with seeds, in the form of raindrop stitch. It’s a bobble that isn’t a bobble! I really hate having to turn my work a billion times and end with p5tog or something equally odious, so I’m in love with this sweet little stitch that gets that same bobble texture without too much work. That said, I did slightly modify the stitch for my purposes, so I made a tutorial!

Sections from bottom to top: seeds, sprouts, crops, mosaic

The second growing section represents the sprouts of the plant, so it’s some simple lace in a vaguely grid shape. Of course, in knitting we love diamond grids over square ones, so diamond lace it is!

The final growing section is fully-grown crops, so more diamond lace, but make it fancy. I had a devil of a time making the chart for this section - I first modified a flat stitch for in-the-round knitting (not usually that difficult, but can be tricky if you have decreases that cross the BOR marker). Then, I had to make a lace chart that would represent what was happening, which is way harder than I thought it would be! It’s important to me to provide both written and charter instructions for knitters, but I admit this section made me want to abandon charts. I knew how to say what I wanted to happen, but it took many iterations (and lots of help from my tech editor snooptiggercrafts <3) to finally get a chart that would accomplish the same thing.

Lastly! The cheerful mosaic section representing the Stardew Valley logo. I know I say this all the time, but mosaic is the literal greatest. If you haven’t yet tried mosaic knitting, please do! It’s just knitting and slipping, no really complicated colorwork (aside from paying attention to where to knit and slip).

After finish the cowl, I still had a bit of yarn left, but realized i had gone over 100g on the MC part. I shortened the seeds section slightly, which not only uses less yarn but has the added benefit of matching the lacy sections in height (since in order to stretch them to the right width, they have to lose height).

I friggin love how the cowl turned out. I also love the photos - thanks to my very patient partner! KnitCircus has bundles available on their site, and of course non-gradients will work just as well.

Rogelio

Two feet modeling hand-knit socks in lavender yarn. A dainty lace motif repeats up the instep, and there’s a lacy ruffled cuff at the top.

Rogelio was one of the earliest Jane the Virgin-inspired socks that I had a clear concept of - given his flair for the dramatic, and the flowy shirts he wears as part of his role as Santos, it seemed only natural to give him something lacy and frilly to match his bold personality and over-the-top costumes!

For the lace pattern on the instep, I turned to my stitch dictionaries. I wanted something with a short-ish repeat, and the design I settled on is predictable enough that it’s not too hard to memorize either! The lace repeat itself is only 8 rounds, but it’s doubled by the addition of the lacy ribbing. The lacy ribbing is from one of the Japanese stitch dictionaries - I love it because it still functions like twisted rib, which is a lovely addition on its own, but adds a simple-yet-effective flair with the alternating lacy parts! During testing I realized the 16 round chart, complete with the ribbing columns for each sides, had been shrunk down a bit too much for some folks, so I added a page that just has that chart blown up as big as it will go. If you find yourself straining to see the instep chart, I hope that addition is useful to you!

The ruffle was the most challenging part for me, mostly because I’ve never knit one before! I’ll admit - my personal style is such that I just don’t wear ruffles. However, I feel like the concept really required it, so I learned a new skill! The ruffle design is an amalgamation of a few different ruffle designs I saw both on other socks and in stitch dictionaries, and is hopefully pretty straightforward to knit. That said - if you’re like me and don’t particularly want to knit a ruffle, the pattern tells you where to bind off after you’ve worked the ribbing.

Rogelio de la Vega saying “A hug from Rogelio is like a rabbit’s foot: lucky, rare, and soft to the touch.”

For the color choice, though the rest of my JTV socks will be in either blue-teal-aqua or coral-pink-red to match the strong color themes of the show, for my man Rogelio I had to use lavender. After all, he doesn’t pop in peach!

Rogelio is available on all the platforms!

Payhip | Ravelry | Etsy | Lovecrafts

Star Chart is here!

I’m happy to announce that my new infinity cowl, the first in a set of three patterns, is now available on all the usual places! The design and the name were inspired by a set of minis from Ritual Dyes - it came with 12 mini skeins inspired by each of the zodiac signs and I’ve been waiting for the perfect project to use them in since I got it.

Despite my love of socks, I decided to go with an infinity cowl for this design. I think I mostly wanted to be able to show off all of the colors at any given moment, depending on how I wrap the cowl. (With socks, there’s just no way to avoid having something hidden inside the shoe!) And, for whatever reason, I’ve been really feeling a need to marl all the things lately. Marling 2 fingering weight yarns means DK-worsted weight, which is convenient both for strain on my hands and speed of knitting up, but I wanted a little SOMETHING fun to look forward to with each color (besides getting to knit with it, of course). And marling can sometimes obscure the color (on account of the marling). Thus…I settled for 2 color brioche!

I didn’t want to do a whole increase/decrease round thing, and since I already had the 2 colors ready to go, I figured, why not split them up for the brioche sections? The gauge is pretty similar after all. And because I can’t leave well enough alone, I wanted to use short rows to make triangular wedges of brioche rather than rectangles. Also, the original design I was toying with was focused on alternating triangles that I just couldn’t make work as intended, so this KIND of achieved that, though in a totally different way. Small victories!

On account of the brioche and the short rows, this pattern is on the intermediate-advanced end of the scale. However, don’t let that discourage you! If you’re new to brioche, it’s just a technique you haven’t learned yet. And I’ve included tutorials in the pattern made by brioche-queen Sosu (Susanne Sommer), so you’re in excellent hands for picking up this new skill.

I’d love to see this design in a variety of color choices - obviously it’s ideal for that endless and beautiful collection of fingering weight scraps and partial skeins I assume everyone else also has, but it’s great for half-vent sets (or those new-fangled Halloween advents, which are also ingenious and perfect!), or even two full skeins! The right side will showcase all your myriad scraps, but it’s reversible thanks to both garter and brioche, so you can always pick which side to show off.

You can get the pattern below, or scroll farther for links to the entire collection!

Links to the collection:

Diana Headband is here!

Ever since seeing the most recent re-imagining of Wonder Woman (the 2018 Gal Gadot movie), I’ve been thinking about how cool her updated tiara and wrist cuffs looked. I became obsessed with the idea of making a headband/earwarmer pattern that would evoke the front plate of her tiara and spent a lot of time fooling around with fingering weight swatches until I realized that it would be much simpler to just do cables in worsted weight! Fortunately I had some lovely bronze-colored Wool of the Andes leftover from a previous project and was able to start designing right away.

One of the things that initially slowed me down was trying to be too faithful to the original tiara, at the cost of what would work best for the actual knitting. It took a lot of ripping and reknitting before I had a pattern that felt fun and intuitive to knit, while still evoking the original inspiration. I hope others think so too!

Now that I’ve got it out in the world, I’m back to noodling on a matching pair of wristers to complete the cold weather set. Get ready for…more i-cord.

Diana Headband is available in my ravelry store.