Friday pattern roundup

Some of this week’s most original and creative patterns are in a new book from STC Craft, Comfort Knitting and Crochet: Afghans. This book has 27 knitted afghan patterns (and 24 crocheted ones)  by Norah Gaughan, Margery Winter, and the rest of the Berroco design team. There’s an amazing variety of color, texture, and techniques to choose from. You can see photos of all the designs here on the Berroco website. Here are two of my favorites:

Danish Modern

Floret

All the patterns are written for Berroco’s acrylic/nylon blend Comfort® yarn in various weights. If you prefer to knit with natural-fiber yarns, it shouldn’t be difficult to substitute – or to shrink patterns to baby-blanket size. **Edited to add: Berroco is giving away 50 copies of the book, plus yarn - click here to enter the drawing.

Patternfish added its 5,000th pattern this week. This site is a fantastic source for patterns past and present – 40+ new ones added every week. More info about them here. Number 5000 was the Kathy Zimmerman coat in Classic Elite Waterlily on the left, knitted sideways in strong knit-purl texture. There’s also a new stole by Catherine Devine with handsome stylized flowers on a mesh ground, and a ladylike cropped cabled vest by Michelle Porter for Lana Gatto (check out the cable detail around the armholes).

Waterlily Sideways Cardigan

Andrea Dogwood Blossom Wrap

Cable V-Neck Vest

Prices for these patterns range from $4.95 - $6.00 – all available instantly. By the way, did you know you can order Classic Elite yarns directly from their website? Waterlily info/colors here.

Here’s a brand new design from Fiddlesticks Knitting – Flair, a  coat-length  vest in feather-and-fan lace with neat, wide seed-stitch bands. Simple, elegant vertical lines, meant to be closed with a pin. A short version would be very nice too.  The yarn is DK-weight raw silk; there’s a special kit price until April 11. Or, buy the (printed) pattern only for $12.00

More lace – an unusual shawl design from Tiziana Sammuri called In Spring Shawlette.  It’s knitted from the bottom up, shaped as four steep triangles with wide embossed-leaf panels on a lace ground. Available as a Ravelry download for € 4.00 EUR. Requires 600-650 yards of fingering-weight yarn. Tiziana has several other beautiful lace designs in her Ravelry shop.

A small free project: the Honey Cowl from Madelinetosh. Reversible slip-stitch texture pattern shows off the semisolid yarn beautifully. 225-450 yards of DK merino wool, may be made short or long, wide or narrow. This would be lovely in silk or a silk blend, too.

Finally, a couple of months old but new to me, Rachel Russ’s incredibly cute Pixie Poncho, designed for Spud & Chloe Yarns  - it’s published in their leaflet no. 9508. A short hooded, fringed poncho with exuberant colorwork in a cotton-wool blend.

I’m working on a color knitting page for the Knitfinder resource section, which is still in its infancy. I’ll post some of the great links I’ve found for you in a few days. Meanwhile, enjoy this week’s patterns!