Frugal knitting - a small accessories collection

Being a designer, I am a fairly productive knitter and I have always a couple of projects on the needle. And this leaves me with a problem that was not so obvious in the early years on my yarn obsession: leftovers. Every time I work on a garment in a women's size, I have a 1-3 skeins leftovers, because I always lean on the safe side of things when I buy yarn for a new garment design. Adding this to my constant desire to familiarize myself to new yarns and you find my accessories quantity stash of yarn to be quite considerable.

This gave me a quite good idea (plus the obvious space concerns...), if I dare say so myself: a collection made up of entirely small to medium sized accessories from all my non garment quantity of yarns.

Special promotion notification for my newsletter subscriber only:

• Notification of the release of new patterns 
• a 50% discount on the price of the individual pattern valid for the first 2 weeks of the pattern's release 
• The collection will be 15$ from the first pattern release until 2 weeks after the last pattern release - no coupon code needed!

This collection will feature 12 designs of small accessories like hats, mittens, cowls and scarves.

Buy the collection here:



So, without making you wait for more, here are the few first patterns of this new exciting collection:

Piccolo -  a stranded colorwork hat

Go visit the Piccolo page for more information on this simple and cute hat!

Worked in

Knitpicks Andean Treasure in color "Prairie Heahter"

Knitpicks Andean Treasure in color "Meringue Heather"

As my collection is called Frugal Knitting, I feel the obligation to explain to you how I obtained these yarns! The yarn from this hat is from the remnants of a set of hat and mittens I designed for Knitpicks Independent Designer Program (IDP for short), and remnants of a failed attempt at another design (yep, this happens more than I would like, and does contribute to my leftovers).

I had 4 balls left of the Prairie Heather and 2 balls left of the Meringue Heather. This hat uses only 2 balls of the main color (Prairie Heather) and 1 ball of contrast color (Meringue Heather), so I do believe I did a great work out of my leftovers!

Piccolo is now available as an individual pattern as well as part of the collection.

Tourbillon - an asymmetrical cable hat

For this little hat, I opted for a single but bold cable and a little slouch. The bold color of the yarn was attractive and showed the cable very nicely, and with less than one skein leftover after my old Dichotomy design, I was quite happy to finally get to use up this beautiful yarn!

The cable for Tourbillon is both charted and written, to suit every knitter's preference.

Sparkling -  a simple textured hat

For this little hat, I decided to take advantage of the wonderful color of my single skein of Madelinetosh Tosh DK in color "Nutmeg)", a single skein I bought a long time ago to try out the Madelinetosh yarns. The knit and purl texture is very attractive and the whole project is relaxing and yet interesting.

The pattern for Sparkling is both charted and written, to suit every knitter's preference.


Brookstone - a textured cowl

Brookstone cowl

 Brookstone came out of my desire to create a stylish cowl using a high texture pattern of only knits and purls (yes, I was kind of on a roll here...) I had a few lovely balls of luxury yarn, Knitpicks Capra in color "
Platinum", which I bough to try out the yarn since I mostly love to work with their yarns. I was not dissapointed by the softness and overall quality of it, but I had to find out what to do with 5 balls of yarn!

Knitpicks Capra Cashmere in "Platinum"

So, I used up 4 balls to create this lovely cowl, in a simple but attractive pattern:

The pattern for Brookstone is both charted and written, to suit every knitter's preference. Go check it now!

Eye of the Storm - a cabled hat

Eye of the Storm is a fun and striking looking cabled hat worked with a little less than 200 yds of worsted weight wool.

Pattern is now available individually as well as in the collection!


Sparrow - A textured shawl

Sparrow shawl

Sparrow is lovely and simple top-down crescent shawl worked in an amazing Aran weight yarn. It features a pretty texture in the center panel and a large lace border. The result is a warm and versatile shawl perfect for fast project and instant gratification.

The size of the shawl is very easily adapted by adding more repeats of the stitch pattern and the crochet border can be replaced by a few rows of garter stitch if desired.

Pattern is now available individually as well as in the collection!

Cathedral - a geometric lace shawl

Cathedral lace shawl

Cathedral is the seventh design to be added to the collection. This little shawl has everything I like in a shawl: it is worked form the top-down (meaning it's adaptable to your own yarn amount), has a lot of visual effect for little effort and is easy enough to memorize after a few pattern repeat.

Pattern is now available individually as well as in the collection!

Montauk - a textured wrap

Montauk 

Montauk is available in both a wrap and scarf size in a pretty and unusual textured stitch pattern made entirely of knits and purls.

Pattern is now available individually as well as in the collection!

Simply Joy -  mittens

Simple Joy mittens

Simple Joy mittens are exactly what they promise: simple and joyful! They are the perfect mitten pattern to whip up in a jiffy on a cold day. They showcase variegated yarns especially well, but would look equally good in a solid color. 

Pattern is now available individually as well as in the collection!

The other designs are still to come, but I will update this post regularly as soon as the designs are ready to come out!

Piccolo hat

Piccolo is a fun and cute stranded hat worked in the softest (I mean it, this yarn is heavenly!) baby alpaca yarn in a sport weight. This is my very first colorwork design, inspired from an old thrift store sweater featuring nearly unreadable small scale color pattern. I personally love to work stranded colorwork in sport weight yarns, because it works up faster and give impressive results with relatively little effort.

As my collection is called Frugal Knitting, I feel the obligation to explain to you how I obtained these yarns! The yarn from this hat is from the remnants of a set of hat and mittens I designed for Knitpicks Independent Designer Program (IDP for short), and remnants of a failed attempt at another design (yep, this happens more than I would like, and does contribute to my leftovers).

I had 4 balls left of the Prairie Heather and 2 balls left of the Meringue Heather. This hat uses 1 ball of each color, but I do believe I did a great work out of my leftovers! I still have 3 balls of the Prairie Heather color and 1 of the Meringue Heather, but I love the yarn so much it should not be a problem to find a way to use them!


Worked in

Knitpicks Andean Treasure in color "Prairie Heahter"

Knitpicks Andean Treasure in color "Meringue Heather"

You can now buy the Piccolo pattern as part of the Frugal Knitting collection:

Or as an individual pattern:

Magnolia lace shawl

Magnolia is thelast shawl of my 2013 collection, 'Ode to the Spring'. For this last shawl in the collection, I wanted to create strong lines to emphasize the construction without straying too far from the Spring theme.

Magnolia lace shawl 

I love the soft, subtle tonal variation of the yarn and the generous yardage made for a large shawl.

The shawl is bordered on both sides, with a larger edging on the outer border and a small border on the inner border. Combined with the large rows of lace, it makes for a strong impression that I feel is very different from the other shawls from the series.

Magnolia lace shawl - close up on lace

For this shawl, I used a lovely skein of tonal yarn that was lingering in my stash for way too long! 

Knitpicks Stroll Tonal
in color "Queen Anne"

Magnolia is now available for sale individually and as part of the Ode to the Spring collection!



Individual pattern:

Collection :

Winter Berries hat

Winter Berries hat started with my leftovers from the Winter Berries scarf, and my wanting for another hat for this Winter season. I wanted a simple hat to coordinate with my scarf, something pretty, easy and fast to knit ( a good combination, I think!). Oh and yes, with me again modeling: gosh I hate that!

Winter Berries hat - Beanie version

My leftovers were quite small in quantity, so I whipped up a beanie sized hat, but I felt the same hat would look nice in a moderate tam. At the same time, I had enough yarn in my stash to work a second sample of the Winter Berries scarf (the first one was sadly lost) and a tam, in lovely Madelinetosh Tosh Vintage in color "Afternoon".

Winter Berries hat - tam version

Now this tam is moderate both in size and in slouch, but I left instructions in the pattern to adapt the size to the knitter's liking.

I love the pinwheel at the crown, making a nice little touch of interest that I feel in complementing the pattern well.

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The pattern is now available in my Ravelry store as well as on my website.