Today, I’m welcoming Witch Bolt into the world (and by world, I mean Ravelry)! Witch Bolt is a Dungeons & Dragons-inspired, reversible double knit hat that is great for double knitting n00bs!
A beholder stands before you, ready to wipe out your entire knitting group in one fell swoop! Little does he know, you’re a Level 3 Knitting Wizard. You point your knitting needle towards the beholder and a beam of crackling energy launches and attaches to it! You’re able to defeat this giant beast with your knitting prowess alone!
Okay, that’s not exactly how a fight with a beholder would go, but we all know this is really about knitting. Witch Bolt is a Dungeons & Dragons-inspired double knit hat. You knit it up using two colors and when you’re done, it’s magically reversible! Just kidding, there’s no magic here, just your awesome knitting.
I have included links to video tutorials made by myself and others to get you up-to-speed on double knitting, so even if you’re a double knitting n00b, you can make this hat. This was one of my test knitter’s first double knit projects!
The color ‘pattern’ is very easy to memorize, making this knit fairly simple and brainless — I was able to knit this very easily while streaming on Twitch (and if any of you have watched a Twitch stream, you know how distracted a streamer can get with chat)! 😀
Test knitters still needed for this double knit hat pattern! If you’re up for a challenge, I need one more knitter who is available to knit this hat by the 26th of March.
About This Pattern
A beholder stands before you, ready to wipe out your entire knitting group in one fell swoop! Little does he know, you’re a Level 3 Knitting Wizard. You point your knitting needle towards the beholder and a beam of crackling energy launches and attaches to it! You’re able to defeat this giant beast with your knitting prowess alone!
Okay, that’s not exactly how fight with a beholder would go, but we all know this is really about knitting. Witch Bolt is a Dungeons & Dragons-inspired double knit hat pattern. You knit it up using two colors and when you’re done, it’s magically reversible! Just kidding, there’s no magic here, just your awesome knitting.
In the pattern, I have explained in detail how to double knit stockinette and ribbing, as well as how to decrease while double knitting. If you’re new to double knitting, it can be a great way to get cozy with the method as the color pattern requires very little thought!
Coming Soon
Witch Bolt is set to release on March 30th on its own and also in a new Dungeons & Dragons-inspired hat bundle on Ravelry!
Charm is inspired by a Dungeons and Dragons spell: Charm Person. When you cast this spell on someone, they automatically treat you as a friend. Cast this on your needles and be charmed by the cabled Xs and Os, and the sweet purled hearts that run up to the crown of the hat. Don’t be alarmed if people seem to start more conversations with you while wearing this hat, it’s just the effect of the spell!
This hat is all about subtle texture and will become your favorite beanie to wear for all of your casual outings. Pick a solid color or speckled yarn to show off the textures (I don’t recommend variegated yarn as the colors will make the texture hard to see).
Along with charming the pants off of everyone you meet, the cables and raised purl motifs in this pattern are engaging to knit but still simple enough that you could work on it during your next D&D campaign (but don’t because your DM will kill me for suggesting that — unless they’re super cool). It’s a great project for dipping your toe into cables if you haven’t knit them before and the pattern includes a tutorial on the cables used to help you through.
Stripes can be a fun, fairly easy way to add some variation of color to a knitting project. These twenty knitting patterns/projects feature stripes, but not plain-jane single-size, horizontal stripes. Stripes in varying widths, colors, or in smaller accent areas.
Here I sit, in my home in central Florida with the A/C blasting. It’s 88°F outside but I’m pretending there is a slight chill to the air. Drinking a pumpkin spice latte and scrolling through my Instagram feed, I see photo after photo celebrating the beginning of a new season—my favorite season—Autumn.
Autumn doesn’t seem to show up here until mid-November most years, so it is with much jealousy I have put together this set of cozy knitting and (one, sorry hookers) crochet patterns. They remind me of fireplaces, warm cups of hot cocoa, and colorful fallen leaves.
To those of you living a bit farther away from the equator than me, enjoy your chunky, cowled, and cabled sweaters! Put on those bulky, scrunchy socks and a matching pair of wrist warmers, curl up in your coziest chair and get knitting (or hooking)!
A Blanket for Seriously Cold People by Sylvia Bo Bilvia
Not sure you could get any cozier, wrapped in this chunky, ribbed blanket designed by Sylvia Bo Bilvia.
This post will be the start of a short series of posts documenting how a complete newbie to knitting pattern design figures out how to do it. Stay tuned for more!
I have been knitting for 6 years, 7 months, 23 days. The first lesson was so traumatic I remember the exact day — just kidding, I blogged about it.
I have knit hats, mug cozies, scarves, cowls, one pair of fingerless gloves, a never-ending shawl and one sock.
Quadratic Cap (I need to start taking better photos…)
The projects I’ve worked on have been fairly straight forward and close to beginner level. My stitches have become more even with time and I’ve even been able to wing a simple hat and cowl without needing a pattern. Because I’ve become so comfortable with the basics I’ve started working on projects that are a bit more challenging so that I could learn new techniques.
Last January, I decided to try my hand at stranded colorwork. Stranded colorwork involves holding two strands of yarn at once and knitting with each one at a time according to a chart. I thought there would be a tough learning curve with the technique but I found that the most difficult part was keeping proper tension behind the work. I guess with all knitting, tension is mostly going to be the issue to work around.
While working on my first stranded color project – the Quadratic Cap designed by Angela Geosits – I realized the color charts reminded me of the pixel art I used to create in high school. Every pixel in the drawing has its own clearly defined space with no blurred lines. I used to spend hours and hours drawing these, which got me thinking that maybe I could bring something like that into knitting. From that point on, I had it in my head that I wanted to make my own knitting color chart.
An example of some pixel art I drew back in high school
I needed a base pattern for my color chart because there is not much of a point to the chart if it never makes it on to a completed knitting project.
My first idea for a base project was a pair of socks. I love ridiculous socks and I would love to wear a pair of my own design and making.
I started to illustrate the color chart digitally. I created a very simple illustration in Photoshop and struggled with color selection for a while. I don’t know if knitting designers usually have the yarn in mind before they start a pattern or if they pick the colors then find matching yarn, but I figured the very subtle color changes I had chosen probably wouldn’t have a yarn equivalent. As I started searching for a sock yarn palette to use in my pattern, I could see that it was true. Even with 30+ colors in the Knit Picks Stroll yarn selection, this was about as subtle as I could get.
The start of my color chart for knitting
Once I got to this stage, I stalled a bit. I wasn’t sure if I should just start pixelating the illustration as it was or figure out the gauge then work from there. The answer seems obvious now (gauge then chart) but for some reason I let it stall me.
I ordered the sock yarn during the most recent Knit Picks sale – woohoo, I was on my way!
Planning out different sheep
The next problem is that I finished my first practice sock (a nice lacy sock kit that I got with my first Signature Needles) in August 2014 and I still haven’t gotten the patience to start the next one. I was starting to doubt that I would be getting this pattern does any time soon.
Then I made about 8 mug cozies as Christmas gifts this past year. They’re fairly small and quick (always a relative term in knitting, it seems) to knit up. That is the base project I was looking for. With the mug cozies, I could kind of dip my toe in the waters of pattern design.
Since I have more time on my hands (an extra 10 hours a day), this made it back onto my to-do list. I had bought a gridded notebook to work on charts by hand, so I sketched a few ideas, seeing what looked right at different sizes.
Rough sketches based off of the digital illustrationColored sketch“Final chart” – 42 stitches wide
I was super happy to have made this progress!
But, and it’s a big but, I hadn’t even started to make a gauge swatch for the cozies using fingering weight yarn. I don’t know why I’d wrongly assumed that knitting the cozy with fingering weight yarn would be about the same as the cozies I’d been making with worsted weight. Or that I would be able to easily go from 42 to 84 stitches so that I could use the chart as-is.
So last night I started the gauge. It’s looking like the cozy will be around 72 stitches, which doesn’t quite fit the chart. I will definitely need to change things around.
Based on how tiny the stitches are, I will be able to add a lot more detail – the sheep bodies can be a little more fluffy-looking, the heads won’t have to be quite so square.
I’m a little worried that the tiny sock yarn won’t be so insulating though. But hey, if it works for your feet, I guess it should work for some coffee.
I’ll continue to post about my first knitting pattern journey. Hopefully it’ll help others on theirs!
Read more about my adventure in creating my first knitting pattern:
A beholder stands before you, ready to wipe out your entire knitting group in one fell swoop! Little does he know, you’re a Level 3 Knitting Wizard. You point your knitting needle towards the beholder and a beam of crackling energy launches and attaches to it! You’re able to defeat this giant beast with your knitting prowess alone!
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