I finished the second version of my upcoming Trillium Path. This version has optional eyelets, which I highly recommend.
I’m in love.
I blocked it much more assertively than the green version. The fabric is floatier, more diaphanous. Both fabrics are lovely, but I prefer the airier version. Also, eyelets really love blocking.
The green version is now soaking for a reblock! Both yarns are A Chick that Knitz Single Fingering.
Trillium Path is currently being test knit. I’ll publish the pattern in July; stay tuned!
This is Gator. He’s just here to look good. (Kid1’s cat)
This is a Yarn Gator. It was a gift from Twice Sheared Sheep in my VKLive NYC teacher’s bag last January. When I first saw it, I thought I’d never need it.
When I knit stranded colorwork, brioche, or slip stitch knitting, it’s usually just two colors at a time. If the knitting is in the round, they never tangle. The two yarns behave themselves sitting in my project bag.
When I knit brioche or slip stitch flat, I automatically turn the work one direction, then the other. It’s easy to tell which way to turn: the direction where the yarns won’t twist.
My current projects are helix knitting. Jogless stripes, knit in the round. When it’s just jogless garter stitch or two color color stripes, I don’t have a problem.
When I knit this three color helix cowl, I set the yarn balls on the table in front of me, and moved each ball to the end of the line when I finished its section. Easy peasy. But what if I don’t have a table in front of me?
I’m working on this three color helix hat while I finish writing a pattern. I want to knit on the go, and don’t always have a table in front of me.
Enter the Yarn Gator. It clips across my project bag. It can fully open so the yarns can be removed without cutting them. And it keeps my yarn balls in order. When I’m knitting with the first or third yarn, it’s easy to tell which way to turn my work to keep them from tangling. (Somehow the middle yarn is always fine.) Without the gator, it’s hard to tell when I’m twisting my yarns until I have a frustrating tangle.
So I guess this was a good idea after all. Never say never!
If you want a Yarn Gator, you can find it here. This is an affiliate link; if you make a purchase I get a small commission. But I only tell you about products that I find useful!
Are you intrigued by helix knitting/jogless stripes? I’m teaching an in-person class at For Yarn’s Sake on June 20. We’ll cover garter stitch, single row stripes, blending dye lots…all in the round. You can sign up here. You don’t need a yarn gator for class; we’ll use the tabletop method to start you off.
I’ve been craving a simple knit, and here it is. Working title, Trillium Path. It’s simple stockinette with assigned pooling fields.
I love the fields of flowers. I’m adding optional eyelet bands for texture to this second knit. Why? Because the first one ended with eyelets to discourage the bind off from curling, and I’d like to incorporate them in the body, too.
I’m looking for a few test knitters for this single skein piece. This is meant to be simple knitting, perfect for travel or social knitting. It’s knit with fingering weight yarn, 100g. I used A Chick that Knitz Singles Fingering in From Paris with Love (green) and Wildflowers (blue). Let me know if you’re interested!
I collaborated with Sweet Paprika Designs for their Skill Building Yarn Club this spring. My design for the yarn box featured…brioche, of course!
Cowl
This is the Staghorn Cowl Hat. I love convertible cowl/hats as teaching pieces, because not everyone loves a cowl…or a hat. So you get to choose!
Hat
You can also choose to knit the whole piece in 2 color brioche rib, without the decorative increases and decreases that make the Staghorn motif. This is a great way to practice brioche knitting before getting into the more challenging parts.
Wider cowl
If you know you don’t want a hat, you can make the cowl a bit wider because it doesn’t need to fit a head. Choices!
Staghorn Cowl Hat is knit with 2 colors of worsted weight yarn. The cowl/hat is knit with 140 yards/128 meters dark color, 66 yards/60 meters light color heavy worsted weight yarn. Shown in Sweet Paprika Andante (100% superwash merino wool, 4oz/110g/195 yards/178m), Jacaranda (LC) and Deep Purple (DC). If you’d like to buy the Sweet Paprika Designs kit, you can do so here.
If you’re a newsletter subscriber, you’ll get a code for 25% off this pattern. I’m a little behind in getting my newsletter written, so it’s not too late to subscribe before the newsletter comes out on Saturday (I hope!). Subscribe here.
This pattern is available through my Ravelry store, link here.
This pattern is also available from my Payhip shop, link here.
I’ve got my teacher hat on. Last week I was trying to come up with a new class or two. I’ve been thinking about colorwork, but only one strand at a time. Strandless colorwork? The easiest of which is stripes.
The easiest of which is stripes. Garter stitch or stockinette stitch, I love them both. Then we get into textured and fancy stripes. And slip stitch knitting, which are just interrupted stripes. And even brioche rib is a kind of slip stitch stripe, right?
But if you’re working in the round, you might want jogless stripes.
And you might want more than two colors. I really went down the rabbit hole with helix knitting this past week.
This striped hat has no jogs in the stripes or the garter stitch edge.
And this cowl’s three color stripes have no jogs, either. Magic!
I think these are actually two classes, one in unstranded colorwork with a touch of helix knitting, and one specifically in helix knitting. I’m teaching the helix knitting class at For Yarn’s Sake on Saturday June 20, 11:30 to 1:30. It’s not on the website yet, but should be up soon.
It’s been really strange for me to have three projects on the needles at the same time, but now I’ve finished the hat and cowl. They’ll have a pattern to go with them; it’s not quite done yet.
The third project is now the only project! This is a single skein bias triangle shawlette. The yarn is from A Chick That Knitz; it’s her Singles Fingering in From Paris with Love.
I love this sweet little assigned pooling stitch. It’s easy! Pattern coming soon.
What’s been in my new project bag this past week? Something that got too big for the project bag it started in.
Effervescent
This is Effervescent, finished and blocked. It’s two color brioche rib, with a syncopated brioche edging and assigned pooling motifs.
Frogged and reconditioned yarn
This is the yarn from a previous shawl that I frogged and reconditioned. I had a better idea for it, and it came out like a dream. The yarn is a little fuzzy now; it’s a single ply and I’ve effectively knit it through three projects. But it’s soft and lovely.
I was about 70% finished with the second shawl in this yarn’s life, when I decided it needed to have bigger motifs, and be knit on a smaller needle. Ooof. Good thing I like to knit.
Then I was worried that it was going to be too small. But blocking is magic.
I didn’t block it aggressively; I just patted it out as the fabric relaxed after soaking for wet blocking. It’s airy and drapey.
The pattern has been tech edited, and I’m looking for test knitters that love brioche knitting and assigned pooling. Is that you?
Posted onApril 10, 2026|Comments Off on So much knitting, so much better
I’ve finally passed the point where I frogged the whole project, Row 196. I’m on 207 of the re-knit now. Whew! I like the fabric a lot better; it won’t stretch open as much when it hangs on the bias.
This picture is from knit group at the local coffee shop; it’s our table on Friday mornings! I don’t get to go to this very often because Friday is a gym/pool day for me. But my gym buddies were both away, so I played hooky and enjoyed the company.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks, so the knitting on this has been a bit slower than I want.
I took some time out to knit a hat band to wear to the No Kings protest on March 28. I love this Typeknitting from Rüdiger Schlömer. You can make it say whatever you want, and it’s so legible.
I met a fellow frog hat knitter on the way to the event.
I love seeing frog hats in the wild!
The hat band works on my sun hat, too. The hat doesn’t have a crown, and is size adjustable, because I have a big head. But not as big as I thought! I was originally planning to knit a headband, but I made it a bit too long. Which made it a perfect fit over a hat!
We participated in this art installation for Mike Schneider (@blcksmth on Instagram) on the Burnside Bridge; it’s created with umbrellas. We’re the 2 white umbrellas on the top line of the second E in the word KEEP.
And we were lucky enough to get tickets to see Bruce Springsteen on the Land of Hope and Dreams tour. It was an excellent show.
I’m 70% through my reclaimed yarn, and I’m having…thoughts. The fabric is a little loose, and the lovely edging stitch pattern is a little floppy. A tighter gauge would make it crisper.
And then I accidentally made one of the motifs bigger than planned (upper left). I like it better than the smallest motif, which gets lost as the shawl gets larger. I could just continue, and add the larger motifs from here on out, because most of the beginning of the shawl is covered when you wear it. But that plus the loose fabric (which will hang on the bias and stretch) means I should at least try a sample on a smaller needle, with larger motifs.
I really like the bigger motifs; they look airier. And the fabric feels firmer, but not tight.
Sigh.
I think there’s another trip to the frog pond, but I haven’t blocked the bigger piece so I won’t have to soak the yarn again.
Seagull Flight is a two color brioche half-pi shawl that is knit flat. It features syncopated brioche rib, and brioche increases and decreases to create the seagulls. The shawl is shaped by increasing at pre-planned intervals rather than on every row, making it a very easy to follow knit. It’s knit with two 100g skeins of fingering weight yarn, or more if you’d like a bigger shawl.
Seagull Flight on Rockaway Beach, Oregon
When I was working on Brioche Knit Love, I envisioned an Oregon Coast theme. We changed that to a coffee shop theme, so I had to rename all the patterns to fit that vibe. Seagull Flight is the only design that doesn’t have a coffee or pastry name.
So we photographed it with a flight of coffee!
The pattern is now available for individual purchase through Ravelry and Payhip, as well as in Brioche Knit Love. (If you’re planning to purchase more than 3 or 4 patterns, you should buy the book or ebook.) Please note that there are 2 files to download; the pattern plus an abbreviations page. Use coupon code FLOCK for 15% off through February 24, 2026.
(Apologies if you’re an email subscriber to the blog and are seeing this twice; I hit post before adding the links, so I deleted the post and started over.)
A friend asked me to knit a frog hat for her. I don’t generally knit for hire, but I told her I would knit one if she would pay $75 to go to my favorite food bank. Okay!
I had the perfect yarn, so I took it as my travel knitting to NY for VKLive. I finished the ribbing on the plane, and realized that the stockinette portion was perfect for social knitting at VKL, so I stopped knitting and worked on a different project.
Done! I used Lamb’s Pride Bulky yarn for this one, 64 stitches on a US 10.5 needle at 3.25 stitches per inch. (I started with 60 sts, but it was too small, so I…FROGGED it and started over!) I’ve put the numbers into the Portland Frog Hat pattern, so now the pattern includes worsted, bulky, and super bulky yarn weights. Don’t worry, I’ll never knit it in fingering weight.
I think bulky weight is optimal! It’s quick, but not too thick. I love my super bulky hat, but you have to have big needles (US 15). A US 10.5 is something you’re more likely to have in your needle stash.
The pattern is free, so grab your green yarn and knit.
photo by Heidi Johanna Miller, @heidijohanna76 on Instagram
A friend shared this photo with me: A Portland Frog Hat at the Alex Pretti memorial in Minneapolis. I’m touched to see it there. I contacted the photographer for permission to repost.
Find my patterns on Ravelry: Michele Bernstein Designs
Here are some of my favorites, and the newest. Many of my designs are also available through my Payhip store.
PDXKnitterati 