Windrose

If you have been following my blog or social media you may know that I love to experiment with with short rows to create shapes and motifs. A while ago, I published my Water Lily pattern - a semicircular potholder with a flower shape.

After finishing it, I started to think about changing in a way to make it a full circle. The most difficult bit was a find out how to start it in order to be able to easily graft it in the end - and it took me a few attempts to get it right. 

So here it is: a pattern for a potholder or doily in a flower shape. I called it windrose, because the petals look a bit like the points of a compass. It starts with a provisional CO, is knitted in short row parts and finished with grafting in garter stitch. 

This project uses yarn in two colours, short rows and is really fiddly in the beginning - so it is definitely NOT a beginner pattern.

The pattern  PDF is available at

• Ravelry 
• Loveknitting
• Payhip

The pattern PDF is 10 pages long and contains

• written row-by-row instructions for knitting this piece – including 19 illustration photos (total of 4 pages)
• short photo tutorials for the following techniques
• provisional CO with a crochet hook and how to undo it
• grafting in garter stitch
• short rows with wrap and turn and picking up the wraps 
• weaving in yarn while carrying it (backwards and forwards)
• crochet CO (at the edge of a knitted piece)

Knitting in DK weight, the piece measures about 30 cm in diameter (yes, it's a small cake on the picture above).  I also knitted the pieces in other yarn weights: The ones in fingering weight yarn, measure about 26 cm in diameter and the ones knitted in thread weight measure 23 cm in diameter.

To knit this you need the following materials

• about 90 – 100 metres of DK Cotton yarn in two colors
• MC - Main Color 32gr (about 55-60 metres)
• CC - Contour Color 14 (about 35-40 metres)
• 3mm knitting needles – I used dpns (just because they are short)
• a crochet hook of a similar size (I used a 3.5mm hook)
• scrap yarn for the provisional CO
• a tapestry needle – for grafting and to weave in ends

With my favorite Greek orange cake (link to the recipe in German)