Pattern Suggestion: Boot Toppers

by Sarah Lake Upton in ,


 
Toppers for Tall Boots - Sea colorway

Toppers for Tall Boots - Sea colorway

 

Since I first started bundling together a few of my favorite colors into mini-skein sets, people have been asking me what they should do with them.  Which is a fair question.  To me they are prompts to creativity and an excuse to try to use more color in my knitting, but as someone who often has a hard time making decisions I can see how having more color options could also be overwhelming.  

So, spurred on by the knowledge that people would again be asking, “what should I do with these?” at the recent Boston Farm and Fiber Festival, I put together a couple of pattern suggestions.  (Disclaimer: these have not been test knit by anyone other than me).   

A set of high or low boot toppers can be knit with one of my mini-skein sets, though you won’t have much yarn left over, so if you increase the number of pattern repeats you may want to shorten them by a row of each color to avoid yarn chicken. 

I’ve included a chart in each color way (Land and Sea) for each boot topper.  This may or may not make them easier to follow…

 
Toppers for Short Boots - Land colorway (these would also make good arm warmers).

Toppers for Short Boots - Land colorway (these would also make good arm warmers).

 


But if you like, these patterns are just a starting point for your own creativity.  I use Stitch Fiddle (available in a free version) to “sketch” patterns.  With this fairly intuitive program you can easily make graphs, which, when combined with a book of pattern motifs (like Mary Jane Mucklestone’s 150 Scandinavian Motifs) makes for a fun afternoon of color exploration. 

And for those of you intimidated by stranded color work, while writing this post it occurred to me that I really should have swatched boot toppers that used stripes rather than small repeated stranded color work motifs.   Which I shall now do…

As of this writing I have three mini-skein sets in the Land color way available in the shop, but last week the yarn spun from the 2018 Straw’s Farm Island fleeces returned from the mill, and I can’t wait to start playing with it!  (That said, it could be a little while before mini-skein sets are restocked, for which I apologize). 


Shop Update - New Kits!

by Sarah Lake Upton in ,


Like many other knitters, I fell in love with Kristin Drysdale's Ingeborg Slippers the moment I first saw them on my Instagram feed.  It turns out they are as fun to knit as they are to pad about in.  So I put together kits. 

For my slippers I used Upton Yarns DK Weight Bluefaced Leicester spun from the wonderful fleece of the flock at Two Sisters Farm.  The pattern calls for size 3 needles, but I found that to get the correct gauge I had to go up to size 6s (I tend to be a tight knitter).  I used light blue Glacier Bay, dark blue Delft, and for a blaze of contrast, bright orange Tiger Lily to finish the edges. 

The kit includes those three colorways, and of course, one of my very happy hand printed project bags. 

Any orders placed between now and Friday will go in the mail the day they are ordered (as long as the order is placed before 3:00 - I still need time to pack them up and get to the Post Office - but I will do my best!). 

And don't forget the Moth Discouraging Sachets!

Happy knitting, and Happy Holidays!