New Knitting Pattern: Santa Pillow

I love designing things, but hate having to wait to share them with you all so I’m excited to finally share with you a pattern I’ve been working on all year for the book Merry Knitmas available from Knit Picks. (You can also buy the pattern as a separate download.)

Living in Minnesota and being of Swedish descent, my Christmas décor tends to be very Scandinavian in design: red hearts, flickering candles, straw goats, cozy fair isle, and, of course, tomte. Traditionally, a tomte was a domestic sprite who protected the farm. He looked a lot like a gnome with a pointed red head and long white beard. Through the years, the tomte has become more of a Santa Claus figure who delivering presents to children’s homes. On many modern Scandinavian Christmas decorations, the tomte or Santa is depicted in a very modern, triangular shape. The design for this Santa Pillow was inspired by that clean Scandinavian style. While the pattern is just a series of triangles and rectangles with minimal face details there is still a sense of whimsy to it that makes you smile.

The pillow was knit up with Wool of the Andes in worsted weight, so it goes pretty fast. The colorwork is simple especially since I duplicate stitched the eyes on after knitting. One thing I did to keep the red from peeking through the white or cream was keep my floats longer than usual. Since the floats would always be on the inside of the pillow it wasn’t a worry about someone catching them like you would on mittens or a sweater. It was just important not to pull those floats too tight.

I have an ebook version of Merry Knitmas to giveaway! All you need to do is leave a comment on this thread on Ravelry telling us what you are knitting for Christmas this year. I will draw one winner from those comments on Wednesday, October 25th. Good luck!