KAL - all you need

So our quickie knit along is a hot water bottle cover called All You Need - a classic by LondonLeo.

{photo credit: LondonLeo}

This pattern lends itself really well to customisation.  One of our talented customers, Lorna has created a heart chart (download here) that can be used on the body of the hot water bottle cover or you could add stripes or indeed do it plain and solid.

I've chosen to do it in our new Jamieson's of Shetland shades... Husk Dusk Egg and Mantilla.

The hot water bottle cover is worked on circular needles and uses Judy's Magic Cast On to give a seamless bottom edge.

You can see a video of this technique here.  Its worth watching it through then start casting on.  It may take a few attempts but it is magic how it works!  If you're not convinced then just cast on normally and start knitting in the round.  You can sew up the bottom later.

I'm going to use the yellow Husk shade as my main background colour and do rows of hearts in Duck Egg blue and Mantilla pink.  I haven't decided yet if I'll do all my hearts in a solid colour or maybe mix it up with some hearts just done in as an outline.

My magic cast on took 3 attempts...  the first time I got confused which way round I was knitting and ended up inside out and with the second attempt I cast on too many stitches!

seamless on the outside...

and on the inside!

I followed the increase instructions but added another increase row so I have 80 stitches on my needles.  Since the heart chart is worked over 8 stitches this makes it nice a easy to repeat it.

The increases worked in this pattern are M1R and M1L.  These are right and left leaning increases.

right and left leaning increases

These can be tricky to work... even my loose knitting is looking a bit tight!  But it does give a nice effect.

I have so far worked two rows of hearts.  Having the second row offset does make a disjointed heart at the end of a round but I pleased with how it looks so I'm going to carry on.

As usual the Jamieson's Shetland Heather is lovely to work with and like the Sheep Carousel tea cosy I'm finding stranded colour work quite addictive... If you need some help with stranded techniques you can read some tips here.

I predict this will be a quick knit!

Let us know if you're joining in too.