What’s in your barrel? Monkeys? Fish? Salt pork? Grog? Single malt scotch? Catnip? A cramped and waterlogged dwarf? It’s up to you!

This pattern came about because of a forum query on how to go about knitting a barrel, and I decided to come up with an answer!
Any yarn weight should work and will determine the size: fingering will give you a height of about 2 inches, worsted about 3 inches and bulky about 5 inches. Use needles a couple sizes smaller than you usually would to give a firm gauge. Yardage will vary with yarn weight and I think the above range is generous.

Though all 42 rounds of this pattern are written out, it assumes that you are comfortable knitting and managing stripes in the round with whichever method you prefer, I do not specify. I also assume you are fairly familiar with several basic increase/decrease methods. It is not a hand-holding pattern, but should be fine for the intermediate knitter or confident beginner.

Thanks to my lovely test knitters for their help in the creation of my first pattern!

Due to newbie ignorance the original PDF was huge! Sorry about that… I have shrunk it significantly with no apparent loss of photo clarity and it is now a petite 507 KB.