We’ve all bought lovely hand-painted yarn that looks so appealing in the skein, but then what to knit with it? It’s a yarn that needs a plain texture – lace and cables will just get lost in the colours – and yet it needs something that’s a bit fancy and not too simple. This pattern is inspired by such a yarn purchase! Koigu Painter’s Palette Premium Merino is a delight to work with, and the hardest thing about the colours? It’s choosing which one to buy.

The pattern is written for lace, fingering, sport or DK weight yarns, and it’s knit to a percentage of your total yarn in order to make the most of that premium skein: to give you an idea of the yardages and finished sizes, my testers used:
lace - MC = 387m (425yds) - 142cm x 32cm (56” x 12.5”)
fingering - MC = 183m (200yds) - 86cm x 24cm (34” x 9.5”) - very small
fingering - MC = 320m (350yds) - 163cm x 37cm (64” x 14.5”)
fingering - MC = 296m (324yds) - 155cm x 36cm (61” x 14”)
DK - MC = 340m (372yds) - 152cm x 41cm (60” x 16”)

Cartwheels is crescent-shaped, and starts with a garter tab at the back neck, working out to the edge. A contrasting yarn makes the special wheel motifs along the hem – you don’t need much, so this can make a feature of some left-overs from a pair of socks or shawl.

The pattern includes step-by-step maths for calculating the placement of the cartwheels, depending on your stitch count when you reach 20-22% of your yarn remaining. It’s a fill-in-the-blanks process, that I hope makes it all as easy as possible. However, I have a treat for you knitters who’d prefer not to work the maths: my wonderful techie husband wrote a widget for my website which does it all for you. All you have to do is enter the stitch count and it prints out the row’s instructions for you – how easy!