Pine tree band knitting chart

About this design

A line of little pines turns any hat, stocking or jumper hem into a winter piece. The trees are Y44 Forest, a deep blue-leaning green, on Y02 Cream, with short trunks of Y06 Cinnamon. Each tree has two tiers of branches, a narrow neck where the top tier meets the lower one, and a pointed tip, which gives it more of a fir silhouette than a simple triangle would. The trees stand ten stitches apart with clear cream space between them.

Knitting the band

Read the chart from the bottom up, starting with the two trunk rounds. Several rounds contain just one coloured stitch in every ten: the two trunk rounds, the neck of each tree and the very tip. Carried normally, those rounds leave floats of nine stitches, and the three-stitch round near each tip leaves floats of seven. You can trap the long floats once in the middle, or, for the single-stitch rounds, knit those rounds in cream only and add the trunks, necks and tips afterwards in duplicate stitch. The two widest branch rounds have floats of five stitches or fewer and knit up comfortably. Each tree only needs a short length of cinnamon, so a small bobbin is plenty.

Sizing and repeats

At 20 stitches and 28 rows per 10 cm, the 50-stitch chart is 25 cm wide and the eight rows come to about 2.9 cm. In the round you need a multiple of 10 stitches: 90 stitches (45 cm) fits a child’s hat, 100 (50 cm) an adult hat, and a jumper body of 180 or 200 stitches gives a full forest around the hem. Worked flat for a stocking cuff, add one edge stitch on each side for seaming.

Colour plan

Cream does the most work, 70% of the 400 stitches, followed by Forest at 28%. Every colour is used at least 10 times, so there are no tiny one-off details to hunt for. Every square of the grid is filled.

Working notes

The longest float is 9 stitches, and 6 rows have a float longer than 5 that should be caught on the wrong side. Every row uses at most two colours, so it can all be worked as stranded colourwork.