Knitted chanterelle mushrooms

Not a full pattern yet, but some beautiful pictures of my latest project: A big and a small chanterelle.

Have you noticed it? Lately, I have been obsessed with knitting mushrooms. After my fly agaric pattern, and my porcini mushrooms, I just had to try to knit a chanterelle. I personally love to eat these together with dumplings or pasta and nice creamy sauce. But how to come up with a knitting pattern for these yellow-orange delicacies?

My, they are such tiny simple mushrooms and appear so simple, but they resisted my attempts to knit them like no other little object I knitted in the last couple of months. It took me 5 (!!) attempts and a lot of careful calculating to finally get it done.

I just couldn’t get the infundibuliform (funnel shape) right. I knew how to knit a funnel, no problem, but how to get the little round overlap?! It just wouldn’t get into my head.

The solution? I knitted two pieces and joined the stipe with the gills and the funnel top of the head together knitting with two needle sets simultaneously. As the stockinette stitch sadly curls the other way, I had to block it with a lot of needles and a lot of hot steam so it overlapped the way a real chanterelle does.

A lot of drama and hard knitting for a little mushroom that is barely 2 inches high, eh? From a certain perspective, it probably would have been better to knit these with 1.5mm needles and not 2.00 mm (size 0), so I could achieve finer gills as well. But well, I may be a perfectionist, but I am not a masochist 😉

I worked out a knitting pattern for an almost mature chanterelle mushroom and a younger one. Interestingly enough, the instructions are almost identically – the difference is almost completely how you finalize them. One is with, the other without stuffing. And they are more or less blocked into form afterwards.

Sounds complicated? Well, it’s probably a better pattern for more advanced knitters who really know what they are doing. I do have to say that working all those twisted increases in the round on such small needles can be a big challenge. They may just be 2.7 inches by 2.7 inches, but there are 64 stitches in the round on 4 double-pointed needles for the cap and about 60 rounds. My beginner’s scarf is only 16 stitches wide and has probably fewer rows. Knitting is sometimes crazy, eh?

I knitted these with a fingering weight Wollmeise yarn (color “Good morning” )and 2.00 needles. Scraps (like 30 yards) will be enough to finish these.

Knitting techniques for these little mushrooms.

• knit stitch & longtail cast-on
• purl
• knit through the back loop (ktbl)
• M1PL
• KLL
• K2tog & k3tog
• Three-Needle bind off
• knitting in the round

I already have the instructions down, but I need to knit one more pair and take pictures before I can publish a proper pattern. No knitting beginner would ever understand how I joined the two parts without sewing and the way I blocked the mushroom for their final shape. I’m also a bit hesitant if I really want to share my trade secrets with the world.

In the meantime, you may want to read my tutorial on knitting in the round like a pro. I also already have got one finished mushroom pattern here.