xkcd pillow

Wendy Verbruggen
c This pattern is based on the webcomic http://www.xkcd.com/149. This comic is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License, and therefore, so is this pattern. This means
youre free to copy and share this pattern, but not to sell this pattern or any item made from this pattern.
Any copy of this pattern should bear this copyright notice.
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The ingredients
This pattern is for a 45 45 cm pillow (approx. 18"). You can of course customize it to a dierent
size by using dierent yarn and needles to change the gauge, or just by adding extra rows and
extra stitches to each side.
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To get a 45 45 cm pillow case I used the following:
A 45 45 cm (18") pillow
Approx. 50 100 cm (20" 40") piece of black fabric
A 50 cm (20") zipper
US 3 / 3.25 mm straight needles
Debbie Bliss Rialto 4 ply:
black: less than 3 skeins
white: less than 1 skein
Gauge: 30 sts x 38 rows = 10 10 cm (4" 4")
The pillow
If your pillow is already black or at least dark enough not to be seen through the knitting you
wont need the black fabric and the zipper. If like me you have a very bright pillow you want to
cover, simply sew the piece of fabric together in such a way as to get a pillow cover and add a
zipper to one side so you can remove the pillow when necessary. Another option is of course to
buy a ready-made black pillow cover and use that.
Now for the knitting!
Knitting only the front
One way to do this (and this is what I did for the pillow in the photo) is to only knit the front
panel of the pillow, and sew that onto your black pillow case. If you do this you want to make
sure that the colour of the pillow you already have matches the colour of your yarn!
First we should do some arithmetic to gure out how many stitches to cast on. In general I think
you should keep in mind that the chart is 124 stitches by 153 rows (including 4 stitch margins),
so you should try to get a gauge that will get you close to that but never less than that (you can
add to the sides, but you dont want to cut o part of the pattern!).
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Disclaimer: I can not be held responsible for any failed and frogged projects! :-)
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In my case we want the knitting to be about 45 cm wide, our gauge gives us 30 stitches in 10 cm,
so we need to cast on 4.5 30 = 135 stitches to get the desired width. The chart is 124 stitches
wide, so we want to add 135124 = 11 stitches to the chart; i.e. we simply knit 6 extra stitches at
the beginning and end of each row (this gives 12 extra stitches, but that shouldnt be a problem).
Similarly for the rows: we have a gauge of 38 rows in 10 cm, so we will get a total of 171 rows in
50 cm. The chart gives us 153, so we need to add 18 rows. So we simply start by knitting 9 rows
in black, then knitting the chart (with 6 extra stitches on each side) followed by another 9 rows in
black.
Obviously these calculations need to be adjusted to your own gauge and the desired dimensions of
the nished object.
Knitting the entire cover
Instead of just knitting the front panel you can of course also knit the entire cover. Either knit in
the round and cast on twice the number of stitches as you would use for just the front panel (as
calculated above). When youre done you will have a big tube that should t around your pillow
and all you have to do is sew up one side and put a zipper in the other side.
Alternatively, you can knit the front and back panel separately. When theyre done you simply
sew 3 sides together and add a zipper to the 4th side (unless you never ever want to see that pillow
again, then just sew it all up :-)
Some alternatives
If you are knitting the entire cover, it might be a little boring to do the back (either long
lines of black stitches in each row when working in the round, or even worse: an entire black
back panel to be knit!). So maybe you can add a bit of a pattern to the back panel. For
example by doing some magic with knitting and purling to make a block pattern, or maybe
add some text to the back, like www.xkcd.org. Or for the really adventurous: chart another
xkcd comic to use for the back panel!
You can of course use buttons instead of a zipper. You can make the front panel a little
longer at the top and nish it in a non-curling stitch like a moss stitch. Then sew the other 3
sides and fold over the top and fasten it with buttons (you might want to make some button
holes in the ap :-)
Why make a pillow? If could use this chart to make a sweater, a blanket, a towel.. err.. my
imagination ends here Im afraid. If you do, please send me pictures!
If you have any other ideas, or have nished something that uses this chart, please send them
to me! Im whirl123 on Ravelry
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, and you can email me on whirl123 at gmail dot com.
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If youre a knitter and have never heard of Ravelry, check it out on www.ravelry.com, you wont regret it!
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