Knitted Bat Dish Towel

Sometimes I get the strangest ideas in my head. I wanted to create a knitted table runner for Halloween, but I didn’t want to knit one long piece. Instead, I wanted to knit several squares in different colors and connect them to make a colorful Halloween runner. Of course, the idea seemed great at the time, but when I sat down to plot it out, it was super frustrating. Like every time I decide to write a pattern, there’s a lot of mistakes and pulling out yarn. I may have even thrown my knitting needles across the room once. But here is square one of my colorful Halloween runner: The Bat.

I’m using Sugar’n Cream cotton yarn for all the squares. For the bat, I used the color Overcast. The pattern is made with knit and purl stitches, so it’s great for beginners.

I’m using cotton yarn because I hope to use this square as part of a table runner, but you could also use it as a cute dish towel of trivet. To make it as close to a square as I could, I knitted a sample and measured how many stitches I needed to cast on to make two inches and how many rows I needed to knit to make the same length, then calculated from there. So, if your gauge is bigger or smaller, it may not come out exactly like mine. But you can use a blocking board to make it as close to a square as you can.

Size US 7 knitting needles

1 skein of Sugar’n Cream cotton yarn in Overcast

Cast on 40 stitches.

Rows 1-4: k across row.

Row 5: k2, p16, k3, p16, k3

Row 6 and every even row after: k across row.

Row 7: k3, p14, k5, p14, k4

Row 9: k3, p13, k7, p13, k4

Row 11: k2, p13, k9, p13, k3

Row 13: k3, p12, k9, p12, k4

Row 15: k3, p12, k9, p12, k4

Row 17: k2, p13, k3, p1, k1, p1, k3, p13, k3

Row 19: k4, p11, k3, p3, k3, p11, k5

Row 21: k5, p11, k1, p5, k1, p11, k6

Row 23: k5, p29, k6

Row 25: k4, p31, k5

Row 27: k7, p25, k8

Row 29: k7, p25, k8

Row 31: k6, p27, k7

Row 33: k13, p13, k14

Row 35: k16, p7, k17

Row 37: k16, p7, k17

Row 39: k17, p5, k18

Row 41: k17, p5, k18

Row 43: k18, p3, k19

Rows 44-48: k across row.

Bind-off and weave in tails.

Despite my calculations, the finished piece wasn’t a perfect square. So, I sprayed the piece with some water and put it on a blocking board to help shape it.

It only took a couple nights of knitting to complete this square. I’m hoping to post four more ghoulish shapes in different colors in the coming weeks. Happy Knitting!