I have, as is so often the case, absolutely no excuse for this nonsense. There is literally no problem on this earth that is best solved with a knitted fried egg. The world was not crying out from the depths of its soul for brioche bacon.

And yet, I felt moved to create them. And I strongly suspect quite a few of you do too.

Because sometimes solving a problem isn’t the point. Sometimes clinging, tenaciously, in the face of all odds, to whatever brings you joy or amuses the folks you like to knit for is the point. And by all the gods these sure do bring me joy and amuse some of the folks I like to knit for.

So no, as I’ve said before and will doubtless say again, they’re not for anything. They don’t do anything. They serve no practical function. But they might just make your brain or the brain of someone you care about make one of those happy feelings for just a moment, and that’s enough right now.

General information

This detailed ebook tells you exactly how to make both the bacon and the eggs.

For the bacon, it walks you through everything from casting on, navigating brioche charts, getting the perfect shape to your strips, and even improvising your own versions in case you want to make something bigger and more dramatic. For the eggs, it covers everything from casting on, shaping your yolk, getting the perfect shape to your whites, and blocking your finished egg as well as giving detailed information on how to scale this up to make something like a pillow or even a blanket.

The whole thing is reassuringly thorough (with pages of step-by-step photos showing every part of the process), and you can absolutely make these, even if you’ve never done a project like this before!

Skills & scope

The bacon is brioche, which some folks insist on convincing themselves is scary (I say, with some authority, as I was once one of these people). But it’s literally the most forgiving, most hand-holding brioche pattern you could possibly imagine.

Even if you’ve never done brioche before, you can do this, as long as you’re up for a little adventure!

Yarn, gauge & sizing
These are adorable at any size, so you don’t need to worry about getting a specific gauge. As long as you’re getting a fabric you like, you’re getting a good gauge.

I made my bacon with a variety of fingering, sport, and dk-weight scraps (many of them various shades of red and light pink from Seven Sisters Arts). My bacon is between 8 and 10 inches long and about an inch wide (pretty much exactly the size of a piece of real bacon). Each strip took less than 100 yards of yarn (about 55% in a darker color, 45% in a lighter color) and about two feet of wire.

If you’re currently dreaming of a giant strip of bacon or even blanket made out of many strips together, there’s nothing stopping you! Though you’ll want more yarn (and may want to either skip the wire or go with a stiffer wire to handle the extra weight depending on your overall vision for the project).

Tools & supplies

Brioche needs to be worked on either circular needles or dpns. You absolutely can do this on a circular, but you have to slide your stitches along the needle to get ready for the next row, and I think that would be tedious with a long circular. So I recommend either using dpns or very short circulars. You’ll also want the general knitting tools you need for most projects (scissors to cut your yarn, a darning needle to weave in ends, a stitch marker if you like to use one to keep track of the front of your fabric). You’ll also want some wire if you want to make the bacon posable. I used copper wire between 18 and 24 gauge. (The secret phrase you want to help you find suitable wire is ‘dead soft.’ That means it will bend easily with your hands but also hold its shape).