This is a stranded colorwork piece inspired by Minnesota’s Northwoods at night, with a moon rising over a conifer forest. Beads are used to represent stars. (For fun, I used a mix of beads - included glow-in-the-dark ones!) I could see this piece also being done in different colors to represent a sunrise or sunset.

The piece is knit in the round with steek stitches, which are then cut and contained with lining. The piece also has a knit edging.

The pattern has written instructions specifying how to knit the piece from start to finish, but please note the main colorwork portion is charted and not written out. I have some short YouTube tutorials linked in the pattern, which show my methods for catching long floats, alternating where I placed long catches, and also doing partial catches before changing to a new color. You could try different methods for catching long floats, but please ensure you get the correct gauge if you do (otherwise the tree and moon shapes may not come out correctly).

The finished piece is quite large, approximately 88” wide x 29.5” tall after blocking. It can be used as a shawl or a long and narrow throw. The piece can also be made smaller by omitting some of the columns in the charts.

I used Knit Picks Shadow lace for this (3 skeins each of the two main colors, and 1 skein for the moon color), but that yarn went on clearance as I was testing the pattern. You could substitute a heavy weight lace or fingering yarn. I recommend a yarn that has a little bit of fuzz to it, as that helps hide the yarn that is carried behind the piece. (Slick yarns like bamboo or silk did not work well in my tests of this pattern.)

You will need circular needles and DPN needles for the smaller size needles, but just a circular needle for the larger size. I recommend a needle set like ChiaGoo, where you can make a larger circular (ie. 46”) by connecting multiple cables.

It is possible to hide your yarn better than I did - the first time I knit this, I did a much better job at not showing my yarn catches. The second time I knit it (which are all the pictures shown of the pattern), the motivation was burning low and I got sloppier in hiding my long catches.

This project is definitely a marathon and not a sprint - take your time with it. Patience and going slow will pay off.