Beach Pebble Paperweight

Just imagine… you’re sitting on Lettergesh Beach knitting a sock and the pages in my notebook keep fluttering over in the breeze. I was ready for a break from knitting socks… so what to do next?

I found myself lying back on the patchwork quilt to enjoy the warmth of the sun on my face. Sitting up, I pulled back the quilt, and dug a pebble out of the sand. It had been digging into my back in a rather uncomfortable way.

Eureka!

A fun idea had come into my mind. Knit a woolly pullover for a beach pebble… voila… a paperweight!

This isn’t really a pattern for a Pebble Paperweight but I thought I’d share what I did.

I used a little bit of the skein of Ripples Crafts hand dyed sock yarn in the colour Hubble Bubble RS03. This is the perfect project for a small amount of left over sock yarn or hand dyed sock yarn. I used less than 5g of 4 ply sock yarn.

My beach pebble is approximately the same shape as a small sea urchin. It isn’t a huge pebble. It has a circumference around the outside edge of 20.5cm (8.25″).

I used 2.75mm double pointed needles and cast on 9 stitches. I joined the stitches into the round spread over 3 needles.

• Round 1: (k1, kfbf, k1) 3 times.
• Round 2: k
• Round 3: (k1, kfbf, k1, kfbf, k1) 3 times (27 stitches)

I paused for a while with a cool drink of water and listened to the soft clinking on the breeze from the yacht mast.

• Round 4: k
• Round 5: kfb on every stitch
• Round 6: k
• Round 7: kfb on every stitch
• Rounds 8-14: k

After round 12, I gathered the gap in the top where I’d cast on and sewed in the tail of yarn.

At Round 13, I divided the stitches on each needle onto 2 needles, 18 stitches on each of the 6 needles. (This might put some people off as it was very much like a little hedgehog at this stage).

• Round 15: (k2tog) repeat to end
• Rounds 16-22: k

I popped the pebble into the its woolly jumper.

• Round 23: (k1, k2tog) repeat to end
• Round 24: k
• Round 25: (k2tog) repeat to end
• Round 26: (k2tog) repeat to end

Then gather the remaining 9 stitches tightly and sew in the end.

This cute little project took me a couple of hours from start to finish and was rather fun to make!

One very cute little pebble paperweight. I purposefully chose to create a slightly ridged gathered look to it as I wanted it to be reminiscent of the veins on the outside shell of the sea urchins.

Then it was back to sock knitting!