Fun
MDK March Mayhem Is Coming!
Dear beloved knitters,
Last March, fans of American college basketball went nuts for three weeks over the NCAA tournament.
Fans of knitting went nuts for three weeks over MDK March Mayhem, our championship of knitting patterns—The Bracket for Knitters.
Well, it’s a whole new year, and there’s a whole new year of patterns to celebrate. Mayhem returns, and we’re so excited. The two of us have been having a ton of fun, hunting and pecking through independently designed patterns published in 2017.
This year’s March Mayhem tournament of knitting patterns will have four brackets, or categories:
- Yoke Sweaters (2017 was the Year of the Yoke, after all.)
- All Other Sweaters: Sweaters constructed without round yokes, including pullovers and cardigans for women and men.
- Neck and Shoulders: Scarves, cowls, and shawls.
- Friends of Miniskeins: Projects of any type that play nice with miniskeins.
We would love to hear from you. What were your favorite patterns, in these categories, in 2017?
Some Guidelines
Aside from having a rollicking good time discovering and voting on awesome knitting patterns, our main goal for March Mayhem is to celebrate the work of independent designers, and show off wonderful examples of good design. There are so many patterns published in a year that a diamond can easily disappear into the rough. Good designers can have a tough time making a living.
So we do have a few simple rules of thumb. Patterns should be:
- Designed by an individual.
- Published in 2017.
- Available by download from the designer.
- Not free.
How to Suggest a Pattern
- Give us a Ravelry link or other link that takes us directly to the pattern, and please limit your suggestions to one or two patterns. It’s hard, but you can do it!
- Email your pattern suggestion to us here: mdkmarchmayhem AT gmail.com. Please do not leave a comment with your pattern suggestion. We will avidly look at everything, but it needs go to the email address.
- Deadline for suggestions: Sunday, February 11, midnight Pacific time.
Love,
Ann and Kay
PS If you are new to MDK March Mayhem, it’s fun to see the patterns that were included last year. Up top are contenders from last year’s championship. To really spend time with a gorgeous bunch of knitting, here are the Ravelry pages for the 64 patterns that vied for the massive bragging rights and joy of being MDK March Mayhem Champion. We can hardly wait until the glorious day when the 2018 MDK March Mayhem bracket is revealed.
Friends of Miniskein should include the Knitvent 2017 cowl by Helen Stewart of Curious Handmade
Whoops, will e-mail. So excited for a favorite pattern that I stopped reading to early.
LOVE-LOVE-LOVE the categories. Can’t wait to see what y’all come up with! I got some great ideas from last year’s picks.
Agree!
Ooooh….YAY! This was so fun last year!!
I love the categories you’ve laid out. Can’t wait!
I agree!!
Oh man, you guys are killing me! I CAN’T KNIT FAST ENOUGH! Too many, WAY too many luscious potential projects!
You read my thoughts!
Don’t worry, they will wait for you, just save the posts in your account for future reference, and move on….
I will be seriously watching for the Friends of MiniSkein. I have two different sets, purchased on 2 differents whims, and I need 2 patterns because they Do. Not. Go. Together.
(The set with 24 colors, each about 20 yards long, is proving to be a special challenge for me. Needing ideas here.)
Because I needed a little break, I took a moment to make a Ravelry search for the yoke sweaters:
https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/search#availability=online%7Cravelry&view=captioned_thumbs&year-published=2017%7C2017&sort=date&craft=knitting&pa=circular-yoke%2Bstranded&pc=sweater
So many beautiful designs…and just in 2017!
Thanks for that link! So many beautiful sweaters.
Last year was so fun. I had a blast picking my brackets. My husband was a little confused over how this translated into knitting but thought it was a creative idea idea. Looking forward to adding new projects to my Rav queue.
Loved it! So glad we’re doing all that crazy again.
I know—how could we not? All the crazy!
This was the most insane, most fun MDK thing of last year! Cannot wait for this year’s brackets!
Compiling list for email as we speak…er, type…
Hey, I loved all 64 of last year’s entries! Thanks for the chance to re-visit them. I would love to contribute the perfect “Worthy but Overlooked Pattern of 2017,” but my Ravelry projects page reveals that there is no such animal. I did just knit a pattern from 2017…sort of. It was Through the Trees, from Pam Powers’ 2017 book Dress to Impress: Knitted boot cuffs and leg warmers. It was my first colorwork project, and I liked it. Teeny problems, though. 1) You didn’t ask for boot cuffs. 2) I turned it into a motif for a hat. Oh, and 3) It’s not available as a single pattern or on Ravelry. The tree motif and background might work for mini-skeins, I guess. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33916502-dress-to-impress-knitted-boot-cuffs-leg-warmers
Lots of fun last year and gave me quite a few patterns that I wouldn’t have found on my own. Looking for to see the brackets for 2018!
Oops, sent you a hat pattern, as well as a shawl pattern. Why is it so hard to follow directions? Too much stimulus in front of me, I guess. Can’t wait for the mayhem to begin. Once tried to find a room in Las Vegas during what the hotel clerk called “some kind of madness going on in town.” Hard to believe but not one room available in the whole city.
Hurrah! March Mayhem is back! So happy for this time of year.
Oh, I loved March Madness/Mayhem last year–I can’t wait!