Aase Pillow av Hanne Rimmen: The Norwegian Knitting Pattern That Belongs in Every Home
There is something quietly magnetic about a pillow that manages to feel both ancient and completely current at the same time. The Aase Pillow by Hanne Rimmen is exactly that kind of object — a knitted cushion cover rooted in the visual traditions of Scandinavian textile craft, yet designed with a modern sensibility that makes it feel at home in any contemporary living space. Whether you are an experienced knitter looking for your next meaningful project or someone just beginning to explore the world of Norwegian craft, the Aase Pillow has a great deal to offer. This post will walk you through everything worth knowing about this pattern, from its design philosophy and construction details to yarn choices, techniques, and why it has earned such a devoted following among knitters around the world.
Who Is Hanne Rimmen?
Before diving into the pattern itself, it is worth spending a moment with the designer behind it. Hanne Rimmen is a Norwegian knitwear designer whose work sits at the intersection of folk tradition and contemporary aesthetics. She draws deeply from the visual language of Norwegian textile heritage — the geometry, the color contrast, the rhythmic repetition of motifs — while keeping her designs accessible and wearable, or in this case, livable. Her patterns tend to carry a sense of intention. Nothing feels arbitrary. Every stitch placement, every color decision, every structural choice reflects a coherent design vision.
Rimmen has built a following among Scandinavian craft enthusiasts and the broader international knitting community alike, in large part because her designs communicate something genuine. They feel like objects that have been considered carefully, made to last, and made to matter. The Aase Pillow is a strong example of this approach.
What Is the Aase Pillow?
The Aase Pillow is a knitted cushion cover pattern designed for a standard pillow insert, typically 40 x 40 centimeters, though the pattern can be adjusted to accommodate different sizes. It features a stranded colorwork motif, meaning the design is created by working with two or more yarn colors at once, carrying the unused color along the back of the work as you knit. The result is a fabric that is slightly thicker than plain stockinette, wonderfully textured on the back, and visually rich on the front.
The motif itself draws on traditional Nordic ornamental patterns — think carefully arranged geometric shapes, floral-inspired forms, or stylized natural elements — presented in a way that feels refined rather than rustic. The name Aase is a traditional Norwegian woman’s name, and like many of Rimmen’s pattern names, it connects the object to a human story, a cultural lineage, a sense of belonging.
The pattern is available as a digital download, making it immediately accessible to knitters anywhere in the world. Once purchased, you receive clear written instructions along with charts for the colorwork sections, which are the most important visual guide for this type of knitting.
Understanding Stranded Colorwork
If you have not worked stranded colorwork before, the Aase Pillow is a genuinely wonderful project to start with, and here is why. A pillow cover is a forgiving format. Unlike a sweater or a hat that needs to conform to a body with precision, a pillow cover has fixed dimensions and no shaping requirements beyond basic construction. This gives you the freedom to focus entirely on learning to manage two yarn colors simultaneously without also worrying about increases, decreases, or fitting.
Stranded colorwork involves holding one yarn in each hand — or both in the same hand, depending on your preferred method — and knitting with whichever color the chart calls for at any given stitch. The other color floats loosely across the back. When done well, these floats lie flat and even, creating a clean reverse side that is actually rather beautiful in its own right. When done less carefully, floats can become too long, too tight, or too loose, which affects the drape and elasticity of the finished fabric.
The key skills to practice are consistent tension and catching long floats. Most colorwork designers recommend catching floats that span more than five stitches by twisting the working yarn around the float yarn at the midpoint, which keeps the back of the work tidy and prevents snagging. Rimmen’s pattern, like most well-written colorwork patterns, will indicate where and how to manage floats.
Knitting in the round, which is the typical method for colorwork projects, makes reading charts much easier because you are always looking at the right side of the work. For a pillow cover, you can knit the front and back as separate flat pieces, or knit in the round and cut (a technique called steeking), or construct the piece using another method entirely. The specific construction approach in the Aase pattern is clearly detailed in the instructions.
Choosing the Right Yarn
Yarn selection makes an enormous difference in any knitting project, but it is especially significant in colorwork. The Aase Pillow calls for a yarn weight that allows the motif to read clearly — typically a sport, DK, or worsted weight — in a fiber that has enough memory to hold its structure without drooping.
Norwegian wool is the natural first choice for this kind of project, and for good reason. Traditional Norwegian knitting yarns are spun with a specific structure that gives them resilience and definition. Brands like Sandnes Garn, Rauma, and Dale of Norway produce yarns that have been used for generations in exactly this type of stranded work. They are durable, they block beautifully, and they carry color with exceptional clarity.
If you prefer to work with something softer or are sensitive to wool, there are excellent superwash merino options that work well for colorwork. The trade-off is that superwash fibers are sometimes slightly less elastic than traditional wool, which can make managing consistent tension a little trickier. However, the difference is manageable, and the result is a pillow cover that can be machine washed on a gentle cycle — a real practical advantage.
For color selection, the Aase Pillow tends to look most striking with high contrast between the main color and the contrast color. Classic pairings include deep navy with natural cream, charcoal with pale grey, or rich burgundy with ivory. That said, Rimmen’s design is flexible enough to accommodate softer, more tonal pairings if you prefer a quieter aesthetic. A muted sage with off-white, for instance, creates something that feels distinctly contemporary and works beautifully in the kind of neutral, texture-forward interiors that have been popular in Scandinavian home design for years.
Reading the Chart
The colorwork chart for the Aase Pillow is where the design really lives. Charts in knitting are visual representations of the finished fabric, read from bottom to top and typically from right to left when working flat, or from right to left on every row when working in the round. Each square on the chart represents one stitch, and the color of the square tells you which yarn to use at that point.
If you are new to reading charts, the Aase Pillow is a good introduction because the motif has a regular, repeating structure. Once you have worked through the first repeat, the pattern becomes intuitive. Your hands begin to anticipate the rhythm of color changes, and the chart becomes more of a reference tool than a constant necessity.
Some knitters find it helpful to use a magnetic chart holder or a row counter app to keep track of where they are. Others prefer to print the chart and mark off each completed row with a highlighter. Whatever method suits you, the important thing is to track your progress consistently so that you can see when the motif begins to drift or when a tension issue is developing before it becomes a larger problem.
Construction and Finishing
The construction of a pillow cover involves a few different stages. Knitting the colorwork fabric itself is the most time-consuming and rewarding part, but the finishing work is what takes the project from a flat piece of knitted fabric to a functional, beautiful object.
Blocking is essential. After knitting, the cover should be soaked in cool water, gently squeezed free of excess moisture, and then laid flat to dry in the correct dimensions. Blocking evening out the stitches, opens up the colorwork motif so that it reads clearly, and brings the fabric to its intended size. This step transforms the appearance of the finished piece in a way that is consistently surprising even for experienced knitters. Colors appear more vibrant, the motif becomes sharper, and the fabric gains a softness and drape that it lacks straight off the needles.
Once the knitted panels are blocked and dry, they need to be assembled into a cover. The typical approach is to join the front and back panels using a seaming technique — mattress stitch is commonly used for its nearly invisible finish — along three sides, then add a closure at the fourth. Closures for knitted pillow covers vary by designer preference and can include buttons sewn onto a simple button band, a zipper, an envelope back created by overlapping two panels, or simple ties. The Aase Pillow pattern will specify the recommended closure, and it is worth following that recommendation on a first pass, then adapting to your own preference once you understand the construction.
The Aase Pillow as a Gift
Few handmade objects communicate care and intentionality as clearly as a knitted pillow cover. It is the kind of gift that sits in a room for years, accumulating the warmth of daily life while retaining its beauty. The Aase Pillow in particular carries an inherent giftability because of its connection to a named design tradition, its visual distinctiveness, and the evident skill involved in its making.
For a wedding gift, a housewarming, a birthday, or a significant milestone, a knitted pillow cover made from a pattern like the Aase is a genuinely meaningful gesture. If you know the recipient’s home aesthetic and can choose colors accordingly, the gift becomes even more personal. A pair of Aase pillows — knitted in two complementary colorways and presented together — is the kind of thing people keep for decades.
Sustainability and the Value of Handmade
There is also a sustainability dimension to projects like the Aase Pillow that is worth considering. Mass-produced home textiles are almost always made under conditions of environmental and labor compromise. Fast-fashion home goods are made cheaply, designed to be replaced frequently, and produce significant waste in their manufacture and disposal.
A knitted pillow cover made from quality wool is the opposite of all of that. Natural wool is a renewable, biodegradable fiber. A well-made knitted object, cared for properly, can last for generations. The act of knitting something by hand removes the object entirely from the cycle of mass production. You know exactly what went into it — which fiber, which hands, how many hours of focused attention.
This is not a sentimental argument but a practical one. Handmade objects made with natural fibers have an actual lifespan that is measurably longer than their machine-made equivalents. Investing time in a project like the Aase Pillow is, in a very real sense, an act of sustainability.
Why the Aase Pillow Continues to Resonate
The enduring appeal of patterns like the Aase Pillow comes down to a few interconnected qualities. First, there is the visual strength of Nordic geometric design, which has proven to be one of the most durable and broadly appealing aesthetic traditions in the world. The same impulse that made these patterns popular centuries ago — the satisfaction of order, symmetry, and repetition rendered in fiber — continues to feel relevant and pleasing.
Second, there is the quality of Hanne Rimmen’s design work itself. A well-drafted pattern is a remarkable thing. It anticipates the knitter’s questions, provides the right information at the right moment, and creates the conditions for success rather than frustration. Rimmen’s patterns consistently achieve this.
Third, there is the particular pleasure of making something for the home. Knitting garments is satisfying, but knitting objects that become part of the daily texture of a living space has a different quality of reward. Every time you see the pillow on the sofa, every time a guest comments on it, every time the afternoon light falls across the colorwork and makes the motif suddenly vivid, you experience a small return on the investment of time and attention you made while knitting it.
Getting Started
If the Aase Pillow sounds like the right next project, the practical starting point is to acquire the pattern directly from Hanne Rimmen’s designer page, which is available through major knitting pattern platforms. Take time to read through the pattern completely before casting on, which is always good advice but especially important for colorwork projects where understanding the full structure in advance helps you make better decisions about yarn quantity and color placement.
Swatch before you begin the main project. This is the step that most knitters are tempted to skip and the one that most reliably prevents problems later. A swatch in the colorwork pattern, blocked to size, will tell you whether your tension matches the gauge specified in the pattern and give you a chance to adjust your needle size if needed. It will also give you the satisfaction of seeing the motif emerge for the first time, which is genuinely exciting.
Then cast on, follow the chart, trust the process, and look forward to the moment when you insert the pillow form and hold the finished cover up to the light. There are few things in the world of handmade textiles quite as satisfying as that particular moment.
The Aase Pillow by Hanne Rimmen is a pattern worth making, worth giving, and worth keeping. It is a small but genuine piece of the long, living tradition of Nordic textile craft — made accessible, made beautiful, and made to belong in your home.
