Halloween colours in Stylecraft Special DK: 6 palettes

The shades Halloween patterns reach for

Black 1002 is in 8 of the 12 Stylecraft patterns and packs, more than any other shade. White 1001 is next with 5, and Jaffa 1256 is the orange designers pick most often, in 4. Cream 1005 and Spice 1711 follow with 3 each. Spice turns up on pumpkins: Toby’s Pumpkin Bag and the pumpkin cosies in Stylecraft’s Halloween Cosies set both use it.

Purple is spread thin. Proper Purple 1855 appears twice, and Parma Violet 1724, Violet 1277 and Plum 1061 once each, the Plum in Special Chunky. Green is just as scattered: Bright Green 1259 twice, then Grass Green 1821, Kelly Green 1826, Cypress 1824 and Lime 1712 once each. The 12 sources use 26 different shades between them, and no single purple or green has become the standard Halloween one.

Black and orange is only half the story

Across all 16 sources, orange and black each appear in 11. Green is in 9, purple and white in 8 each, and pink in 7. Yet only 8 of the 16 put black and orange in the same project, and the other eight get to Halloween without the pairing.

Simply Crochet’s free ghost bunting uses no black yarn at all. Its eight ghosts come from one ball each of Fiesta 1257, Citron 1263, Jaffa 1256, Bright Green 1259 and Turquoise 1068, with black felt for the faces. Vera and Bess’s Day of the Dead Halloween Wrap has black but no orange, pairing Black and White with Turquoise, Magenta 1084 and Lipstick 1246, one ball each. Rosina Plane’s Boo! Ghostly pack has neither: White, Graphite 1063, Mushroom 1832 and Parma Violet 1724.

One blanket, four moods

Rosina Plane’s Boo! blanket shows how far one pattern can stretch. It ran as a six-part crochet-along in 2023, with a new part each Friday from 8 September to 13 October, according to Black Sheep Wools. LoveCrafts describes it as overlay mosaic crochet with an envelope border, and sells the pattern for £8.95, checked 3 October 2026.

Each colourway is a 10-ball pack for a blanket of about 90 × 110cm. Spooky is the classic: three White, four Black, and one each of Proper Purple, Grass Green and Jaffa. Ghostly keeps the three White but trades everything else for four Graphite 1063, one Mushroom 1832 and two Parma Violet. Candy is the soft one, with three Cream, four Gingerbread 1806, one Clementine 1853 and two Fondant. Creepy leaves Special DK for Stylecraft ReCreate DK in Ecru, Aubergine, Blush, Avocado and Dijon.

Wool Warehouse sells the three Special DK packs at £23.50 and Creepy at £45.50, checked 3 October 2026. That £23.50 is exactly what 10 single balls at £2.35 cost there, so the pack saves choosing rather than money. Black Sheep Wools lists Spooky and Ghostly at £21.50 on the same date. Wool Warehouse’s Creepy listing notes that Rosina used only 185g of Ecru and 290g of Aubergine, so a tight crocheter may not need the last ball of either.

Six palettes to paste into the designer

Each palette below is a set of shades one published pattern or pack uses together. Spooky, Ghostly and Candy are Rosina Plane’s own colourway names; the other three names are ours, for the source in brackets. Where a pattern named shades without codes, we added the codes from our Special DK colour chart.

Paste a code list into the granny-square designer to try the colours on a grid before you buy; the same six palettes are loaded there as presets. Screen colours are only a guide, so check a shade card or a real ball before you commit.

The Halloween shades everyday packs leave out

Our colour combinations guide lists 25 everyday Special DK yarn packs, 21 of them Attic24’s. Jaffa, Bright Green, Grass Green, Fiesta and Graphite are in none of them, and Black and White are in only one, Catherine’s Crochet Corner’s Ross Poldark pack. Spice is the exception, in 8 of the 25. If your stash came from blanket packs, Spice is the Halloween orange you’re most likely to have already; the Black, White and Jaffa that Halloween patterns use most will probably need buying.

Single balls fill the gap. Wool Warehouse listed Special DK at £2.35 a ball on 3 October 2026, so a five-shade palette costs £11.75 for one ball of each, before delivery; Wool Warehouse showed free UK delivery over £30 on the same date.

How much yarn each kind of project takes

Small makes need very little. Doodabs Designs’ Pumpkin Chocolate Orange Cover asks for 45m each of Jaffa and Kelly Green, about 15% of a 295m ball. Raffamusa Designs’ Halloween Eyeball Dishcloth, in Paintbox Cotton DK, lists 88m of Champagne White and just 5m of Pillar Red. Ali Crafts Designs’ Hazel the Witch uses only oddments of Black, Jaffa, Bright Green, Cream and Violet.

Blankets take 10 to 16 balls. Boo! takes 10 for about 90 × 110cm. Sirdar’s Trick or Treat crochet-along pack, by Happy Crochet Lady, has 14 balls of Hayfield Bonus DK for about 125 × 110cm and costs £34.50 at Wool Warehouse, checked 3 October 2026. Kate Gerrits’ Macbeth Witches blanket, in the thicker Stylecraft Special Aran, asks for 7 skeins each of Spice and Black plus 2 for the border, 16 in all, for 135 × 135cm.

For your own granny squares, the granny-square designer works out yarn per colour from your grid. If you’re planning a full blanket, the granny-square blanket planner gives a total from weighed squares.

How we counted

We opened each pattern or pack page on 3 October 2026 and noted every shade it names. We counted a shade once per pattern or pack, however many balls it uses. The Stylecraft Halloween Cosies set, a knitting pattern, counts as one source, though it covers five cosies. Twelve sources name Stylecraft Special shades: ten in Special DK, one in Special Aran and one in Special Chunky. Table 1 gives Special DK codes throughout: we matched the Aran and Chunky shades to Special DK by name, and the same name in a different range may not be quite the same colour. Wee Woolly Wonderfuls’ Watermelon is a Special Chunky shade with no Special DK match.

The other four sources use ReCreate DK, Hayfield Bonus DK, King Cole Majestic DK and Paintbox Cotton DK, and we counted those by colour family only. The families are our grouping, by shade name: Cream and Ecru count as cream rather than white, and Fondant, Fiesta, Magenta, Watermelon, Blush and Cerise count as pink. We left out Hayfield’s Zest, because its name doesn’t settle its family.

Stylecraft’s blog post Ghoulies and ghosties, dated 13 October 2022, suggests Spice, Clementine or Jaffa for Cute Crochet Makes’ pumpkin stack. We didn’t count it, because it’s a suggestion rather than a pattern. HazelLoop hasn’t made these projects; the shades and quantities are the designers’ and shops’ own, linked below.

Common questions

Sources and scope

• www.woolwarehouse.co.uk/packs/boo-halloween-cal-by-rosina-plane-spooky-pack
• www.woolwarehouse.co.uk/packs/boo-halloween-cal-by-rosina-plane-ghostly-pack
• www.woolwarehouse.co.uk/packs/boo-halloween-cal-by-rosina-plane-candy-pack
• www.woolwarehouse.co.uk/packs/boo-halloween-cal-by-rosina-plane-creepy-pack
• www.blacksheepwools.com/products/boo-blanket-cal-spooky-in-stylecraft-special-dk-by-rosina-plane
• www.lovecrafts.com/en-gb/products/boo-halloween-mosaic-crochet-pattern-by-rosina-plane
• www.woolwarehouse.co.uk/packs/sirdar-trick-or-treat-cal-yarn-pack-sirdar-hayfield-bonus-dk
• www.lovecrafts.com/en-gb/products/sirdar-halloween-crochet-along-blanket
• www.stylecraft-yarns.co.uk/Content/Downloads/Free%20Patterns/F004_HalloweenCosiesPattern.pdf
• www.stylecraft-yarns.co.uk/blog/ghoulies-and-ghosties
• simply-yarn.com/crochet-patterns/free-ghost-crochet-pattern
• simply-yarn.com/crochet-patterns/free-crochet-spider-web-cushion-pattern
• www.lovecrafts.com/en-gb/products/pumpkin-chocolate-orange-cover-crochet-pattern-by-doodabs-designs
• www.lovecrafts.com/en-gb/products/day-of-the-dead-halloween-wrap-crochet-pattern-by-vera-and-bess
• www.lovecrafts.com/en-gb/products/hazel-the-witch-crochet-pattern-by-ali-crafts-designs
• www.lovecrafts.com/en-gb/products/tobys-pumpkin-bag-crochet-pattern-by-stitched-up-by-emma
• www.lovecrafts.com/en-gb/products/macbeth-witches-shakespeare-halloween-blanket-crochet-pattern-by-kate-gerrits
• weewoollywonderfuls.com/products/witchs-cauldron-free-pdf-download
• weewoollywonderfuls.com/products/brand-new-halloween-2024-kit-pre-order
• www.lovecrafts.com/en-gb/products/halloween-eyeball-dishcloth-crochet-pattern-by-raffamusadesigns
• www.woolwarehouse.co.uk/yarn/stylecraft-special-dk

Sources checked 3 October 2026. Label facts come from the linked references; worked purchase examples and arithmetic are our own illustrations.