April 2024 - Stitches at Altitude

I love when inspiration for my next knitting project comes to me without too much effort on my end. Most recently, this occurred when I visited Saguaro National Park for the first time earlier this year. A cactus hat is the perfect knitting project inspired by the national park. Living in Colorado I am accustomed to seeing tall pine trees everywhere. However I was not prepared for the massive cactus that covered the national park! The cactus on the hills around Phoenix remind me of mountains after a forest fire; tall pillars of trunks left standing with no foliage. The scenery was impressive, a little eerie, and made me want to capture the beauty of the landscape in some way.

Cactus Hat Cast On

Shortly after returning home I was at our local library and happened to spot Knitting the National Parks by Nancy Bates. I took the eye catching book down from its display. Lo and behold there was a beautiful cactus hat inspired by Saguaro National Park! A huge selling point for the book is the way the hat is shown in two color schemes in the book. One is a daylight scene with green cactus and bright blue sky, and the other has shadowy cactus silhouettes against a colorful sunset sky. I am a fan of easy color work projects, like the Pac-Man hat and animal baby blanket mentioned here.

Two versions of the same cactus hat, sunset and daylight.

I cast on the green cactus hat first. I have a tendency to knit tightly, so I went up a needle size. The gauge provided is given in stitches per inch, but there was no guide on rounds per inch. While I matched the gauge, my first go around turned out on the larger side. It probably would have fit the Saguaro cactus! After realizing the hat was going to be too tall I tried to decrease quicker than in the pattern. That didn’t work either.

Revising the Cactus Crown

The first cactus hat was getting too tall, but a quick decrease caused puckering at the top.

The top of the hat puckered and didn’t look as attractive as I was imagining. Instead of facing the problem right away I cast on for the night time version. This time I used the needle size specified in the pattern. The hat was again looming large, so I skipped a few rows of the chart and made the cactus slightly shorter in stature. By the time I had bound off it was a great fit!

Upon returning to the green cactus I ripped back down to several rows before the decreases. I added a lifeline. It took two tries, but I was able to get the crown shaping to work well.

Finally the last step was to weave in the ends (of which there were several given the two colors per hat and several joined yarn balls along the way) and give them a quick water bath. I wet blocked the hats flat to even out all the stitches. It always makes such a difference even if a project doesn’t initially look like it needs a lot of blocking attention.

Two cactus hats soaking in water to prepare for a light wet blocking session.

I’ve already completed my next hat from the book, this time inspired from Carlsbad Cavern National Park. The winding cables bring a lot of texture to the fabric. It’s nice that there is a variety of techniques used in the hat patterns in Knitting National Parks.

Cables define the Carlsbad Caverns National Park hat.

What goes better together than a long road trip around some National Parks and coordinating car friendly knitting projects? Not much! Enter your guide to Knitting the National Parks, a book by Nancy Bates published in 2022. Within the 271 pages of beautiful beanies Nancy takes us across the country and shows us breathtaking landscapes and cleverly designed hats.

Photo features the cover of the Knitting the National Parks book. Four different photos are displayed on the cover, the top two are national parks and the bottom two are knitted hats. — Knitting the National Parks by Nancy Bates. The cover photos do a great job of pulling you in!

The first official national park (Yellowstone National Park) was designated by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872. Since then, there have been 429 national parks dedicated to preserve nature and history for future generations. Knitting the National Parks celebrates 63 of these harmonious and unique spaces.

I first came across Knitting the National Parks after returning home from a trip to Saguaro National Park in Arizona. Upon seeing the book on display at my local library I was interested to find out if any of the large cactus I had just seen made an appearance. I was not disappointed! The 35th hat in the book takes inspiration from Saguaro National Park, with outlines of cactus rising from the brim of the colorwork beanie. That was enough for me to bring the book home! Afterward while looking through the patterns there are several other hats that are beautiful and interesting. They will make it on to my future project list! If you want to read some other book reviews check out my posts on Crochet Donut Buddies and Crochet Iconic Women.

The Best Stops Along the Way

The book contains high quality, glossy photos of each hat. The photographs in general do a nice job of capturing the main characteristics of the hat, not just capturing a pretty photo of a model wearing the hat. Most projects have at least 2 photos of the hat from different angles. The designs range from colorwork charts to cables and even a lace beanie. The majority of hats incorporate colorwork inspired from views found at each national park. My favorites include colorwork that mimics striations in rocks seen at Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado and the swirling snow covered landscapes of Wrangell-St. Elias in Alaska. Several patterns use a combination of color and texture to add unique elements to the hats.

Close up view of a partially finished hat. The hat is a light cream color and shows cables representing cave formations. — Texture is a large player in the cabled beanie inspired by Carlsbad National Park.

Beware the Detour

Since my most recently visited park was Saguaro, I cast on a cactus inspired hat. While knitting the hats I ran into a few minor detours on my way to finishing the project. The gauge for the hats is given in stitches per inch around, but not rows per inch vertically. I matched the stitch gauge, but the first hat ended up being three inches too long. Since the circumference was a good fit I didn’t want to adjust the needle size. I was able to rip back and adjust the pattern and decreases slightly to produce a hat that fit better. Note that there is one size for each pattern, given to fit most adults. Slightly different sizes are achievable using larger or smaller needles. Patterns might be adjustable for kids sizes, but the knitter will need to calculate the stitches and adjust the charts.

The patterns in the book rely on charts, which take up an entire page. This makes them easy to see. Charts distinguish different stitches based on color (for colorwork patterns) and standard symbols. There is a legend appearing with each chart for easy reference. However, on a few patterns the colors used are not easy to distinguish from the grid lines in the chart. Another small issue is the row number labels are not centered on the rows for some of the patterns. This makes it difficult to track which number row is the active row without counting up from the bottom.

Extra Features

Knitting the National Parks begins with an overview of the book and the inspiration behind the designs. Then, Nancy Bates gives her advice on choosing yarn and how to properly wet block a finished hat for best results. Selecting the right yarn is important for projects where color choices and textures bring the landscapes to life.

Additionally, not only does color play a large role in a finished object, but different color combinations can create a variety of pleasant hats with the same pattern. The Saguaro National Park hat offered ideas for variations with colors to show both day and night time views. Read more about my adventure knitting the Saguaro National Park hat here. Several other hat patterns in the book contain tips and ideas to make more than one hat from the same base pattern. This extends the utility of the book beyond the original 63 patterns.

Hat featuring Saguaro cactus. The cactus are black and the background color is a variegated pink/blue/yellow to represent a sunset color scheme. — Color takes the hat from shadows and sunset to broad daylight, all with the same pattern.

A hat featuring Saguaro cactus. The light green cactus stand out against a blue background. — Color takes the hat from shadows and sunset to broad daylight, all with the same pattern.

Nancy Bates goes beyond the knitting of a hat with some patterns that call for embroidering extra details on the finished objects. This gives some hats more depth and allows for each one to be absolutely unique. There is not a guide to embroidery techniques in the book, but suggestions are included for how to complete each project.

Final Thoughts

Going through Knitting the National Parks, there were 21 different hats that I would consider knitting. I chose those based on my familiarity with the particular National Park and the design of the hat. Beyond those, there are a handful of others that I really enjoyed and thought were clever! Considering how many patterns I found attractive, I think the book is a good value and retails at $35.00 in the US. That works out to $0.55 per pattern! I would recommend this book for someone who is familiar with knitting in the round and reading charts. The patterns are easy to follow and they produce beanie style hats that should fit the average adult.

Month: April 2024

A Colorful Cactus Hat for Any Time of The Day