Tag: knitting

A Colorful Cactus Hat for Any Time of The Day

A Colorful Cactus Hat for Any Time of The Day

Posted on by Kayla

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.
Knitting the National Parks: Get Ready For the Ultimate Road Trip

Knitting the National Parks: Get Ready For the Ultimate Road Trip

Posted on by Kayla

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.
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.

Explode into Color: How To Define Colorwork Knitting

Explode into Color: How To Define Colorwork Knitting

Posted on by Kayla

Have you ever tried knitting with multiple colors at one time? It can be confusing! Keeping the different colors from becoming a tangled mess takes practice and patience. What doesn’t help is that multiple terms can define colorwork knitting. Stranded knitting, Fair Isle, and intarsia are among popular vocabulary. How do you get better at a technique when you aren’t sure what to research?! I’ve done the groundwork for you. Below are some tips and definitions to help you spend less time in the knitters glossary and more time making progress on your project.

What in the Word

To learn more about recommended ways of working with multiple colors it is important to know how you define your colorwork knitting project. Stranded knitting, fair isle, and intarsia all have slight variations that make all the difference in a final project. Let’s break down each one to get a better understanding of what each technique does.

Work that Colorwork

Show me your colors! Pictures of sweaters covered in explosions of colors can create envy in the crafting world. What technique do these knitters use to create such stunning and colorful projects? Each of these projects is a variation on colorwork knitting: any knitting where two or more colors are in use at the same time. Pretty simple! Fair Isle, stranded knitting, and intarsia are all types of colorwork knitting. Typically, there are two or more colors on each row of knitting to be considered colorwork. With this definition, rows that are stripes of alternating colors don’t count here. That doesn’t mean stripes don’t have great uses, and they can be a great way to introduce variation into a project without adding too much complexity.

Colorwork knitted hat displaying Pac-Man and associated ghosts. Good example of ways to define colorwork knitting as the bottom band of blue ghosts on a white background and the center band of yellow Pac-Man and black background were done in stranded knitting and the top ban showing one blue and one orange ghost on a white background was done in intarsia.
The top of this hat was done in intarsia because each ghost was a separate color and there was no need to carry each color all the way around the hat. The center and bottom sections were done in stranded knitting where both colors in use were knitted or carried across the rows.

Stranded at the Drive In

Don’t despair like Danny from Grease, with a little practice you won’t be branded a fool in your colorwork projects. To start, the terms stranded knitting and Fair Isle are interchangeable. In this technique, multiple colors are in use within a single row of knitting. Usually the colors are present in a few stitches at a time, and the color not in use is carried along the backside of the knitting. This creates strands of yarn along the wrong side of the work.

One important thing to watch for is the tension of those strands across the back of the knitting. A tight tension causes the front of the project to pucker. Too loose of a tension and holes can form where the color change occurs. When executed correctly, these projects are doubly warm because the strands add an extra layer. The additional warmth is great for winter hats and mittens, like my Ladybug Mittens, which are a great introduction to stranded knitting.

Now Entering Intarsia

Another type of colorwork is intarsia. When I hear the word “intarsia” images of Narnia fill my imagination. Maybe that is because the technique invokes images of mysterious, challenging, beautiful works of art. Or maybe my mind wanders in odd ways. Intarsia involves working each block of color with a separate strand of yarn. For example, if a pattern has four sections, red, blue, white, and blue, use a separate strand of yarn for each section without carrying the yarn across the entire row or breaking off the yarn at each color change. This is a good technique for designs that do not cover the entire width of a project and for projects with large blocks of the same color. Projects like this take more patience and planning to keep all active colors untangled, but the end results can be stunning!

Example of intarsia knitting, a yellow square with a pink elephant in the middle. The pink elephant is centered and creates a separate block of color.
This elephant square was double knit, but shows an example of when intarsia would be used. The elephant doesn’t take up the entire width of the square, so the three sections, yellow side 1, pink elephant, and yellow side 2, would be knit with separate strands of yarn without carrying yarn across a section.

Conclusion

Now that you know more about how to define colorwork knitting, are you ready to cast on? A plethora of colors add dimension to any project. Colorwork of any variety is a fun skill to practice in your craft. Try out different techniques to find what works for you.

Oh Baby! What Baby Gift to Make?

Oh Baby! What Baby Gift to Make?

Posted on by Kayla

Choosing a knitting or crocheting project for babies can be an exciting and overwhelming struggle. What baby gift should you make? There are thousands of patterns aimed at babies and new parents. Some are quick and easy, others are all intensive projects, and all are labors of love.

I recently learned that a friend from college is expecting their first child. My first thought was, of course, what baby gift to make! Baby blankets, sweaters, softies, hats; there are so many choices! How do you choose what project to cast on for new babies?

Tick Tock Time Constraints

The first obstacle to tackle is time. How long do you have until the baby will arrive? Do you want the gift to be ready for a newborn, or wait until the child is a few months old? Crafting takes time, and it is stressful when done under a time crunch. Knitting and crocheting should be enjoyable! If time is not on your side, choose a smaller project like a softie or an easy sweater.

Baby blanket shown blocking in the grass. The blanket is yellow with pink animals inside small squares.
Blanket made as a baby gift for a friend.

By far the most time intensive project I have ever done was this baby blanket for an animal loving friend. It was double knit and had different animal patterns. There seemed to be miles of yarn involved, and many, many months of knitting!

I have also made several baby sweaters for various little ones in my life. You can read more about the sweaters I have done in my blog post Goldilocks and the Many Sweaters and see how I tried blocking baby sweaters in Lessons in Sweater Blocking.

Practicality, Please!

The next question to answer is how practical do you want your present to be for new parents? A gorgeous cabled sweater is a lovely item, but if the baby is born in June a warm sweater will not be very useful. Babies grow like weeds! A sweater that fits today will be too small in a few months. Softies and stuffed animals are always adorable, but most babies don’t interact with them until they are at least a few months old. This doesn’t mean that cute crochet bunnies aren’t a great gift! Emma the Bunny from Edward’s Menagerie is one of my favorite softies and would make a great gift! Just keep in mind the intended recipient and think about how the parents might receive different types of gifts.

If you are interested in reading more about Edward’s Menagerie you can read my book review. I just did another character out of the book, Angharad the Donkey, for a friend whose school mascot was a donkey.

A donkey made in school colors for a friend from college and their new baby.

Baby Yarn for Baby Gifts

Once you have a pattern picked out, the next step is choosing the right yarn. Babies can have sensitive skin, so choosing a yarn that is soft and intended for a young audience is a great idea. I enjoy using Bernal Baby Yarn and Baby Bee. Texture of the yarn is important, make sure to choose the right type for your project! That fluffy cloud like yarn makes cozy winter baby blankets, but is not ideal for light Lacey sweaters. When choosing a knitting or crocheting project for a baby, try to pick a yarn that is machine washable. New parents will appreciate this! Yarn that requires special care and blocking does not meet the busy schedule requirements of new parents.

You should be ready to create the perfect gift for the new baby in your life! choosing a knitting or crocheting project for a baby can be difficult, but some forethought can save a lot of headache down the road. Baby gifts are so much fun to make! Do you have a favorite project for new babies?