David Suzuki Calls for Knitters to #knit4monarchs

The David Suzuki Foundation, which provides science-based education, research and policy work in Canada, says that because the population of monarch butterflies has fallen so drastically, humans need to step in and help.

The solution? Knitting chrysalises for caterpillars to make their cocoons in.

As you might have guessed, given what day it is, this is actually a serious April Fools joke. Yes, monarchs are in trouble, but unfortunately this isn’t a problem we can solve with our needles.

The real solution, the foundation says, is planting more milkweed. Though there is a caterpillar and chrysalis pattern on Ravelry if you really want to knit one, it just won’t actually help the butterflies.

Have you seen any other knitting related April Fool’s gags? I’d love to hear about them.

Next Pattern:

I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve shared any patterns for our circular knitting machine users. I know these devices aren’t for everyone but even though I much prefer knitting by hand, it is kind of fun to crank things out on these machines.

One of the most common early projects for a circular knitting machine is a scarf. Which makes sense, because it’s just one long tube and you can make it as long as you like.

One problem that comes from knitting scarves on the circular knitting machine, though, is that it can be hard to know how to finish the ends of the tube so that it looks like a finished scarf and not a tube of knitting.

If you’re not a knitter or crocheter, the most basic way to finish a circular knitting machine scarf is just by cinching up the ends and maybe adding a pompom to each end to cover up any hole that might still be visible at the end.

But if you have a little knitting or crochet skill or are willing to learn, there are a lot of different options for closing up the ends of a scarf. And this would also be true if you hand knit a tube scarf!

I recently wrote a post over at Our Daily Craft that includes five different ways to close up the ends of a tube scarf:

the simple cinching method mentioned above
sewing the stitches together
three needle bind off
grafting
crochet bind off

Grafting is my favorite because I feel like it gives the cleanest, closest to a seamless look. If you’re a knitter you may already know how to do it but even if you don’t it’s not that hard to learn.

Do you knit tube scarves by hand or machine? I’d love to know how you like to finish them!

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