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Video Tutorial: The Seafoam Stitch

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It’s a lot of fun to intentionally drop stitches when you’re knitting. Dropped stitches open up the work without actually increasing or decreasing at all, so it’s a great skill for newer knitters who might be afraid of yarnovers and decreases. I actually just used a simple version of this technique a few weeks ago when I knit my Garter Dropped Stitch Scarf you can check out at About.

seafoam scarfPurposefully dropping stitches can get a little fancier than that, though, if you wrap the yarn around the needle more than one extra time and/or use different numbers of wraps on different stitches across the row. That’s how the Seafoam Stitch is made, and it looks like a lot of fun.

You can check out a video of the technique at Knitting Daily. The demo shows it as the edging of a shawl, but wouldn’t it make a great season-shifting scarf or wrap all on its own? For example, this really cute Seafom Scarf from Put a Sock in It?

Have you ever used dropped stitches in a pattern? Spill it!

[Photo by Put a Sock in It.]

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Comments

  2. I have made a couple of scarves using a dropped stitch. It IS fun! and creates a lovely lacy effect. Found the patterns on Lion Brand’s website I think.

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Knit a Hat with a Flock of Chickens

It’s well known (among knitters, anyway) that knitters seem to love chickens as a motif and a subject of our knitting projects. The Emotional Support Chicken and all the other chicken knitting patterns are just the beginning of our devotion to farmyard friends. 

For example, there’s Farmer Dennis’ Chicken Hat. This free pattern from Stacy Black is a simple worsted weight beanie sized for adults and decorate with a couple of little rounds of colorwork fences and a flock of chickens strutting around the body of the hat. 

You don’t need a lot of any of the colors for the chickens, their facial features or the fences, so this is a great project for using little leftover bits from other projects. The main color for the body of the hat is less than a skein using the yarn suggested, so you might just have everything you need in your house to start stitching up this hat right away. 

The colorwork is presented as a chart, with a 16 stitch section that repeats around the body of the hat. All the color changes are shown on the chart but I think it would be easier to knit the whole chicken in the chicken color and add the eye, beak and other features using duplicate stitch when the knitting is done. That way you don’t have to carry those yarns around the whole hat for just a few stitches. 

As the name suggests, the original hat was given to a farmer who shared their eggs, but anyone who raises chickens or just has a thing for the fowl is sure to love this cute hat. It wouldn’t be too difficult for someone new to stranded knitting or reading charts to make, either, so if that’s you, give it a try. 

The pattern is available for free on Ravelry. 

[Photo: Stacy Black]

Knitting Patterns for Little Chicks

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