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A Look Behind the Scenes at Noro

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noro yarn in the makingA Japanese television program called “Great Gear” recently featured a look into yarn producer Eisaku Noro’s production facilities, and it’s a great bit of eye candy for lovers of knitting and color.

The show calls the yarns “exquisitely colored” and Noro says each of his yarn blends uses 10 to 20 different colors, with the hope of emulating the colors of nature. He says originality is at the top of their list of priorities, which is evident in the company’s lovely yarns.

The company has been around for 40 years and is now distributed in 30 countries. It’s a lot of fun to see how this yarn comes together, especially looking at the stripes lined up as unspun wool.

If you want to see the video, visit the Great Gear website, click on “Hand Crafts Special 2” and you’ll find it there. I’d love to know what you think of the video or of Noro. I just finished a sweater in it for my next book and it was so much fun to knit!

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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]

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