A Super Warm Headband to Knit in a Flash

I love knit headbands and earwarmers because they are almost as warm as wearing a hat without having to actually wear a hat. Since I’m always cold, even inside the house, I really should experiment with wearing a thick earwarmer like this one inside in the cold weather (I already wear fingerless gloves, often thick socks, usually under a blanket).

The Heartbreaker Earwarmer from Mandi Coffeen is worked in two colors of super bulky yarn. Use a bit that’s left over from another project to make the slip stitch pattern that looks like hearts in the middle of the design. Each round of hearts takes about 3 yards, so you could even use a bunch of different colors to make an ombre or rainbow color scheme.

In fact, since it only uses 40 or 50 yards of yarn (37 to 46 meters), you can use leftovers for both colors of yarn. Make a bunch and use all your super bulky stash.

The pattern is written in two sizes, and is easy to adjust if you’d like to make it bigger or smaller. The designer rates it as intermediate but it shouldn’t be too difficult if you’re comfortable working slip stitches and knitting in the round. The pattern includes photos to help you through the technique.

Even better, the pattern also includes a bonus pattern for a coffee cup cozy that uses the same fun slip stitch pattern. you can bet your drink will stay warm and your hand protected with such a thick cozy.

Either or both of these designs would make great gifts to knit up for anyone in your life, and once you get the pattern down you can stitch them up in a flash for bulk knitting (for teacher gifts, coworkers, family, etc.).

You can find the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Mandi Coffeen]

A Super Warm Headband to Knit in a Flash

Knitting Pattern -The Ice Diamond Headband

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Stitch dictionaries are a fun way to learn new-to-you knitting stitch patterns or to take a deep dive into a particular technique. Debbie Tomkies offers 100 cable stitch designs and thoughts on how to incorporate them into projects in her Cable Knitting Stitch Dictionary.

Each stitch pattern is shown in a large swatch photo and with written and charted instructions. Any special stitches are included on the page. The stitches are rated on a difficulty scale of 1 to 3, and the pattern notes also indicate how many extra stitches you should add to a project if you’re going to work this cable (since cables pull the fabric closer together you need to compensate for that) as well as how many stitches and rows are in the repeat if you want to design a project yourself.

The cables are arranged into sections: classic cables, combinations, all-over panels, creative cables, motifs and panels and cabled edges and borders.

It’s fun to flip through the designs to think about projects you can add a single cable or two to or make with an allover cabled design. Or you could make swatches of different cables and sew them together into a pillow cover or a throw.

At the back of the book there’s a section on general cable knitting techniques, reading charts, working swatches and avoiding errors (though it mentions working the wrong number of rows between cable turns, it doesn’t share how to count rows between cables to avoid this mistake).

It also talks about how to design your own cables, combine cables in a project, choose the right yarn and needles and determine how many more stitches you need to cast on when working cables instead of stockinette stitch. There’s also a glossary of symbols and abbreviations you may find in cable knitting and other patterns.

The book provides a good overview of things you can do with cables, as well as some fun things you might not have tried like infinity cables and horizontal cables. It’s a great book for a designer who likes to work with cables or a knitter who wants to play with different stitches in their projects.

About the book: 176 pages, paperback, 100 stitch patterns. Published 2024 by David & Charles. Suggested retail price $26.99.

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