Alice Springs Hosts Celebration of Hats

Funky hats abounded in Alice Springs, Australia, with the Beanie Festival and Exhibition that took place late last month. (This article says it goes on through mid-July but I’m not seeing that anywhere on the event’s website, but it’s cool regardless.)

Entrants from around Australia and as far away as Germany, Japan and the United States sent hats to compete for prizes and the chance to be purchased in the marketplace. Organizers said there were about 7,000 hats on display and that they expected about 5,000 of those to sell.

The exhibition highlights indigenous crafters, and workshops are held through the year to pass on beanie-making skills to people throughout the countryside.

Visit the expo’s website to see more of the amazing hats that took prizes this year related to the theme “Out of this World.” The hat pictured above was the winner in the stitching category. It’s called “Let Me Bring You Down to Earth” and was stitched by Shaz Harrison-Williams of Tasmania. Beautiful work!

[Photo via BeanieFest.]

Looking for more Knitted Beanie patterns? Check out these Knitting patterns we found on Etsy.

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Specific to knitters, you can join our Knitting Patterns Only group to get, well, knitting patterns, ask questions and gain inspiration for what to knit next.

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A Terry’s Chocolate Orange is a classic Christmas gift in the UK that has become more popular in America as well. And if you know knitters, you know they’re going to cover something in knitting if they can, so there are lots of different Christmas themed chocolate orange knitting patterns out there (which you could use for an actual orange as well if that’s in your traditions).

Chocolate orange covers seem to be one of those projects where a designer makes a lot of variations on the theme, so we’ll just touch on a few here but you can further explore the designer’s works if you like what you see.

Wild Welsh Knitting has a cute little set of orange covers that look like little drawstring bags. There’s a snowman, a Christmas tree and a robing, and they are all worked in DK weight yarn. This designer has lots of cute little Christmas projects, not just for oranges.

Wendy Morgan has a bunch of chocolate orange cover knitting patterns, not just for Christmas, but for our purposes I wanted to point out the set that includes a Santa, reindeer and Christmas pudding. It’s available on Ravelry, and the pieces are worked flat using DK weight yarn.

Rebecca Roberts is another designer on Ravelry who does a bunch of Christmas chocolate orange cover knitting patterns, but I wanted to share this post box one because I think it’s really cute and not a design I’ve seen from others. It has a little bird on top and you could change up the colors to make it a TARDIS (yes I know that’s a phone box, not a mail box, but still) if you wanted.

Made by Marianna has a great set of her Christmas orange cover knitting patterns available on Etsy if you want to make a bunch of different designs. This collection includes six patterns: a Christmas pudding, Santa hat, snowman, Christmas trees, elf hat and Santa’s belt. The Christmas tree is shown above. All of the patterns use DK yarn.

Secret Garden England has a bunch of cute holiday patterns, too, but if you’re stitching for someone who doesn’t have a lot of Christmas cheer, you’ll want to make this Grinch one. The details are so cute, and while you’ll need more supplies to add all those things, it’s well worth the effort!

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