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.

Looking to buy your Yarn online? Check out these online yarn specials.

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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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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