Knitting

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Book Review: Knitting the National Parks

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America’s National Parks have inspired artists and regular folks as long as they have existed, and Nancy Bates found inspiration from the parks for her knit hat collection Knitting the National Parks.

The book includes mostly colorwork hat patterns for each of 63 national parks, from the well known (Yosemite, Arches, the Petrified Forest) to the obscure (Isle Royale, Kobuk Valley, Voyageurs).

Each hat includes design elements drawn from the park itself, such as the pink bands of pegmatite found amid the darker rocks of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, or the ancient bristlecone pine tress of Great Basin.

Embellishments like bobbles, textured stitches and surface embroidery add more details to many of the hats.

These patterns are best for intermediate knitters because of all the colorwork and the fact that all patterns are charted. Almost all of the hats call for worsted weight yarn, and while many of the hats use between two and four colors, there are several that use more. (You can see many of the patterns on her website.)

The notes for each pattern explain what inspired it. Out of the context of the book, though, these are just nice hat patterns that don’t always read like they were inspired by a park. Acadia’s birch-patterned hat could be a blue sky with clouds if worked in another colorway, for example, while Wind Cave’s calcite formations look like animal print.

These hats are a great opportunity to plan with colorwork and other design elements even if the hat you like isn’t tied to a park you’ve been to. And learning more about the parks might just inspire a bit of wanderlust as you plan your next national park outing. Just don’t forget to pack your knitting!

About the Book: 272 pages, hardcover, 63 patterns. Published August 2022, Weldon Owen. Retail price $35.

Comments

  1. This is the first book I’ve paid RETAIL for in years. I love it. So many choices, such pretty patterns. Most of the kits [and there are not kits for every park yet] are sold out, which is too bad. Kits are $36/each. I plan on making some for various friends/family over the years.

Have you read?

Easy Knit Baskets to Use All Your Stash

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts. 

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts. 

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects. 

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version. 

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want. 

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do. 

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like. 

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.