Check out Kristin Nicholas’ New Fair Isle Hat Class

I don’t know how the online crafty classroom Creativebug escaped my notice for so long, but I was led there by something earlier this week and noticed that they have a brand-new class from Kristin Nicholas all about knitting a basic Fair Isle hat.

You should know from the outset that basic for Kristin still involves three colors, and some duplicate stitch to make it look more complex, but this really is a pretty easy pattern and, better yet, a pretty pattern.

Creativebug, it turns out, offers classes in all sorts of skills, from knitting and crochet to apothecary (soap and essential oil use), jewelry making, paper crafts, printmaking and more.

Some of the classes are available for free, while premium content (such as Kristin’s classes; she also has one on more general colorwork knitting) is viewable for $24.99 a month if billed monthly (or as little as $16.99 a month if billed six months at a time). Unfortunately you can’t buy a single class if you just want to see what their content is like, but you can look at the free stuff to get a feel for it.

Is anyone a member of Creativebug? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[Photo via Creativebug.]

Next Pattern:

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]

Knitting Patterns for Little Chicks

Tiny Hens to Knit

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