Free Pattern: Easy Christmas Hat

I for one am not ready to be thinking about the winter holidays, but if you’re the Christmas in July sort, Craftown has a new pattern for a knit hat designed by Melanie Smith that you might want to take a look at.

The Tis the Season Hat is sort of the hat version of a paperbag skirt. It has some shaping as you work up to the crown, but instead of closing up the top you bind off the stitches normally. A round of eyelets makes room for a braided cord that cinches up the top.

Of course worked in different colors (or even not) this would be a fun hat to wear throughout the colder months. Only trouble with this pattern is that it doesn’t give gauge, so make sure you knit a swatch and see if casting on 80 stitches will give you the size hat you need.

[Photo via Craftown.]

Looking for more Christmas themed Knitting patterns? Check out some of our favorite Knitting patterns on Etsy and

These Christmas Knitting Pattern Books on Amazon

I guess I must have had this pattern on my mind, because I had chosen this log cabin blanket recipe to write about, promptly forgot about it and a couple of weeks later started knitting a log cabin blanket using all my pink yarn.

It might stay pink if it makes it to baby blanket sized, or I might add in some pastel green and blue, too, to make a bigger blanket. We’ll see. I’m also holding several strands of yarn together to make a kind of bulky yarn, which means it’s deeply satisfying how much yarn is used even as the project is still relatively small.

In Kristen Finlay’s version, DK weight yarn scraps (or fingering/sock yarn held double) are used to make a simple scrappy log cabin blanket that’s lighter weight than my version. Log cabin is a great technique for knitters of any skill level because it’s worked in garter stitch. The only not completely basic technique you need for log cabin knitting is picking up stitches.

If you’ve never worked a log cabin knitting project before, this is a good introduction, and it is really nice to use all your yarn scraps in one big project you’ll use for years to come.

If you use a lot of DK weight yarn you can keep building on it whenever you finish a project, or if you use more worsted weight you can do the same thing with it, it will just be a little bigger starting out than the pattern calls for. How big it gets is totally up to you.

I have really been enjoying working on my log cabin project, and it’s my current sitting at my desk and need a break knit (do you have one of those or is it just me?).

Ready to start your own log cabin blanket knitting project? You can grab the free pattern from Kristen Finlay on Ravelry.

Need more log cabin inspiration? Check out more log cabin knitting patterns.

[Photo: Kristen Finlay]

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