Free Pattern for a Breton Striped Hat

There’s something totally summery about the Breton stripe, which was originally designed for the French navy but was taken over by nautically inspired fashionistas for decades.

Kat from Just Crafty Enough took the stripe as her inspiration for the latest Iron Craft challenge and whipped up a darling striped hat.

It’s a great hat for spring because it’s snug and short, not completely covering the ears. I love that the dark stripe has a bit of sparkle, too, which brings some sass to a classic design. You could of course work the stripes in whatever color you wanted if you weren’t trying for the nautical look.

She also worked some handwarmers in the same striped pattern so check back on her site for those, too!

[Photo via Just Crafty Enough.]

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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