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Free Pattern: Go Team Mittens

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team mittens just crafty enoughIf you’re spending the day in front of the television watching your favorite college football team (or, heck, even at the game) the perfect project for spectating is the Go Team Mittens from Just Crafty Enough.

These basic mittens — sized for an adult woman — can be worked in solids or stripes, according to your needs for representing your team. Example charts for Michigan and Minnesota are provided, as well as a blank chart you can use to draw up your own design, whether it’s for a sports team, a person’s initials or some other design of your choosing.

Now’s as good a time as any to mention its likely you’ll have to draw your own chart if you want to sport a team logo on your mittens or anything else you knit. The names, images and slogans associated with college and professional sports teams are licensed, trademarked and carefully (you might say aggressively) protected by their owners. If you find someone selling — or even giving away — charts with licensed images on them, what they’re doing is illegal. Usually the copyright holder won’t go after someone providing patterns for free or individual crafters who’ve made something for their own purposes, but it has happened.

[Photo by Kathy Lewinski via Just Crafty Enough.]

Just for fun as I was writing this I looked up the licensing guidelines for my school, the University of Arkansas. They helpfully have a guide for crafters (crafting sports stuff is a big deal around here) and you can get a license to sell hand-crafting Razorbacks products for $100 a year, plus $25 for labels to put on your products indicating they are officially licensed. This allows a crafter to sell to individuals but not to wholesale their products, and more hoops must be jumped through for crafters who sell more than 500 items or make more than $2,500 a year selling hog-emblazoned items. I think I’ll stick to red and white stripes (Pantone color 200!) just to be safe.

Jorid Linvik’s Big Book of Knitted Mittens: 45 Distinctive Scandinavian Designs is sure to inspire you to want to knit some fun mittens, whether embellished with classic motifs like birds, hearts, moose and classic colorwork designs or those with a more modern feel liks guitars and skulls, a giraffe, penguins or a turquoise lizard.

The book includes a lot of instructions on how to make your mittens come out right, including a discussion of how different gauges can give you different sizes of mittens (and which mittens can be worked to different sizes for kids and adults). The charts are a little different from others you might have seen in that they show how to divide the stitches on the needles and where to place the thumb.

Looking for more knitting patterns for Mittens? Check these out on Etsy. 

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Comments

  2. I am unable to get to the actual pattern for the Men’s Version of these great mittens. Can any one please help!

Have you read?

Michaels Acquires Joann Intellectual Property; Joann Website Now Forwards to Michaels

 

 

Craft retailer Michaels has acquired the intellectual property and private label brands of now-defunct retailer Joann, according to a media release, and the Joann website now forwards to Michaels. 

The releases states that Michaels will be developing the “beloved Big Twist® brands as part of the Michaels portfolio.” It also notes plans to expand its offerings in the fabric, sewing and yarn categories, with more than 600 new products being added. 

“We’re honored to have the opportunity to welcome JOANN customers into our creative community and are committed to delivering the selection, value, and inspiration they are looking for at Michaels,” David Boone, CEO of Michaels, said in the release. 

Specific to yarn, the company notes it has plans to expand its yarn selection by 25 percent this year, including releasing more than 60 new private-label Loops & Threads products beginning this month, expanding offerings of Lion Brand and the Yarnspirations family of brands, and welcoming Big Twist yarns. 

The release specifically mentions Big Twist Value Plus, Big Twist Twinkle, Big Twist Posh and Big Twist Baby Bear, and notes that the offerings are “now being developed as part of Michaels portfolio of brands and will be available in-stores and online later this year.”

No word on what this means for Herrschners, which previously announced it would carry Big Twist. Its page announcing the news still says “at this time we are not able to release details on specific Big Twist varieties or colors, or the exact date the yarn will be available to order” and encourages signing up for email updates.

This news comes just days after the final closing of the last Joann locations and the appearance of a message on their website talking about “stitching up something new.” The Joann website now forwards to a landing page for craft retailer Michaels. 

“Welcome Joann customers,” it says at the top. “We’ve got your go-to essentials and so much more.” The page also notes “everyone is welcome at our craft table” and says the website is a source for “fabrics, yarn, notions & more.”

Further down the page it says “With JOANN stores closing, Michaels is excited to welcome new makers, crafters, and sewing enthusiasts into our community” and has a string of links to product categories these shoppers might be looking for. It says Michaels carries “many of the favorites that Joann customers love” including patterned fabric, yarn, ribbons and notions. 

The release calls this a “dedicated landing page” with a “curated assortment of products” they think are relevant to the Joann shopper. 

If you go directly to Micheaels.com, you see their regular website but there is a link at the top of the page for Joann customers that leads to the same page linked above. 

The release doesn’t mention opening any new stores in towns left without a craft store thanks to the Joann closure. It does note they have 1,300 stores in 49 states and in Canada, and they have both US and Canada-facing websites. 

What do you think of this news? It’s not the exciting future I’d hoped for with Joanns cryptic announcement, but I know legions of knitters and crocheters will be happy to know Big Twist will live on, and other crafters will probably be happy about expanded selection at Michaels.