Get Ready for Christmas in July with Red Heart

I am unwilling to think about Christmas at a time like this, but if you like to make holiday gifts or decorations for your home, now would actually be a great time to get started.

Red Heart is sharing patterns to inspire you with a month full of Christmas in July projects.

They just opened the first week, and each week this month there will be a few more patterns to work from.

This is for knitting and crochet, and there’s only one knitting pattern so far — a scarf for a dog! — but the colors on the crochet projects are super inspiring and might get you thinking about knitting a colorful tree skirt or afghan with a different pattern.

Are you thinking about holiday knitting yet? I’d love to know what you’re working on!

[Photo: Red Heart.]

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

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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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