Great Ways to Stay Inspired in 2015, from Knitter’s Review

Clara Parkes has been a fixture in the knitting world for 14 years, giving the rest of us tons of great information about yarn, tools and the knitting life.

She said in a recent post that it’s easy to keep her job fun and inspired, and that there are five main things she does to keep the creative spark.

I’ll let her give you all the details, but this is a great collection of things to read, listen to and try.

I’m now in my eighth year of writing about knitting, and I know there’s so much more to learn and do and write about — and always will be more — than I can ever possibly cover. That’s overwhelming, but it can also be a lot of fun to dive in and explore whatever’s interesting me at the time.

I really want to get into podcasts this year because I know there’s some great conversations happening around them (and Clara offers links to a few in her post).

I’d love to hear what you do for inspiration, for your knitting or other creations.

[Photo via Knitter’s Review.]

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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