Help Stomp Out Bullying with Blue Hats

Lion Brand Yarn has teamed up with STOMP Out Bullying (a national nonprofit aimed at changing the culture for kids to reduce bullying, cyberbulling and other forms of abuse) on a project that knitters and crocheters can support, called #HatNotHate.

This antibullying campaign aims to have knitters and crocheters produce blue hats to be worn by themselves and others on the World Day of Bullying Prevention, which is October 1. (Non-crafty folks are asked to wear blue that day). Lion Brand suggests making a hat for yourself, making others to donate to a school and explain what they mean, and spreading the word to others in person and on social media.

They’ve also collected 22 knit and crochet hat patterns worked in blue yarn, and are donating a portion of the proceeds from sales of blue yarn from their website to the cause. For knitters I love the Pike Street Hat, and the Nevins Street Hat is a sweetly slouchy crochet project.

This sounds like a great project for yarn crafters to get involved in to help raise awareness of an important issue for our kids.

[Photo: Lion Brand Yarn.]

Next Pattern:

I feel like I haven’t shared many knitting machine patterns lately, probably because I haven’t been using my knitting machines much lately. (I finally made space for them to live on the bookshelf in my office, and now that they have a “place” it’s almost like I forgot they existed for a while.)

But I did recently make a little cat bed, that surely would work for a small dog, too.

This one uses two different sizes of knitting machine: a larger one (it could be any in the 40-48 needle range) and a 22 pin.

The larger machine is used in flat panel mode to make the bottom pillow like part of the bed, while the smaller machine makes a long tube that is used around the edges as the sort of walls of the cat bed.

For stuffing I used a bit of leftover quilt batting for the pillow, and some cut up old T-shirts for the tube.

You can use any worsted weight yarn you like (I used two colors of Big Twist Pound+, which comes in huge skeins that weigh more than a pound). Acrylic or cotton yarn is nice for washablity, but you’ll be cranking for a while so make sure you use a yarn your machine likes so it’s not too much of a struggle.

You can grab the pattern for this cat bed over at Our Daily Craft. I’m sorry to report the pictured is as close as a cat has gotten to it so far, but maybe your cats like to be cozy more than mine do?

If you’re looking for more options for cute handmade places for your cats and little dogs to rest, check out this roundup of knit pet beds. I still want to knit one by hand but the machine version was definitely a faster option (especially good since my cats are ungrateful).

Next Pattern:

Have you read?