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Homeless Man Knits Hats for Others

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Homeless man loom knits hats for others in need.I know we all love a heartwarming story about knitting, right? This one comes to us via the Medford Mail Tribune (that’s in Oregon) and profiles Trinidad Flores, a homeless man who spends his time loom knitting hats to give to other homeless people and for babies.

He’s knit more than 1,000 hats, and he gives them away to people he meets on the street, as well as to a local WIC office and a hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

He says he’s been homeless for about three years, and he started knitting to help combat his depression. Local business owners support him and give him donations, and many know him only as “the hat man.”

“When you give a person something productive to do, it changes the mindset. When you change the mindset, other things start to change, too,” he told the paper, saying that he might like to start his own nonprofit to teach homeless people to knit for charity.

What a lovely story, proof of the power of knitting and the fact that anyone can help other people with the work of their hands.

[Photo by Jamie Lusch of the Mail Tribune.]

Comments

  2. This really warms my heart. I have done the same thing in my area, Modesto, Ca.(Really Ceres, but no one knows where that is.). I have a lot of yarn , I would love to give to THE HAT MAN,as soon as I get the extra money to send to him. Of course I would have to have an address. We are planning a move to Arkansas. It would be wonderful if I didn’t have to move it. Please let me know, Thank You.Mary

Have you read?

Knit a Pet Bed on a Knitting Machine

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).