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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.]

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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 Stunning Bestiary Scarf

I don’t even know what to say about this amazing knitting pattern. The Bestiary Scarf from Monstra & Mirabilia is so full of details it’s a little intimidating to talk about. 

It features, as the designer describes it, an “artistic encyclopaedia of Western mythical creatures.”

The pattern includes a dragon, harpy, Medusa, chimaera, centauress, phoneix, kraken, mermaid, sew serpent, cyclops, wyvern, Pegasus, amphiptere and amphibaena. (It’s a good thing there’s a photo of the proejct with everything labelled because I definitely didn’t know the names for everything.) It’s also designed like a landscape, with water and land creatures toward the bottom ends and sky creatures toward the top. 

The dragon is at the center and is worked sideways so it will show as upright when you wear it. 

The scarf is worked in double knitting, so the colorwork appears in the opposite colors on the other side. 

It’s worked in light fingering weight yarn (on size 0 US or 2mm knitting needles) and the colorwork is shown in charts. The pattern also includes some video tutorials and written instructions to help you along. The designer says the pattern is for intermediate knitters, and “advanced beginners may succeed with patience and the help of the video tutorials.”

When I was an advanced beginner this kind of a pattern would have brought me to tears, but if you love a challenge, and a project that you’ll wear and get tons of astonished reactions every time, this is the project for you. And of course if you have a few double knitting projects under your belt and are comfortable reading charts, this project shouldn’t be hard, but that doesn’t mean it’s fast. But lots of great things take time, and that’s never stopped us before, right? 

You can get a copy of this pattern from Monstra & Mirabilia on Ravelry. 

[Photo: Monstra & Mirabilia ]