Knitting

Free Patterns, Tutorials and Project Ideas

Knit a Flock of Flamingos Hat

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Winter is coming for us in the Northern Hemisphere. That’s just a fact. But we don’t have to give up on bright colors and fun, whimsical, even summery feeling knitting projects while we’re waiting for it to warm up again.

We can keep cozy in knit hats festooned with a flock of flamingos if we want.

Stephanie Lotven is here to help us out with that project, thanks to her Flock of Flamingos hat knitting pattern.

This one uses four colors to make the flamingos themselves as well as a watery background at the bottom of the hat, a lighter sky and a colorwork pattern at the top that evokes sunshine. There’s an optional chart for adding duplicate stitch beaks and eyes to the flamingos (and a video tutorial is included in case you’ve never done that before) but they’re really cute either way.

The pattern uses fingering weight yarn, and you might just have some leftover sock yarn in your stash that would work for some of these colors. If you want to use the exact colors used in the sample, you can grab a kit from Emma’s Yarn. There are actually a few different color combos there if you want to change it up a bit. You could also change up the background colors so that the birds are standing in sand with a blue sky background. You could probably even work with the same background color throughout if you like, but the change is fun, too.

You should look through the projects on Ravelry to see different color options that people have used to get more ideas, especially if you want to use your stash.

I’m not saying knitting this hat will totally chase away your winter blues, but it’s sure to bring a smile to your face as you knit it and when you wear it.

You can find the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Stephanie Lotven]

Animal-Inspired Sock Knitting Patterns

Have you read?

Knit a Log Cabin Blanket with All Your Scraps

I guess I must have had this pattern on my mind, because I had chosen this log cabin blanket recipe to write about, promptly forgot about it and a couple of weeks later started knitting a log cabin blanket using all my pink yarn. 

It might stay pink if it makes it to baby blanket sized, or I might add in some pastel green and blue, too, to make a bigger blanket. We’ll see. I’m also holding several strands of yarn together to make a kind of bulky yarn, which means it’s deeply satisfying how much yarn is used even as the project is still relatively small. 

In Kristen Finlay’s version, DK weight yarn scraps (or fingering/sock yarn held double) are used to make a simple scrappy log cabin blanket that’s lighter weight than my version. Log cabin is a great technique for knitters of any skill level because it’s worked in garter stitch. The only not completely basic technique you need for log cabin knitting is picking up stitches. 

If you’ve never worked a log cabin knitting project before, this is a good introduction, and it is really nice to use all your yarn scraps in one big project you’ll use for years to come. 

If you use a lot of DK weight yarn you can keep building on it whenever you finish a project, or if you use more worsted weight you can do the same thing with it, it will just be a little bigger starting out than the pattern calls for. How big it gets is totally up to you. 

I have really been enjoying working on my log cabin project, and it’s my current sitting at my desk and need a break knit (do you have one of those or is it just me?). 

Ready to start your own log cabin blanket knitting project? You can grab the free pattern from Kristen Finlay on Ravelry. 

Need more log cabin inspiration? Check out more log cabin knitting patterns. 

[Photo: Kristen Finlay]