Knit a Flock of Flamingos Hat

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

This is a project that kind of stopped me in my tracks when I saw it while scrolling Ravelry. It’s such a fun contrast of a semisolid color worked in stockinette stitch and a more tonal yarn worked in a feather and fan variation.

(See more about feather and fan in this post on my blog; I also have a feather and fan scarf if you want to practice.)

The Nitty Wrap from Renate Dziedataja is worked in fingering weight yarn from a Finnish mill, and the name is the Finnish word for meadow. You of course can use whatever yarn you have handy.

It’s even more interesting because the project is worked from one short end across to make a long rectangle, and the two different sections are joined using intarsia. Generally we think of intarsia as being used for colorwork, so this is a fun different use of it. The lace section is charted in the pattern but it’s pretty easy to follow.

And of course it’s totally optional but to add a little more interest and tie the two colors of yarn together the designer also added some embroidery along the short edges on the stockinette side. A drawing of what she did is included but you can also add different designs if you’d rather.

The shawl has I-cord edgings to give it a nice finished look that doesn’t take away from the organic simplicity of the design.

As shown, the shawl measures about 22.5 inches/57 cm wide and 59 inches/150 cm long. You can of course adjust this according to your preference, the amount of yarn you have and the gauge you are getting. Try a thicker yarn to make a wider shawl if you like.

This pattern is available in English and Latvian for free on Ravelry.

Photo: Renate Dziedataja

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