Knitting

Free Patterns, Tutorials and Project Ideas

Oregon Wool Used for Team USA Uniforms — And Knit Your Own Hats

by

Ralph Lauren has been the outfitter for the US Olympic team and Paralympic Team for years, and the company likes to use American-made fibers when it can. That’s why Oregon’s Shaniko Wool Company has once again been tapped to produce items for the team. 

Shaniko Wool Company and its partner ranchers have been tending sheep continuously for more than 100 years, and this year they’ve provided wool for sweaters, mittens, hats and more for the Olympic teams. Shankio Wool also provided the wool that made the navy blazers worn by Team USA in the opening ceremony at the 2024 Paris Games. 

The same family owns Imperial Stock Ranch, which supplied wool for uniforms in 2014 and 2018 as well. 

For the opening ceremony Team USA uniforms included winter white toggle coats and trousers, as well as turtleneck sweaters with stranded knit patterns, an American flag and Olympic rings, all made with American wool yarn from the Shaniko Wool Company’s co-op of growers. 

You can buy some of these items from the Team USA Shop, where the men’s toggle coat runs almost $2,000 an the opening ceremony Paralymics sweater is almost $700. 

The earflap hat is a mere $327.99, but as you might imagine some intrepid knitters have already interpreted these classic designs for home knitters to make their own. 

Mercy Crimm has a beanie worked in red, white and blue with the snowflake pattern from the Team USA hats. The pattern is a free download on Ravelry and it comes in three sizes. The motif is charted but it’s a pretty easy one to follow. The pattern uses worsted weight yarn. 

Another free Ravelry download comes from Susan Rainey, whose intepretation of the hat is a little more literal. This one includes the ear flaps and tassels of the original, and is also worked in worsted weight yarn. It has four size options and is worked from the bottom up starting with the earflaps, with a chart for the colorwork. The designer calls the tassels “a little fussy,” but also notes they make the hat, and I agree. 

Are you planning any special knitting while watching the Games this year? I’d love to hear about it!

10 Flowers to Knit for your Olympic Bouquet [Knitting]

Knit a Sweater (Sort of) Like Tom Daley’s

Have you read?

Easy Knit Baskets to Use All Your Stash

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts. 

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts. 

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects. 

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version. 

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want. 

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do. 

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like. 

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.