Pattern Sales Benefit Artist Community in Italy

Mutonia is a sort of travelers’ camp, sort of arists’ colony in Italy that has been relatively peacefully existing for 23 years. From what I’ve read there’s basically one person who wants rid of them, and community is in danger of being shut down because of this person’s complaints, even though the people who live there have never occupied the land illegally and most of the people in the town accept them.

The reason this has to do with knitting is that one of the residents is Wooly Wormhead, the renowned knit hat designer. She’s released a hat knitting collection that includes 10 popular past designs, all modeled by residents or friends of Mutonia. The ebook, called Hatopia, retails for £9 (a little more than $14 US), and £6 from the sale of each book will go toward supporting Mutonia’s cause.

You can learn more at Wooly Wormhead’s website, or check out the petition in support of the artists at Change.org.

[Photo by Wooly Wormhead via Ravelry.]

Next Pattern:

I don’t know if it’s possible to look at the Snug Wrap from Sylvia Watts-Cherry and not smile. There’s so much fun stuff going on in it that if I had a bunch of sport weight yarn in my house I definitely would have cast this one on immediately after seeing it.

There’s stripes and circles of different sizes and colors, worked with intarsia. The wrap is worked sideways in both garter stitch and stockinette, so different sections also have different textures. Color blocking means you’ll use a lot of two main colors, and there are two more colors used for contrast throughout the piece.

As I mentioned, the project calls for sport weight yarn, and it’s already pretty big — 23.25 by 82 inches or 59 by 208 cm — so you probably wouldn’t want to use heavier yarn unless you just want to make it a super scarf. You could use even lighter yarn to make it more of a scarf than a shawl if you wanted.

The yarn used is a combination of Merino wool and recycled threads from La Bien Aimée’s yarn making process, so it’s a fun way to reduce waste while making something awesome.

The color motifs are depicted in charts in the pattern, but none of these are difficult so even if you’re new to chart reading you should be able to handle this pattern. The colors in the sample are so pretty but you can of course change it up with your favorites that will make you smile as you knit and wear this super fun pattern.

As usual, checking out the projects tab on Ravelry will show you some more fun color options. I love the idea of using jewel tones to give it a more wintry look, but the sky is the limit when it comes to color options.

You can find this pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Sylvia Watts-Cherry]

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