Stitch with Sweets to Support Warm Up America

The Hallmark Channel and Warm Up America have teamed up with Stitched with Sweets to provide fun and warm Christmas scarves to women’s shelters.

As part of their Countdown to Christmas, The Hallmark Channel has donate $10,000 to the initiative and is encouraging knitters and crocheters to stitch festive scarves in their holiday color palette to donate to Warm Up America, which will distribute them to shelters.

Cozy up with your favorite story about a woman who decides to leave her life in the big city behind to marry the owner of the Christmas tree farm (isn’t that what they’re all about?) and stitch up some fun hot chocolate mugs and holiday sweets to make into scarves to donate.

The original pattern was designed for crochet by Twinkie Chan, master of food-related crochet. (I’ve made her crochet doughnut rattle a couple of times.) Candace O. adapted the pattern for knitters.

It’s patchwork based so you can make a bunch of pieces and sew them together, or you could alternate different designs in one long piece and add appliques when the the knitting is done. There are options for hot chocolate mugs worked in garter stitch or ribbing, with hears and candy canes you can applique to the mugs. There’s are also rectangular panels with designs inspired by candy canes, ribbon candy and peppermint bark, as well as a bobble-covered piece meant to evoke marshmallows.

The image above shows the crocheted version because there’s not a full knit scarf on their website. But if you want to crochet it, there’s also a video tutorial on the website showing how to work the pieces.

Both the knit and crochet patterns are available from Warm Up America. There you will also find the address to send completed scarves or patches that they can sew up on their end. There’s no deadline mentioned, but check that page for more details before you donate.

Also check out their current needs page on their website to learn about other things you can make to donate.

[Photo via Warm Up America]

Next Pattern:

From the front, the Simply Me Blouse from NORgardknitters looks like a plain, boxy, garter stitch sweater. The kind of thing you’d want to throw on every day, like the knit version of a sweatshirt.

But when you look at the back, you realize there’s more going on than meets the eye.

This sweater also has a giant pleat on the back, giving lots of volume and interest without making the knitting any harder.

Simply Me is worked from the top down, starting with the yoke being worked back and forth in rows. Extra stitches are cast on at the back to form the pleat (which is crocheted closed when the knitting is done) and the body is joined in the round under the underarms.

But if you know anything about knitting in the round, you know that to make garter stitch you have to knit and round and purl a round. To avoid that this pattern uses short rows so you can still knit every round and come out with garter stitch.

The sweater has a wide boatneck and a cropped, boxy shape with three-quarter sleeves. There’s no edging to interrupt the pretty waves of garter stitch.

The pattern comes in six sizes, to fit a bust from 31.5-33.5 inches, or 80-85 cm, up to 43 to 47 inches, or 110-120 cm. But there is a lot of positive ease worked into the pattern, so if you want less ease you can work it for a larger range of sizes. There are lots of projects on the project page on Ravelry, most of which show it in a solid color, but you can also see ideas for stripes or a fade. It calls for DK weight yarn.

You can find the Simply Me Blouse pattern on Ravelry, where it is available in English, Danish, French, German and Norwegian.

[Photo: NORgardknitters]

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