Walthamstow Resident Shows Her Olympic Love in Knitting

I love knit displays of all sorts, but this is pretty epic. There’s a woman who lives on Howard Street in Walthamstow (that’s in London) who apparently honors all sorts of special events by knitting up a bunch of characters and making her front garden into a knit diorama.

Her display honoring the upcoming Olympic Games first got notice on Facebook, and a British writer for the Atlantic shared the story in its online section Atlantic Cities.

The captions on some of the photos are a little mean-spirited, but in all the write appreciates this as a yarny act of love. And it’s quite diverse, too, with swimming, diving, track and field events and beach volleyball represented, among other events, as well as athletes from Spain, Jamaica, America, Australia and Kenya, as well as a British athlete on the medal podium.

It’s always wonderful to see the ways creativity, passion, time and yarn can combine into really excellent stuff.

[Photo by Feargu O’Sullivan/the Atlantic Cities.]

Next Pattern:

Linen stitch is one of my favorite knitting stitch patterns that, every time I use it in a project, I think about how I don’t use it often enough.

It’s an easy stitch to make, with slip stitches done with the yarn held to the front of the work on the right/front side and to the back on the wrong/back side, which makes the strand of yarn a visible part of the pattern.

It also makes a fabric that is thick and looks kind of like a woven fabric.

I recently used linen stitch to make a double-thick pot holder, which I worked in a kind of interesting way. I didn’t want to have to do any sewing on the project, so I started it from a crochet cast on and picked up stitches from the side of the cast on to make the hot pad all in one piece in the round with the edge sealed.

This requires working on two circular needles, which is another technique I don’t use that often and am always reminded how much I like it when I do.

The combination of double thickness and the stitch pattern makes for a hot pad that’s already pretty thick, but I also added a bit of old towel to the inside before I closed up the end to make it super thick and extra protective for your surfaces.

I found the engineering challenge of this construction method to be a lot of fun, but you could also just knit it as a tube (casting on twice as many stitches as I did) and sew up the ends by hand when the knitting is done. Either way you’ve got a useful and pretty addition to your kitchen, whether you work it in a solid color, stripes or as a stash busting project will all your cotton odd balls.

You can grab the pattern over at Our Daily Craft, or check it out on Ravelry.

40+ Hot Pads You Can Sew For The Kitchen [Sewing]

A Cozy Knit to Calm Your Mind

Double Knit an Infinity Scarf

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