Bicycle Patterned Knit Hat

I am excited to share my Bicycle Patterned Knit Hat on the blog today! The pattern for this hat can be found here on Ravelry,  here on Craftsy or purchased directly here.

I made this hat for my friend Kyle who loves riding his bike. Kyle knows a lot about bikes and how to fix things (his real job is as an engineer) so when I found a bike abandoned in the basement of my apartment (see a post about my bike basket here), Kyle was nice enough to check it out and make sure it was safe to ride for me. 

When I asked Kyle if he would like any type of hat in particular, he told me to go ahead and design away! After consulting with his wife, I decided to make him a hat with a bike pattern. I really like how it turned out and I hope he does too!

Photos by Matt Menietti
Special thanks to the Big Shark bike store for allowing us to take pictures.

My Favorite Slipper Pattern

A family of slippers knit for my German host family - Christmas 2008

In this post, I would like to feature my favorite slipper pattern. I have made several of these slippers since I discovered the pattern in the Fall of 2008. Since then, I have made around 20 pair of these slippers for gifts for friends and relatives. They are super easy and always appreciated. The pattern calls for an optional cuff, which does add some ankle warmth. 

This pattern knits up fast - there is one row of knitting followed by the pattern row. I have cast on fewer and used smaller needles to adapt the pattern for children's feet. Additionally, I like to use 3-strands of yarn when I make this pattern for adults. The pattern for these slippers is free and can be found here.

My parents wear theirs so much, the bottom wears out in a year. To combat that, I have started sewing suede fabric on the bottom of their slippers to help them last 2-3 years. I have them stand on the suede fabric in their slippers while I draw their foot pattern on the fabric. Then I cut out the "sole" and sew it onto the sipper using a needle and thread. I'll try to get a picture of this the next time I visit my parents and post it here.

Arm Knit T-shirt Yarn Cowl

Arm knitting has been all the rage on Pinterest and after seeing some cool projects, I decided to give it a try. 

This was perfect project to use up some of my extra T-shirt yarn from the crocheted T-shirt rugs. See the diagram to the left for instructions on how to make T-shirt yarn. I used two T-shirts for this yarn. I plan on cleaning out my closets and repurposing a lot of T-shirts into these comfy scarfs. They make fast, inexpensive, easy, and beautiful gifts as well!

How to make T-shirt yarn

Arm knitting was pretty intuitive to me and I just started right up without any tutorials. However, even beginning knitters find this project accessible (see The Pinning Mama's scarf here) and numerous video tutorials can be found (Simply Maggie's excellent tutorial is here and and updated version with a cast off here).

Pattern:
Cast on 10
Arm knit until scarf is ~40" long
Cast off, leaving ~20" long tail
Use tail to seam the cast off edge to cast on edge creating an infinity scarf

It was fun looping the stitches over my arms and transferring from one arm to another to add rows. The scarf grew so fast, it only took me about 30 minutes from cast on to cast off. Check out the pictures below taken during the process. It was especially difficult to get pictures while knitting, the two shown were the most successful attempts at me setting a timer and wedging the camera under my chin. 

My scarf was long enough to wear open or wrap once around my neck. It is super warm and comfy and I can't wait to make more!