Last night I invited some friends over to the loft at JP Headquarters to teach them how to knit. There were lots of us so I was grateful to have my sister there to help teach. Even guys showed up. Way to go guys! I got them started on beanies which will be donated to “Beanies of Hope.” It’s a project to provide beanies to young adults who are homeless in Santa Cruz. The winter months are cold and a beanie is such a simple, quick project to make a difference.

Speaking of cold, we were very. As you can tell from the pictures of everyone bundled up, the loft is cold. I have a few space heaters, but blew a fuse early in the evening so we were only able to have one on. Plus, the warehouse is too big to heat the entire space and the walls aren’t insulated. Everyone was a trooper though, despite their cold hands.

If you’d like to donate some beanies to Beanies of Hope, you can mail them to PO Box 1361, Santa Cruz, CA, 95061. They’re being collected until February.

Beanies are a great project for using up random yarn from your stash. Below is a pattern for a basic garter stitch beanie. I wrote it so that you can use whatever yarn you’ve got lying around. This pattern is knit flat because I was keeping it simple for brand new knitters, but it certainly makes more sense to knit it in the round. Just be sure that instead of knitting every round you alternate between knit and purl rounds.

Basic Garter Stitch Beanie

MATERIALS
• Depends on the weight of the yarn, but around 150 yards
• Needles
• Darning needle

FINISHED MEASUREMENTS
Circumference: 21 inches
Length: 9.5 inches

INSTRUCTIONS

Knit a swatch to determine gauge. Multiply your gauge stitch for one inch by 21. Round up or down to the nearest ten. Cast on this number of stitches.

Knit all sts until piece measures 7 inches.

SHAPE CROWN

To shape the crown you’ll be evenly decreasing 10 sts on every odd numbered row. In the example below there are 90 sts to begin with. Decrease in this manner until 10 sts remain.

Row 1: K2, k2tog, *k7, k2tog, repeat from * to last 5 sts, k5. (80 sts)
Row 2 and all alt rows: Knit all sts.
Row 3: K2, k2tog, *k6, k2tog, repeat from * to last 4 sts, k4. (70 sts)
Row 5: K2, k2tog, *k5, k2tog, repeat from * to last 3 sts, k3. (60 sts)
Row 7: K2, k2tog, *k4, k2tog, repeat from * to last 2 sts, k2. (50 sts)
Row 9: K2, k2tog, *k3, k2tog, repeat from * to last 1 sts, k1. (40 sts)
Row 11: *K2, k2tog, repeat from * to end. (30 sts)
Row 13: *K1, k2tog, repeat from * to end. (20 sts)
Row 15: *K2tog, repeat from * to end. (10 sts)

FINISHING

Cut yarn leaving a tail approx. 20 inches long. Using a darning needle, thread the yarn through the stitches on needle. Slide stitches off needle and pull tight. Fold beanie in half. Sew seam and secure. Weave in loose ends.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 3:30 pm and is filed under Charity, JP Headquarters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.