My brother is a huge Indianapolis Colts fan, so I decided to knit him a Colts hat. I couldn't find a Colts hat pattern, so I decided to use a hat pattern and add the horseshoe.
I looked online for a charted Colts horseshoe but couldn't find one. I decided to give charting my own a try. I downloaded a Colts Horsehoe graphic and overlayed it on some knitting graph paper, tweaking it from there. What I have posted here is what I came up with.
I made two attempts at knitting this hat. In my first attempt, I found a hat pattern for a double-knit hat that I could use to make a reversible hat. I got the hang of double-knitting but found it tedious. It was great for adding a charted pattern, though, since there is no carrying of yarn to worry about. When I finally finished the hat, I was disappointed with it. It turns out that my purl stitches (the inside layer of the hat) were much looser than my knit stitches (the outside layer). Since I couldn't fix the hat, I ripped it all out and started over.
In my next attempt, I used a basic knitted in the round hat pattern. I just knit the hat in blue and used duplicate stitch to add the horseshoe after the hat was completed. This process was much quicker and turned out much better, as you can see above.
Feel free to use this chart for your Indianapolis Colts gear!
This is really stellar! I am going to knit a Colts hat for my bro's birthday, but was worried about the horseshoe pattern, seeing as I haven't knit anything with a pattern. Knitting over the stitches definitely is easier and I won't have to worry about the extra yarn on the inside. Thanks so much for the chart!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I'm glad you are able to use the chart. If you're ever knitting for a baby, check out the baby-sized Colts Horseshoe I just posted on the blog.
ReplyDeleteI want to use something like this to do a dishcloth in a single color... Any ideas on how this can be accomplished?
ReplyDeleteJodi or Christina... I'm looking to make the colts logo on a dish cloth using a loom... Any idea where I can find a pattern to follow? Thanks, Meg
ReplyDeleteHi Meg,
ReplyDeleteThat's a great ides!
You could knit the main part of the dishcloth in stockinette stitch and purl the blue parts of the charted horseshoe on the right side and knit the blue parts on the wrong side. That should give you a subtle, textured horseshoe.
For the hat do you use single strand of yarn for the hat? I'm knitting on a loom... so I use knit over? then go back through and knit the "u"? Any help would be appreciated.
ReplyDeleteMeg, I'm not that familiar with knitting on a loom. All I can tell you is that I knitted the entire hat first using a single strand of Lion Brand Wool Ease in blue and then used a tapestry needle threaded with white yarn to make the horseshoe. The technique is called duplicate stitch and I'm sure you could do the same after you're finished with your hat on the loom.
ReplyDeleteThis knit graph is awesome but I have one question. How would I use this graph for crocheting? I don't know how to knit but I do crochet and I have crocheted graphs many times but I was just wondering do I do one sc for every square or should I double the number and do 2 sc for every square?
ReplyDeleteAll I can say is give it a try and see what happens. I've never done charted crochet before. Maybe you could do a search on "crochet charts" or "crochet graphs" to see what you find.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for offering the Colts logo chart. I'm going to use it for a couple of scarves. Thanks again. LKMarshall
ReplyDelete