I finished knitting my second frog hat while peacefully protesting down at the ICE facility yesterday. It’s a quick knit, but I knit it twice because the first one was a bit bigger than I wanted. I’ll ravel it and knit a second (third?) hat. Knitting it a bit smaller also means that I have enough yarn for two hats.
Do you want to knit your own super bulky weight Portland Frog Hat? I wrote up detailed instructions; you can find them here. I just updated it with notes for worsted weight yarn, too.
I doubled down on my bag game yesterday. Both discontinued, but well-loved.
Words of encouragement3 needle bind off time!
I was heartened to see protesters (knitters, painters, readers), aid workers from Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition, and clergy support yesterday.
I spent the weekend in Albany, Oregon teaching at Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival. I taught entrelac, Darn It! (mending), and log cabin knitting.
I think the mending was the most challenging for me, because it’s been a hot minute since I’ve taught it. But I was ready, and we had fun.
I didn’t have a lot of time in the market, but I managed to snag a few things.
Yarns for frog hats, and some sweet buttons for a baby sweater.
How do you start knitting a frog hat? Rib it! Rib it! 🐸 This super bulky is knitting up quickly on US 15 needles. I’m riffing off Pussy Hat for 4 gauges by Sarah Keller, pattern free on Ravelry. I’ll add buttons and felt for eyes.
Flock and fiber festival isn’t just for knitting. There are animals (I only saw the bunnies), spinning, weaving, crochet.
This wet felted hat with needle felted ornamentation was my favorite piece in the exhibition. It’s by Val Kinman, who was in my log cabin class on Sunday.
Needle felted pygora goats. I didn’t catch the name of the artist. If I find out, I’ll update here. Edit: Lester Nishimura is the artist, and he has only been needle felting since early this year!
Navajo style weaving by Bob Van Slyke
Saw lots of fiber friends over the weekend; it’s always great to catch up! You can see more of my pictures on Instagram, if you’re so inclined.
Karen’s frog hat is fabulous! I was going to use the green worsted for a brioche beanie and add eyes, but I really like the shaping on this one. We shall see…this pattern is Frog Hat by Annanitato Lolo, available on Ravelry. The eyes are crocheted.
to this! Pardon my Quality Assurance Cat; she’s making sure the ends have been woven in properly.
I’ve added spiral stitch markers to the circle; can you see them? They’re cats! The ears help them stay in place. The stitch markers are meant to hold my lightweight necklaces. Which I’ll show you, once I get them untangled. They’re currently in a box, all jumbled up.
Reminder: The Knit Your Own Adventure Summit is this week! This free online event will help you be a more confident knitter. Learn more about the Knit Your Own Adventure Summit, and grab your free ticket here (The links to the summit give me credit for you signing up, which is free. If you upgrade your access with an Expedition Pass, I receive a commission. Your choice!)
My presentation is Frogging Your Knitting: Getting Back On Track. And I’m participating in a Zoom panel on Tuesday October 7 at 1 pm Central. It’s called Live Fix-It Lab: Your Top Troubleshooting Questions Answered. Come join the fun!
I’m so pleased to publish the Fantasia Cowlette! Fantasia is a fingering weight bandana cowl knit in the round, featuring easy assigned pooling fans on a stockinette stitch background.
Choose a single skein of fingering weight yarn that is dyed for assigned pooling. I used A Chick that Knitz Singles Fingering in Tropical Flowers for mine.
The pattern is available through Ravelry and Payhip. Use coupon code FANCY for 15% off the pattern through October 9, 2025. Let’s get knitting for fall!
Reminder: The Knit Your Own Adventure Summit is next week! This free online event will help you be a more confident knitter. Learn more about the Knit Your Own Adventure Summit, and grab your free ticket here (The links to the summit give me credit for you signing up, which is free. If you upgrade your access with an Expedition Pass, I receive a commission. Your choice!)
I’m presenting a segment on frogging your knitting and how to get back on track. And I’m participating in a Zoom presentation on Tuesday, too. Come join the fun!
I’m excited to be part of the Knit Your Own Adventure Summit! This is a free 4-day event where you’ll learn from 20+ top knitting designers who are ready to help you fix your knitting mistakes, tackle challenging techniques with ease, and knit with confidence.
I’m giving a presentation about frogging your knitting. As a designer, I have a lot of experience with frogging. It’s part of my design process. (Rip-it, rip-it, rip-it! Practice makes perfect.)
This summit is free! You can watch the presentations for 48 hours after they go up. You can also upgrade your access with an Expedition Pass, but basic access is totally free.
You can get all the details about the Knit Your Own Adventure Summit over here, but as a quick recap:
The summit will run from October 7-10, 2025
Each day will be packed with amazing speakers who are ready to help you learn
The summit is absolutely free to attend, but you can choose to get the upgraded Expedition Pass for bonus resources and an upgraded event experience
Learn more about the Knit Your Own Adventure Summit, and grab your free ticket here (The links to the summit give me credit for you signing up, which is free. If you upgrade your access with an Expedition Pass, I receive a commission. Your choice!)
Progress report on my jewelry storage project. I want to hang my necklaces so they don’t tangle.
This circle isn’t quite as big as the embroidery hoop, but it’s going to be stretched while wet blocked. It seems a bit ruffly, and if I fold it in half it’s slightly more than a half circle.
Wet blocking solves that. And the little yarn over holes are a good guide for centering it in the hoop.
It definitely grew when wet. Now what should I do with the excess fabric? I don’t want to keep it looking like a mob cap.
I can turn it to the back and trim it off, but it might still show. Or I could try to glue it to the inside of the hoop. Or I could take yarn and sew across the hoop to hold the extra in back, like spokes on a wheel. That might show through to the front, though. What do you think?
I’ve decided I want a brighter color for my bedroom; the gray/blue isn’t as contrasty as I thought it would be. Also, I think I don’t want it to be a single ply; it’s going to get some bumping and handling as I hang and swap out jewelry on it. So this lovely yarn is on its way to me from Sharon Spence at Garage Dyeworks. It’s a plied MCN blend (merino/cashmere/nylon), colorway April in Paris. I think it’s going to be perfect.
Simply Stellar is an asymmetric triangle brioche shawlette, knit on the bias from narrow end to wide end. It features assigned pooling stars. The pattern requires two skeins of fingering weight yarn, one of which should be dyed for assigned pooling.
I knit my Simply Stellar with A Chick That Knitz Deluxe sock in Wildflowers (pooling) and Sassy, a fabulous hot pink.
I designed this shawlette as a slightly simpler version of my Starstruck. Tammy Pelfrey, the dyer at A Chick that Knitz, told me that some people were intimidated by the syncopated border on Starstruck, so Simply Stellar was designed as a simpler introduction to brioche plus assigned pooling. The shaping is very simple, and the yarn tells you when it’s time to make a star.
This pattern is available through Ravelry, link here, and Payhip, link here. Use coupon code SHINE for 15% off through September 9, 2025.
We’re barreling towards September, and I am juggling several projects! I’ll have a new design out next week (Tuesday, September 2), another one ready for tech edit and test knit, and a fun online project for October. I had a photo shoot with my sister yesterday. She doesn’t work for cash, so we go out for our favorite lunch instead. Her: chicken and waffles. Me: usually the perfect fried chicken sandwich.
Lunch at Screen Door, PDX Pearl District
But this time I had a fried chicken salad. It’s salad, so it’s healthy, right? (Look away from the bacon.)
I’m still editing pictures, so you’ll see those later.
I’ve been looking for a way to store my everyday necklaces and earrings. Right now they’re jumbled in a pretty box, and they’re always tangled. I’m planning to use a big circle of knit fabric in an embroidery hoop, and add some hooks to hold the necklaces. Those hooks may be spiral stitch markers; we’ll see if they work. Earrings can go directly into the fabric. Wish me luck!
I started knitting with leftover yarn, but I really wanted something that coordinated with our bedroom, and I wanted it to be more interesting than a stockinette circle. Assigned pooling is doing the trick.
I bought this yarn, MadelineTosh Tosh Merino Light, at For Yarn’s Sake on the way to a meeting. I didn’t have the right sized dpns with me, so I bought these Knit Pro Cubics. They’re square shaped. I like them!
We’re heading into a holiday weekend. Hope yours is full of knitting. I hope mine is, too!
And off, and on, and off, and on again! Sometimes it takes a while to figure out what your yarn really wants.
This yarn is A Chick that Knitz Singles Fingering in Tropical Flowers. I got it at Nash Yarn Fest, intending to pair it with another color for brioche plus pooling.
Here it is with Caribbean.
It was nice, but the stars didn’t really pop against the background.
I liked the contrastier combination of Wildflowers and Sassy. this is A Chick That Knitz Deluxe Sock. This pattern, Simply Stellar, is coming soon. It’s been a busy summer, and this will make a nice intro to fall knitting.
I frogged the blue version, and decided to try a different assigned pooling pattern, without brioche. I want this to be a cowl, and it has to be worked in the round because the motif has to be worked from the right side of the fabric.
I love how the colors pop against the background when it’s just the pooling yarn. The second color in brioche really didn’t add anything meaningful.
But do I want the motifs to be flowers?
Or volcanoes? I knit on this last weekend, while we were traveling to and from Ellensburg, Washington for a friend’s birthday/retirement party. And by the time we were halfway home, I decided I wanted flowers.
And voilà, my project was instantly transformed into a swatch! I needed to frog the whole thing, and work it from the bottom up instead of top down.
That meant choosing an edging for the beginning, and doing some math. Easy peasy. The nice thing about working it from the bottom up is that there won’t be any yarn chicken shenaningans going on. The edging is completed first, so I know there’s enough yarn for it. And I can knit the top of the cowl to be as tall as I want it to be with the yarn that’s left; the height isn’t a critical measurement.
I’m about halfway done, and looking forward to showing you the result. It’s an easy knit.
Cheers! (Cocktails at Julep in Ellensburg. Backwoods Barbie on the left, Rhinestone Cowboy on the right.)
I started a brioche project with a new to me yarn. This lovely Andante worsted from Sweet Paprika is 195 yards/110g, or 1.77 yards/gram. My usual worsted is Malabrigo Rios, which is 210 yards/100g, or 2.1 yards/gram. So the Andante is a bit heavier/thicker than what I’m used to. I cast on with Andante based on my previous gauge with Rios, and it turned out that it was noticeably bigger.
As usual, my project is a project, until it’s a swatch. At least I measured my swatch for gauge before frogging!
You can really see that brioche is a 2 layered fabrc when you frog the colors separately. I find this highly amusing.
I’m back on track, and have a fun project that is easily memorizable. It will be fairly simple, for newer brioche knitters. I’m designing this for Sweet Paprika’s Skill Builder Yarn Club; it will be published in 2026.
Find my patterns on Ravelry: Michele Bernstein Designs
Here are some of my favorites, and the newest. Many of my designs are also available through my Payhip store.
PDXKnitterati 