Earlier this autumn, we had an influx of hat projects getting completed from Knitting the National Parks by Nancy Bates. I wondered idly on an Instagram post if we could maybe manage - as a shop community - to finish at least one example each of all 63 hats before the first day of spring 2024. Nancy Bates saw it and commented - "If you reach your goal, I'll make a trip up there to visit!!" We are nothing if not up for a good challenge - especially with the reward of an amazing designer coming to visit us - and so the shop community leapt into action.
We're officially inviting all shop community members to participate in The Great National Parks Hat Challenge! Between now and March 18, 2024, pick any hat (or hats!) that you want to make, let us know which ones you're working on, and we'll get you on our spreadsheet. If you're looking to help us fill holes in the spreadsheet, you can see it here - with some help from generous shop community member JH, we even have difficulty ratings for each hat if you're having trouble figuring out which one might be a good starting point for you.
Once you've finished your hat, please submit it through the Google Form so we can keep tabs on how close we are to reaching our goal! Once our local UPS Store gets its large-format printer back up and running, we'll have a map posted in the shop with photos of the completed project.
Even if you see that the hat you want to make is already being worked on or completed, we want you to join us in this group effort - no one has exclusive dibs on any of the hats, no one gets a prize for completing the most, and we're not requiring that yarn be purchased through the shop. Of course that would be lovely, but we also know that everyone's budgets are running tighter than normal this year - use as much as you can from your stash, find a stash buddy to share partial skeins or split the cost of a single skein you can use in multiple hats, but most importantly... HAVE FUN!