Knitting California: 26 Easy-to-Follow Designs for Beautiful Beanies Inspired by the Golden State

This charming guide by Bates (Knitting the National Parks) shows how to knit beanies featuring designs inspired by her home state of California. She recommends using worsted weight yarn because it’s “cozy” and “easy to work with,” and encourages readers to make practice swatches before starting a project to test the needle gauge. The playful designs consist of a mix of landscapes (the “Pacific Coast Highway” beanie shows a road running the circumference of the head above gray cliffsides and a foamy blue ocean), patterns (the muted orange, blue, and brown stripes of “SoCal Surf” pay homage to striped surfboards from the 1960s and ’70s), and abstractions (the tan “Death Valley” cap features winding asymmetrical purled cables that evoke the eponymous park’s cracked salt flats). Trivia accompanies each project; for instance, Bates notes that “while sequoias are the largest trees by volume (huge trunks!) the coastal redwoods of California are the tallest” and provides instructions for a beanie depicting silhouettes of the massive trees against a blue night sky speckled with white beads that stand in for stars. The simple color charts make it easy to follow the instructions, and the projects capture a broad cross section of what the Golden State has to offer. Lovers of the West Coast will want to take note. (Oct.)