This red and black flag signifies a storm warning. One flag means Tropical Storm Warning, and two flags together mean Hurricane Warning. (The signals for Gale Warning and Small Craft Advisory are two red pennant (triangle) flags and one red pennant flag, respectively.)
I thought these marine weather flags would make kind of cool throw pillows, so I’m knitting up a couple of envelope-style pillow covers. I’m just making it up as I go along, but I know that if I don’t write it down I’ll forget how I did it.
What this means:
I just finished writing out my first ever knitting pattern. It is very simple– just a black square inside a red square, using very basic stitches (it’s only the front flag part, not the entire pillow cover), but it was HARD to write the pattern, and I’m still not sure it’s accurate and user-friendly. So, if you use the pattern, please help me out by leaving a comment about how easy or difficult it was to follow, and what I should do to make it better.
The way it’s written assumes you know how to make basic knit and purl stitches, as well as how to join a new color in an intarsia style. (It’s not as hard as it sounds! I learned it pretty quickly from YouTube– check out these videos for instructions: Intarsia Knitting Basics and Intro to Intarsia. The second video is by KnitPicks, and it features nautical flags, so yay! Perfect.
Click here to download the PDF pattern.
Thanks!
Sarita Li
Related articles
- For the Love of Nautical Flags (thelandlockedsailor.com)
- Nautical Flag Knitting: Letter B “Bravo” (thelandlockedsailor.com)
- Nautical Flag Upcycling: It is the East, and Juliet is… the Letter J (thelandlockedsailor.com)
Hey! fun blog! a captain just told me these hurricane flags were once flown off our CG station at the Battery. They measured 10′ by 10′!
They were discontinued in favor of the radio warnings. In bad weather, not the whole harbor could see them. So he took some and used them for painting drop cloths!!! What I wouldn’t give for one of these!!