Knitting [& Knit-a-thon!] Update

First, the knit-a-thon update. I got a very nice thank you letter from McConnell Library with the final tally (at least the current final tally) on knit-a-thon goings on:

• 450+ balls of yarn were donated,
• 260+ finished items were donated to the Clothe A Family campaign and half a dozen tiny caps were taken to the premie ward at the hospital,
• over $900 was raised to support the children's lit programs at CBRL,
• hundreds of knitting needles were donated, and many are still waiting to be given to new and aspiring knitters,
• 30 door prizes were donated and then won by very happy knitters,
• and lots of good [donated] food, fun and conversation were had by the many many knitters who participated in both locations.

Isn't that great? Congrats and thank you to everyone who donated and/or participated. And hey, guess what! It's only 11 months until the next knit-a-thon!

I was lucky enough to win a door prize myself and, although there were tons of beautiful kits to choose from with enough yarn for e.g. an afghan, a lace shawl or even an entire sweater, I was a good little girl and picked the one, scrumptious ball of Noro you see above. I just loved the colours and one of my knit-a-thon objectives was to destash, not restash. Well, at least as far as yarn goes. I got heaps of new needles - everything from size 2 dpns up to 25 mm needles which are presumably meant for broomstick lace but won't ever be used for that by me! (At least, not unless someone tells me what broomstick lace actually is...)

I also scored a whole whack of needles for my friend Amy, who knew how to knit in theory but hadn't done it in practice for a long time. She came to the knit-a-thon to lend her support and keep us company but had zero (0) intention of knitting anything, but I bunged a pair of needles in her hands and a ball of yarn in her lap and she was away! She left with left with many balls of yarn and a hat under way and has since started another. I can be very persuasive!



Knitting continues apace on my March socks. I was really hoping to knit some monkeys for March since they're having a March Monkey contest on Sock-A-Month but, alas, I don't think I'll have time so I'm sticking to my original railroad rib socks. I knit the leg of both socks first and then intended to knit the heel flap of one and then the other so that they'd be exactly the same but I really like doing the heels and just couldn't stop! As you can see, they've gotten a bit out of synch so now I have to decide whether to just finish #1 and then go do the heel and foot of #2, or whether to play catch-up so that they're the same length. Tricksy! I must admit I'm not loving the colours quite as much as when I started. The pooling makes them look like camouflage socks - NOT the look I was going for. Oh well!

Another piece of knitting news: you may recall from my Feb 8 spinning pics that Sidney was knitting (yes, that's Sidney. Now You Know.) She had with her that day a really neat little book of Luxury One-Skein Wonders. This little gem was filled with tons of patterns for things you could knit out of a single skein of yarn. Now, this is perfect for me in many ways: 1) I really only get one or two skeins of yarn spun at a time before I get distracted by doing other things, so projects to use up these orphan skeins are much appreciated, 2) I can't knit anything very heavy without the ol' CTS acting up, so lightweight projects that use only a single skein are easy on the wrists, and 3) my attention span lasts about one (1) skein. Granted, my handspun is not anything luxe, but the idea was a good one.


Turns out there are a few different books in the series, so I am now the proud owner of 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders, which you can see behind that yummy Noro above, and I got a copy of One-Skein Wonders: Yarn Shop Favourites from Coast to Coast for Chris for her bday.¹ AND Donna has a copy of one of the One-Skein books - not sure yet if it's a fourth one or one of these three, but at any rate our little spinning/knitting group is well covered by wonders of one-skein or less! So now I need to pick a lovely pattern to use my new yummy Noro on!

Incidentally, I see that Chapters has all three titles on for 34% off right now, and a 20% discount on their irewards memberships. If you buy a lot of books, I heartily recommend it - it's not nearly as good as it used to be but nevertheless Ron and I always keep our membership current and get loads of coupons in the mail.

Only other thing to mention knitting-wise is that I finally finished that blue feathers and fan scarf but I think it's a bit short, so I'm going to take out the casting off and make it longer. I was worried about the length so I never cut the ball off, which means I can take out the CO and then just keep knitting until the ball is consumed. Which it will be before long!


Oh, and I was also given this totally fab vintage knitting bag that I'd been drooling over during the entire knit-a-thon as a thank you for helping to organize and get the word out. It came in as a donation, completely filled with needles which were divided up for door prizes, gifts and general use during the knit-a-thon and on Fibre Fridays. I told Chris that she ought to put the bag out for a door prize itself but she played skeptical - I think maybe she was saving it for a gift all along, the sneaky bugger. Not that I'm complaining: I. Love. This. Bag. It's vintage, it's my favourite colours, it's plenty long enough to fit a pair of straight needles into with knitting still attached, and it even matches my current project of that description. What's not to love? (Those are my new enormous 25mm broomsticks needles and my yummy Noro in there with the fan scarf, by the way.)

Okay, that's it for me for another week or so. I think I'll try to post something worthy at least every weekend since Scarf A Day is taking up my weekday blog-energy. Hopefully by next weekend I'll be able to impress you all with pics of the blankets I'm weaving on Mabes right now. :)


1. I tried to get pics of them all lined up side by side, but just couldn't figure it out. This has caused me grief in the past and will no doubt continue to do so in the future. Any Blogger users out there who can help me out?

Knit-a-thon 2009

Wow, what a day! We had almost twice as many knitters as last year, produced tons of stuff for the Clothe-A-Family charity and raised lots of money for the Children's Literacy programs at the library - all in all, a huge success!

We had experts and newbies just learning how to cast on. We had people from six to sixty (and maybe even one or two seventies, though everyone was so spry and excited we all seemed about six years old). We had tons of great donated door prizes, loads of donated yarns and the biggest box of donated needles you could possibly imagine - hundreds and hundreds of pairs of brand new double points, circs, straights, crochet hooks, cable needles and more.

The best way to describe an event like this is with pictures, so here's a sampling of the pictures I took during the day (you can see the rest in my Picasa album here.) I really tried to get at least a couple pictures of everyone but towards the end of the day there were so many people arriving that I know I missed a few - I'm sorry about that! I wasn't the only one with a camera so hopefully everyone's represented somewhere.
























And finally, here are some of the things we'd made by mid-afternoon:



Not everything fit on the clotheslines and loads of things were still WIPs at this point but were hanging by the end of the day. Folks also took lots of WIPs home to finish and then bring back to the library, and many people also took home yarn and needles to begin brand new things to bring in to the donation box in the next couple weeks.

My three hats are on the walls somewhere; sadly, I didn't get any pictures of the last hat I made which was my favourite of the lot. I knit it out of some Lopi wool I've had since the dawn of time and put in some stripes and even a little tiny colour pattern. I hardly got to knit at all during the day since I was so busy running around but I did start my very first pair of mittens. I finished them up last night and will make a hat to go with if I can figure out what size to make it - I need to find someone to fit the mitts and then measure his head, I guess!

You saw it here too!

Holy Cow! We actually made the front page -- in full, glorious colour, no less! We couldn't have asked for better advertising for the knit-a-thon than that! WOOOOOOOOT.


Thank you, Cape Breton Post for supporting the Knit-a-thon! Thank you, Steve Wadden, for such a great picture! Thank you to all our sponsors for donating signs, door prizes, lunch on the day, patterns for things to knit, yarn to knit and crochet them out of, needles and hooks to knit and crochet them with, and money for the Children's Lit programs at the CBRL. Thank you to all the knitters and crocheters who are planning to come! Bring your friends!

Okay, so that was a bit premature seeing as how the knit-a-thon isn't until Saturday. I'm just so excited to be on the front page that I'm overflowing with thankfulness. :) There are worse ways to be!

FYI: The text in the pic above is Pretty Small, but if you click on it you will see it in its full sized glory. For the moment (maybe just the day?), you can also see it in the e-version on the Post's website.

Of course, there are lots more close-ups and details at my original post on our exploits here.

You saw it here first!

Originally I wasn't going to blab about this 'cause guerrilla knitting is supposed to happen on the Q-T, you know? However, this wasn't exactly guerrilla knitting since we got permission from the Old Sydney Society and all, so there's really no reason to keep mum about it. :) Hmm, what do you call guerrilla knitting when it's officially sanctioned?


That's good ol' DesBarres, lieutenant governor of Cape Breton from 1784 to 1787, resident of the little park on the corner of Dorchester and Esplanade streets, and poster boy for the 2009 Knit-a-thon. The whole idea of the knit-a-thon is to get together and knit things like hats and scarves for folks who need warm things during the winter, and who needs warm things more than a big metal guy who lives on a street corner, I ask you?

This all started a couple of weeks ago when we were brainstorming ways to bring attention to the knit-a-thon. We were sitting at the Bean Bank, sipping our tasty coffees, when Chris mentioned that her husband had sent her an email with a picture of knit-graffitti in it. I'd seen tons of it online as well, so we started comparing notes and the next thing you know, Chris and I are out in the snow taking rough measurements of Himself.

By "rough" I mean I put my hand next to various bits and pieces while Chris took pics with my cell phone:


Gettin' an idea of the scale of this guy now? The span of my hands put together like that is 15" so I was guessing his whole head had to be around 35-40" around. (Ron and I went back later with a measuring tape and verified: 36" around. Am I good or what?)


This was like holding my daddy's hand when I was a little girl. :) Except that it was a whole heckuva lot colder! Ever held a bronze guy's hand in the snow? Brrrr!

After his measurements were taken, I made a quick trip to le Valu and picked up a hand knit sweater. Wasn't quite sure what I'd do with it but I figured inspiration would strike - and so it did! Chris provided the scarves and I whipped up the hat on Sunday (and tried it on for size late Sunday night just in case alterations had to be made).

As of this afternoon, DesBarres is wearing a fetching green hat and not one but two warm scarves:


He is also sporting the hottest new fashion accessory in park statue attire, the cabled legwarmer:


Aren't they great? Man, I'd like a pair of leg warmers like those! Note also his well turned (i.e. incredibly meaty) calves: they're 19" around, for anyone who's interested in his vital statistics. They're every bit as big around as his thighs. Not that I was feeling his thighs, no ma'am.

I made a wild guess as to what size hat he'd require but then had to skimp a bit on the rows before I started decreasing 'cause I only had just so much of this three yarn combo. Good thing his head is so much wider than it is tall: those rolls of hair on the sides of his wig add a lot of width but not height, you understand. I finished up with only two yards of yarn to spare and a hat that was just barely big enough but still looks quite nice on him, ifIdosaysomyself:


He looks happy about it, anyway! I suspect he also quite enjoyed having his leg warmers sewn on:



That's Chris and Sidney working on his right leg. I had the pleasure of sewing on his left leg warmer a bit earlier. And no, that's not a satellite in his right hand, thank you so much for asking.¹ It is, in fact, a giant ball of yarn with giant knitting needles through it:


Who knew that DesBarres was such an avid knitter? Must've learned at the military academy along with map making and the like, I GUESS.



Here we are, the four mad knitters. Sidney on the left, Chris in the middle and, yes, that's me on the right with the pink needles stabbing through my head. DesBarres getting back at me, perhaps?

This pic was snapped by the very obliging guy who came to take pictures of the entire enterprise for tomorrow's Cape Breton Post. I'm hoping that we'll get on the front page so that it'll be in colour but I'm not holding my breath. There may also be some t.v. news dudes by tomorrow to interview Himself - will be very interested to hear what he has to say!

Hopefully between the paper, the news and all the folks driving by, Col. DesBarres will help us get the word out about the knitathon! This being the word in question:


So there you have it: a full confession by Sydney's newest officially-sanctioned-so-not-really-guerrilla knitter!

Oh! I should also mention that Col. DesBarres is not the only poster boy for the 2009 knit-a-thon! By now, Alexander Graham Bell and his wife Mabel are also spreading the word about our sister event in Baddeck from their perch on a park bench. :)


1. I kid you not: at least two people have said that the yarn and needles look like a satellite. I'd no idea satellites came in hot pink. Maybe I ought to make another yarn/needle combo and crash it into the first...

A preview of coming attractions

I know I've been quiet the past few days - this is because I've been working on Top Secret Plans for advertising the Knitfit Knit-a-thon.

Here is a sneak peak of what I'm talking about (quarter added for scale):


I'm bad for knitting my hats slightly too large but this is by far the biggest hat I've ever done and I'm afraid it's too small. Also, those are by far the largest stitches I have ever made: nearly 1 stitch per inch! I used three strands of bulky weight yarn and The. Biggest. Circular. Needles. EVAR.

And now I'm off to go play dress up with larger than life dolls... hee hee hee...

Knit-a-thon 2009

Hokay! Got the skinny on the knit-a-thon pledges and a few other details regarding the knit-a-thon itself:

Knitters can, if they wish, collect pledges from sponsors. "Pledges" meaning a flat $5 or $10 or $however many the sponsor wishes to donate rather than those really awkward 2-cents-per-stitch-knit kinda deals. Any amount is very much appreciated; anyone donating $10 or more will receive a receipt for tax porpoises if they include their name and address on the pledge form. The pledge forms are here - if you're planning to knit and don't mind asking some folks to sponsor you, please download and print yourself a copy and then bring it and your pledges collected on the day.

Monies raised will go toward the Children's Literacy Programs at all branches of the CBRL, including the Summer Reading program, the Storytime program, the After School Library Fun program, and an online Teen Reading program. I gather that the $1200 raised last year was a huge boon to these programs which, although highly valued, are but one piece of the library pie and so can always use some extra support from the community.

If you are not keen to collect pledges, don't let that stop you from participating! We need all the knitters and crocheters we can get to turn the heaps of yarn donated into hats, mitts, scarves and other goodies. As I mentioned before, all knitted and crocheted items donated will be passed on to the Clothe-A-Family charity to be distributed across the island. The yarn has already started coming in to the library branches and if last year's donations are anything to go by it'll take the work of many, many hands to make light work of the knitting to be done!

There will be tea and cider and cookies and lunch and possibly even cake. There will be free patterns for hats, scarves and socks. There will also be a side room where expert knitters can take newbies under wing for some private instruction if they're feeling shy or in need of some seriously quiet concentration. We're also hoping to have a tv set up in there with instructional videos such as Knitting from Start to Finish*ing playing from time to time.

And finally, should Mother Nature throw us another storm of the sort we're getting today, the snow dates for both Sydney and Baddeck is the following Saturday, February 29. If the weather looks dodgy, check the library website, the KnitFit blog or here at HFD for the status on a possible date change.

Knit-a-thon 2009

Ho hum. We got 10-15 cm of snow overnight and the roads aren't very navigable yet, so my morning weaving date has been postponed. I think I'll take the opportunity to get some paperwork and non-fibrous stuff done today - been putting that off for a while but the end of the month is rapidly approaching. However! I do want to share...

...An update on the Second Annual Knit-Fit (as in "a fit of knitting") Knit-a-thon:

First, this is the note I received from Chris Thomson, who works at the library and is one of the organizers:

"The Knit-a-thon is from 10 am - 5 pm on Feb 21st at McConnell Library and at Baddeck Library. Everyone is welcome to come out and knit or crochet for charity. It was lots of fun, and we hope to have door prizes and lunch donated as well. We have some yarn left over from last year and are hoping for more donations before the big day. Also hoping we don't get a snow storm this time! We had 24 hearty souls out last year and, with donations of finished products as well as yarn, we donated 250 items to the Every Woman's Centre and raised almost $1200 for Children's programs at the Library. This year the finished products will be donated to the Clothe-a-Family campaign run by the Salvation Army who will distribute the items to families in need around the region."

Wowsers! 250 items and almost $1200?! Not bad for 24 knitters, b'y! Especially considering that there was practically a blizzard on the go that day.

The knit-a-thon is organized by volunteers¹ and the staff of the Cape Breton Regional Library. Last year the official event was held at the Sydney branch but a group of rogue knitters on the west side of the island organized themselves and held a knit-a-thon-in-tandem out their way, which was absolutely GRATE. This year the organizers are planning official events at both the Sydney and the Baddeck library branches, and hopefully anyone who wants to participate but can't get to one of those places will take a page from the Inverness knitters' book and have satellite knit-a-thons as well. You can read all about the organization that led up to the big day last year and see pictures of the event itself (including the much lauded yarn cake!) on the KnitFit blog.

A few more details about this year:

Everyone with an interest in knitting is invited to come, whether or not you actually know how to knit. If you do already know, bring your WIPs or start something new on the day. If you don't knit but want to learn, or know how but want to brush up your skills, now's your chance to pick the brains of dozens of teachers in one spot. There will be loads of yarn and needles aplenty and beginners can expect to have a project underway by the end of the day. Even if you just like to hang out near knitters but don't want to knit yourself, we'd love to have your company - lunch will be provided and there will be some non-knitting things to do, too - not to mention an entire library branch to browse through!

Now read that last paragraph again, but substitute "crochet" for "knit" in all cases. :)

There are donation boxes in every CBRL branch now, which we're hoping will fill up with donated yarn and all kinds of knitting and crocheting paraphernalia - needles, hooks, other kinds of equipment, books, videos, whatever - but mostly yarn! The equipment will find a good home with fledgling knitters and crocheters and the yarn will be used to make hats, scarves, mitts and other warm things which will then be donated to the Clothe A Family project. The boxes will stay out after the event as well, so that folks who finish their projects after the knit-a-thon is over can bring them in to be collected. All the collected knitted and crocheted items will be picked up and brought to Clothe A Family in Sydney, and CAF will take care of distributing them all over the island, not just in Sydney or Baddeck, so you satellite knitters and crocheters: bring your stuff to any library branch and they'll make sure it gets into the distribution chain!

I'm assuming from the $1200 figure(!!!) that knitters can also raise pledges before the event - this is an "a-thon", after all. I'm not entirely sure how that bit works but I'll do some checking and share any intel I get.

Last year local businesses donated tons of yarn and door prizes and this year promises to be the same, so don't miss out! Come join us in Sydney or Baddeck on the 21st!

1. Sidney and Carisse, two of the founding members of the Unspun Heroes, did much (most?) of the organising last year. Way to go, guys!