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?

The joy of socks (a little at a time)

Hey, long time no see! At least not here on HFD - I've been really busy over on Scarfaday lately. Turns out it's really hard to keep two busy blogs up to date all the time - who knew!? (Well, okay, I should have expected it and yet, I'm still kinda surprised. Colour me naive.)

I'm anxious to tell you about all kinds of stuff but I'm not gonna - not yet, anyway. "Why is this?" you may ask, and I shall tell you: it has to do with my new theme for the... month? Maybe a month, maybe a little less, maybe a whole lot longer. My theme for the time being, let's call it.

The theme is "Little by little," and my reasons for it are many. Mostly, I was trying to think of ways to make Scarfaday and all the other stuff I've got on my plate easier to do and more fun, but I also thought choosing a theme for a duration of time would be inspiring and helpful when it comes to making decisions - about design, about ways to spend my time and energy, about what to write on the blogs, ekcetera.

This particular idea for a theme suggested itself when I was starting to feel a bit burnt out on Knit-a-thon and Scarfaday stuff. I've always been a binger (as in"one who binges", tho' I am known to bing happily from time to time :) - I tend to do a whole lot of something for a while and then burn out and go do something else. One of the things "little by little" means to me is working on things incrementally - work a bit on a project, take a break. Work some more, take a break. Don't rush, don't burn out, get the job done all in good time.

"Little by little" is suggesting lots of design ideas, too. Things like working on items of a smaller scale, working on pairs of things that go side by side, working more slowly (something I've been thinking about a lot this year already), working in finer threads... It's going to be fun to see where all it takes me. :)

And so, although I'm dying to tell you all about tons of different things, I'm going to curb my inclination to write pages and pages about them all and just hit you with one thing at a time. I'll work through my list little by little, and maybe it'll be more fun to read about them that way, too. :) First up, the thing I've been meaning to talk about the longest: the joy of sock...amonth!

I was poking around online to see if anyone else had *aday blogs or something along those lines and somehow stumbled across a Sockamonth blog. People all over the world have signed up to knit a pair of socks every month and then post 'em when they're done. How cool is that!? I'm sure it will come as no shock at all that, since I'm a sucker for *aday (and, evidently, *amonth) projects and I've been loving the whole sock knitting thing since Mom got me hooked up with some needles and yarn at Christmas, I promptly signed up to participate.

My first pair of socks was due at the end of February but, happily, I actually already had them done. You remember those blue and green and yellow ones I'd been working on? When they last appeared on HFD, I'd just frogged the toe of the first one I'd finished in order to reknit it. I finished that up, Kitchenered the toes one both socks and was all set for Sockamonth! Easy peasey. :) Of course, since I didn't have to worry about getting them done in time, I promptly forgot all about posting them at all, and only barely remembered before the March 1 deadline. D'oh!


This is the picture I posted to the blog, mere hours before the end of the month. It's a bit cheesey, as we had friends coming over At Any Moment and plans for the evening, so I just bunged 'em on my feet, slapped some white paper down on the kitchen floor and tried to find some pleasing arrangement for mes pieds. It's kinda hard to get a good angle at your own feet without blocking the light coming from overhead, letmetellyou. Also: it's impossible (at least for me) to work your feet into a heart shape. This is probably for the best.

The socks way up at the top of this post ^^^ are the ones I've started for March. I quite like the colour and the railroad rib but I'm a bit worried that they're going to be way too big, 'cause this is stretchy yarn with some elastic in. Plus, I have no pattern for these in hand yet - I just cast on Some Stitches and am hoping that a pattern will miraculously appear in my inbox with the particulars sometime before I hit the heel. Also, I'm really anxious to knit a pair of toe-up socks and try out a really cool, really easy provisional cast on method I found on YouTube, so I might change gears and work on another pair for a while. A friend of mine gave me a toe-up pattern for fingering weight yarn at our last Unspun Heroes gathering that I might use, or I might use this pattern from Ravelry.¹

Fortunately, the Sockamonth rules just say that you've got to finish the socks in the given month - doesn't matter a whit when you start them. Which makes it perfect for my little by little theme!

Hmm. My text to photo ratio is pretty high for this post. Oh well, what can you do? I'll try to talk less and pic more next time!



1. Yes, it's true: I've joined Ravelry. Ravelry, Twitter, Flickr, WeaveZine, I even rejoined Yahoo (gack!) and some obscure machine knitting thing... I've turned into such a joiner! I used to avoid all this stuff like the plague but now I can't seem to stop! Might have to apply The Theme(tm) to online groups as well. Ooo-arrr.

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!

Gossip girls

I realized late last week that folks will be arriving at the knit-a-thon on Saturday with stuff already made, a fact underlined by one of my friends showing up for our usual Saturday night gig with yarn and needles in hand. "Oh boy," thought I. "I'd better get knittin'." And so I have!

I've been using a super simple pattern: Cast on 80 stitches, knit until you've got enough, decrease at 8 points. Easy peasey. Haven't worried about gauge - some hats are bigger, some are smaller, but everyone's head's a different size anyway, right? They'll fit someone out there. :)

That up there ^ is my trio of finished hats. Don't they look like gossipy little things? Not sure what they're saying with the heads so close together like that... can't be anything nice!


This was the first one I knit, using up odd balls of some bulky acrylic stuff I had in der stash. I started on Saturday after I finished the toe of my sock while the aforementioned friends were still over. They'd brought me a huge cuppa tea which just so happened to be almost the first caffeine I'd had in weeks, so I was up allllllll night - got the hat done around 4:00 aye em, as I recall. Ooph. And then promptly cast one this one:


More acrylic yarn from the stash. I'm never keen to weave with acrylics so knitting with it is a great way to use it up. I was really surprised by how soft this hat is - the ball didn't feel that soft before it was knit but hoooo boy is it soft now! I also really liked how the colours swirled around it. :) Good job it's too small for me or I might be tempted to keep it.

Took a break from human sized hats to knit up the one for Des Barres on Sunday afternoon, but then went back to finish the swirly hat on Monday. On Tuesday I cast on this one:


I cast it on twice, in fact, since I discovered after knitting the first few rounds (at Tim Horton's, OF COURSE) that I was actually knitting a mobius strip. Ho hum. Frogged it and started again, still at Tim's, and then finished 'er up on Wednesday. The yarn in the purple one is heavier than the others so I only cast on 72 and it's still plenty big. Doesn't curl up at the bottom the same as the others do either. I'm hoping it'll be slightly less toilet-paper-covery once it's blocked.

We went to Tim's for lunch again today so I cast on a new one. Just barely getting started on it:


Poor new kid on the block. I hope the gossip girls aren't too hard on it!

I've got more of all these yarns so, if the stars are right, I might get to knit scarves to go with. I'm not all that fussy about knitting scarves - they just go on and on an on and on and ON. Might try knitting them lengthwise but what I'd really like to do is combine the yarns with some other stuff to make it super bulky and then knit that to make it go even faster. Sadly, even with my ridiculous stash, I don't have the right stuff to combine them with and it seems wrong somehow to go out and buy more yarn when I've got such a pile already. I'm hoping to find the perfect thing at the knit-a-thon on Saturday.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some knitting to do!

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...

Takin' a stab at knitting

Is this hysterical, or what? Poor, poor leetle ball of yarn... Talk about guerrilla knitting!


By Terry at Bent Objects via Craftzine. This is the only fiber one I've seen so far (except maybe for the Roman tickle fighters if you count feathers as fiber) but you should still run, not walk, over to look at the rest. Priceless!

A little of this, a little of that...

Phew! Who knew it would be so hard to post on HFD regularly while I'm doing Scarf A Day?

Scarf a day is taking up most of my fiber energy lately -- but not all of it! I've got an idea in mind, an experiment if you will... I'm not going to say much about it now, but here's a preview of possible future attractions:





I'll post more later if this project amounts to anything. Yes, I'm a tease. :)

In almost completely unrelated news, I've been seeing more and more guerrilla knitting (aka knit bombing, aka knit graffiti) in the tubes lately, including this absolutely astonishing tree cozy and a whole host of other amazing things by the group knitta please and this incredible Mexico City bus by knit-graffiti artist Magda Sayeg. I can't get all that excited about knitted cozies for door handles, I have to say, but the scale of the covered trees and buses is pretty impressive...

And, before I forget, I wanted to share a picture of the beeooootiful thing my dear ol' mum has been weaving of late, for a show that she and some others are organising on her island off her coast:



She's weaving this on her new 12 shaft 60" macomber that SOMEONE GAVE HER. Okay, okay, so I don't think it was an actual gift -- the loom is living at Mom's for the foreseeable future but ownership has not actually been transferred as far as I know -- but geeesh! AND the macomber is like the umpteenth loom that she's acquired like this. Why does no one give me looms, I ask you? It wouldn't even have to be 12 shafts - I'd settle for eight! Even four in a pinch! I learned to weave first, doesn't that count for anything?! It's even got two back beams, one sectional and one not. (Ooops... drool in keyboard... Sorry, Lu) And yes, I realize that I already have three floor looms, one of which has never even been to my house and went directly into storage 'cause I don't have space to set it up. SO not the point!

Ahem. Now that that little tantrum is out of the way, is that not the most beautiful colour gamp you've ever seen? Check it out from some other angles (including one that shows off the loom *sob*):




I wish I could see the finished blankets in person but they're going into a show where I expect they'll sell in a heartbeat and so I shall not have the pleasure. Pictures may be worth 1000 words but they don't do much for tactile sensory input, eh wot?

And now, with drool in my keyboard and fingerprints on my screen, I bid you bonne nuit.