2.04.2008

February 29th, 2008 is World Knitting/Crafting Day...

This event has been declared by members of Stitchlinks, a global friendship network researching the therapeutic benefits of knitting and stitching.Read their list of 25 ways that knitting and stitching can help depression. It's a great site with wonderful support and information that goes to show that knitting is more than just fun or a fad. It helps!I'll be spending the day with my family on Feb. 29th as we will be celebrating my Dad's 80th birthday. And I plan to knit through as much of it as I can in solidarity with the many others who will be doing the same thing, and to honour my Dad who still wears the vest that I knit for him 25 years ago from yarn that I bought at the Safeway Grocery store in Duncan B.C.WHAT WILL YOU BE DOING OF FEBRUARY 29th to recognize the importance of knitting and stitching in your life? Email your thoughts and plans to betsan@stitchlinks.com to let them know that we're with them in this.

The above announcement came from the WOOL-TYME Kingston newsletter which just went out (as it does every month) on the 1st or 2nd. It's a lot of work, putting it together but as most of you know, I'm a huge fan of writing so it really isn't work work, more like fun work that eats into the sleeping, eating, living, knitting, bill paying, etc. aspects of my life. It's always so nice to send it out and get it off my computer and into the hands of people who so kindly tell me that they really look forward to it. If you don't get it, YOU SHOULD... so click on the link at right and it will automatically sign up your email address. You've nothing to lose as it is an easy process to unsubscribe if you feel that it takes too long to download or if it doesn't suit your needs. (It's not too late to get February's copy as I usually send out a second run about the 10th of the month to cover those who have signed up since the first.)


As most of you who connect with knitting blogs are the same savvy people who are into many fun things in the techno world, I'm sure that you all know "Ravelry". Well, today is a red letter day for me as I got my invitation to join this great on-line community of knitters/crocheters. I signed up right away, got myself set up with a Flickr (sp??) account and spent about 10 minutes looking through a cyber territory that I'm sure would be equivalent to the size of Northern Quebec. So I make the announcement of my Ravelry-hood with great embarassment at my lack of knowledge, but with great excitement too at the prospect of learning much. ( I always seem to get into new ventures in pairs...on Wednesday I will be taking a workshop introducing me to Facebook.)

For those of you who don't know Ravelry, to the right is an example of a page that a member would post of pictures of projects that they are working on. (Notice that this is a place where no one seems to be embarrassed by the fact that they have several projects on the go at the same time.) Go to https://www.ravelry.com/account/login to find out more about it and to get yourself on the list for future membership.

And in advance of my Ravelry-posting of the projects that I've been having fun with here are a couple of them:
At the top of this post there is a rather strange looking hat which is a "re-worked" project that I can't believe I'm actually doing. About 10 years ago, when Sirdar SNOWFLAKE had a screaming yellow, I made a "bumble bee" hat for my little girl. It was very cute and she liked it a lot. She liked it so much that she wore it for many years, long past the time when I'm sure her friends would have considered it cute. A couple of years ago it seemed to blessedly have disappeared but was resurrected this very cold winter and my "little girl" who is now a senior in High School asked if I could do something about making the band softer, as the acrylic that seemed appropriate at age 7 had gotten stiff and scratchy over the years.
I agreed and cut off the bottom part of the hat and re-knit it with Mission Falls 1824 Wool in time for her to take it with her on a school ski trip this past week. (Although she told me that she wanted it exactly as it was, complete with knitted googly eyes re-attached at the front of the hat, I did manage to make it a bit bigger without her noticing.)

The second project that I'm working on, and adoring every moment of, is the EZ Pi shawl from the latest Vogue Knitting Magazine. I've actually done a lot more since I took this picture and although it doesn't look like much here, you gotta feel this baby to appreciate the glory of SUBLIME's cashmere, silk and merino blend. I'll keep you posted as it grows.
P.S. There is no such thing as the phrase: "I'll just do this..." within the context of a time frame when it comes to working on the computer. Case in point: I just spent the better part of 45 mintes of the 30 minutes that I had alotted to getting this post up and when I pressed "view", I realized that I had actually posted it in www.wtkpatterns.blogspot.com which is the sister site to this one where we keep all our free patterns for people to access... Time is irrelevant anyway, isn't it?