For Sale for Those Who are NOT for Sale

For the past several weeks I've had an idea percolating in my heart and mind. I have been knitting most of my life and as you can imagine, I have collected a bit of a yarn stash. Because I am also a spinner, I have amassed even more yarn created from wool and llama fiber. (Little side note here: I live in Southern California which has a mediterranean climate. I don't wear much wool.) As I've been working through my stash, decluttering what I'm not going to use in the future, I contemplated how I could either make some money from my efforts or share what I have with others.

About a month ago, I decided that I wanted to somehow sell items knitted from my handspun (and often hand dyed) yarns and donate all the profits to a charity. We have sponsored a young orphan boy (now almost a man!) from Uganda through an organization called Ugandan Lambs Project. Another charity that I am passionate about is GENERATE HOPE, which focuses on helping young women who have been rescued from sex trafficking slavery. These were the two groups I planned to give any proceeds I earned from selling my yarns and knitted and felted items.

Just last night, I had a conversation that opened a door to help Generate Hope NEXT WEEKEND. They are holding an auction event in San Diego and are going to have an arts and crafts table to sell any crafted items they receive for donation. This will include anything knitted, crocheted, felted, sewn, quilted or beaded.

Do you have new finished items in your house that you could mail to San Diego to add to the table? Items must be received by Thursday October 21st to be included in the auction. I know this is late notice, but I want to put this out to any and all people who read my blog just in case you can do something, anything, to help Generate Hope meet their needs and goals.

If you can help, please leave me a comment with your email contact information and I'll get in touch with you and let you know where to mail your package.

Thank you so much! Generate Hope thanks you. I thank you. And those precious young women thank you!

Minimalist Knitter's Handbook

Recently, I downloaded a free e-book.  It's titled Minimalist Knitter's Handbook, Knitting More While Owning Less. Written by Robyn Devine, this short but informative book is a quick and easy read.  In less than forty pages, Robyn encourages knitters to really think about what they enjoy knitting, what kinds of yarn they honestly don't like to use, and how much knitting they realistically do in a three month period.  She also guides her readers through how to destash their yarn, needles and patterns.  Perhaps most importantly, Robyn gives pointers on how to NOT return to stashing habits once the yarn stash is gone.

While I had already started doing some of the activities Robyn suggested, I found her ideas to be challenging and inviting.  I have in the past dumped out my yarn on the guest room bed and separated the skeins in to keep and give away piles, I know I need to do it again. And again.  I especially liked her ideas about how to plan projects and keep everything together in one place for the projects.  I'll be following many of her other suggestions in the months ahead.

If you are a knitter or crocheter, and you have a stash of yarn that is a little larger than you would like to admit, then I know you'll enjoy reading Minimalist Knitter's Handbook and benefit from following some of Robyn's suggestions.

You can download the book FOR FREE at minimalistknitter.  Look for the title of the book on the right side bar of the blog.  If you do get the book read it, please let me know!  Destash! Minimalize! Enjoy!

Thoughts on Knitting Limits

During my amblings around the internet, I recently came across the blog Minimalist Knitter when Robyn was a guest poster at Becoming Minimalist.

Minimalist Knitter got me thinking about how knitters tend to accumulate piles of yarn that never get knitted into anything.  Those luscious skeins of brilliantly dyed wool or bamboo or cotton lie languishing in bins, cupboards and drawers as stashes of forgotten acrylic snuggle in the plastic bags hidden in the guest room closets.  A total waste.What a pity. How sad.

Several weeks ago, I did tackle my yarn stash and eliminated a large bag of yarn I knew I would never use.

Another comment Robyn made was that as knitters, we should think about the kinds of items we normally knit and what garments we just don't enjoy working on.  I've been considering this and have come up with a short list of items that I seem to knit all the time.

Baby Sweaters.  In my defense I will say that I do have a grandson to knit for.  Additionally, nephews and nieces are starting to have babies. So my three favorite baby sweater patterns are being knitted over and over.  I don't seem to branch out much since these three sweaters are so cute and work up so easily.

1. Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket.  It's a fun knit, all in garter stitch with minimal sewing of seams.

2. Knitting Pure and Simple's Neckdown Baby Cardigan.  I've been knitting this sweater in its three sizes in various fibers, colors, stitch patterns for many years.  It's one of the most versatile patterns I've ever seen.

3.  Mason Dixon Knitting published a kimono pattern in a knitting book several years ago.  I knitted it up, changed the parts of the pattern that I didn't like.  Not liking the tapered sleeves, I switched the pattern to make the arms straight.  I also vary the front, changing from the V cross over opening to a straight front with a couple of button holes.

My knitting pattern choices are becoming more minimalist, as you can see.  I don't enjoy wearing fancy, trendy clothes and don't much like making them either.  Since I finished the master knitter's course, I don't feel like I have anything to prove in knitting up exotic patterns.  The beauty of minimalist knitting is that I can knit what I like when I like.

FROG

I'd love to be able to show you a photo of my finished sweater.  I'd love to say I have been wearing it.  I'd love to be moving on to another project.  But I can't.

The fronts and back are indeed finished on the Minimalist Cardigan.  One sleeve is half knitted.  Until yesterday afternoon I thought that the other sleeve was done up to the sleeve cap.  When I was ready to shape the cap, I double checked my stitch count.  That's when I realized that I had used the numbers for the WRONG SIZE even though I had highlighted the correct numbers in BRIGHT YELLOW!

Frog. frog, frog.  TINK. TINK. TINK.  Cast on again.  Count stitches.  Recount stitches. Refer to the pattern.  Reconfirm pattern.

I now have four inches on the sleeve reknit on the correct number of stitches.

Time spent knitting: 1 week
Stitches unraveled: 10,320
Reminder to check the pattern: priceless

Minimalist Cardi

Because I promised to give an update on the remake of the sweater I unraveled a couple of months ago, I took some photos of the new cardigan in the making.  After much searching, swatching, deciding and blithering, I finally chose to reknit the reuseable yarn into a cardigan.  Then I searched, swatched, and blithered some more and decided that the minimalist cardigan from Interweave Knits Fall 2007 was what I really wanted.

Then I had to make sure my gauge was a good match.  Check.  After that, I had to decide what size to knit.  There is a big jump in inches between the sizes and I fall right smack dab in the middle between two.  Isn't that always the way it is?  Nothing ever really fits exactly.  Fortunately I had been browsing through Maggie Righetti's Sweater Design in Plain English and read that moss stitch, which is the main stitch used in the minimalist cardi, tends to stretch sideways after blocking.  Aha!  I chose the smaller of the sizes in the pattern.  I sure hope Maggie is right.

The back is finished and I'm up to the armholes on the left and right fronts.  Being me, of course I had to change something in the pattern.  After I had knitted a few inches of the front, I realized that the center edging of stockinette looked horrible.  That over all stockinette stitch in the original sweater was one of the features I disliked about it; the yarn lost all its springy beauty in that stitch.  So I pulled it out and switched the front to all moss stitch.  This change may result in a wider front but I'm ok with that.  And it's even more minimalist because the whole sweater is worked in the same stitch.

I think I'm going to love this sweater!  My elbow has asked me to take a short break from knitting.  The tendons are complaining about the quick knits I made for my niece's baby. Usually I just ignore my elbow's complaints and keep on knitting, but this time the protestations are louder and longer.  So I'll humor the ligaments, tendons and muscles for a few days.  But I'm looking forward to wearing the finished Repurposed Minimalist Cardi!

How It All Started

My paternal grandmother was a country woman. Even though she attended a Normal School, earned her teaching certificate, and taught school for a few years, she returned to her roots and became a farmer's wife. My grandmother loved to garden. She planted vegetables every spring. She grew prize winning dahlias. She also knitted. For the last thirty years of her life, she lived on the edge of a small town near the old farm, but Grandma remained a county woman at heart all her life.

When I was six years old, I began my yearly two week summer visits to Grandma's. I learned to eat cherries straight off the tree, to wash a freshly plucked carrot and pop it directly in to my mouth to savour the true flavor of carrots. As you can imagine, two weeks seemed a long time to be gone from home even though my older brother was always with me. After a few days of playing-in-the-garden bliss, we would stage Peggity, Parchesi and Monopoly marathons. I guess that I got restless because I'd also already read all the books I'd brought with me and I began pestering my grandma and annoying her. So she did what every wise grandma does when she has a bored six year old granddaugher in the house. She taught me to knit.

I took to knitting like a duck to water. I created a plethora of slippers that first year, giving hand knit slippers to every female relative who would accept them. I moved on in a few years to a sweater. Because my grandma was the only person I knew who knitted, my knitting lessons were sparse, and my technique certainly lagged behind my enthusiasm. That sweater was a piece of 'art' but it certainly wasn't wearable. It didn't really matter to me; I just loved to knit.

When my grandmother died (more than twenty-five years ago now), my parents asked me if there was anything of hers that I wanted as a keepsake. When I finally received the message and answered (I was after all living many thousands of miles and eight time zones away), I said, "Just Grandma's knitting books and needles." My parents went looking but found only one book left among her possessions. I treasure it as I do my memories of Grandma patiently teaching me to knit one quiet summer afternoon.

Grandma was a country woman, a gardener, and a knitter. I wonder if she knows that while I'm not a country girl, I am, like her and because of her, a gardener and a knitter.

Earth Day Efforts

Every year, in April, our world celebrates our home, the Earth. Because our natural resources are not limitless, we must focus on reducing our consumption, reusing whatever we are able to, and responsibly recycling as much as we possibly can. I do my part. I turn off lights. I compost.

In my efforts to declutter my home and wardrobe, I regularly give away clothing that I do not wear. Last week, I pulled this sweater, handknit by me several years ago, from the sweater shelf and evaluated its continued presence in my closet. Epic failure. I never wear it because 1) the neck is too tight, 2) the arms are too short, 3) length? too short, 4) it is too wide through the body, 5) and too tightly knit on needles too small for the bulkiness of the yarn. Out that denim colored 100% wool sweater went-- in to the giveaway bag.

With Earth Day approaching, I contemplated the idea of recycling used sweaters to create new items. I've done it before. Felting wool sweaters I've found at the thrift store, I have designed and sewn bags and purses and given them as gifts to appreciative friends and family members. Once, I tried to unravel a sweater knitted with the loveliest yarn, only to discover that it had actually been cut and sewn from a length of stockinette knitting which made it useless to try to recover all those short lengths of yarn. My mind wandered to the giveaway pile in the front coat closet and I thought, "Someone will really score with that denim wool sweater."

Aha! Why can't that someone be ME?

I retrieved the sweater (I do love that yarn!), picked at the woven ends and unraveled the whole sweater. Six large skeins of curly, kinky strands.

I tried not to think about the fact that every one of those curls meant a stitch I had knitted once before. Thousands upon thousands of knits and purls.

Now I am hunting for the next perfect pattern to reknit the denim wool yarn into the next perfect sweater. This time, I will pay more attention to gauges and measurements. And in this way, I will be honoring Earth Day as well.