Tag: charity

Stash Dash Time

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For those of you that have been before you’ll know what it’s all about, the rest of you would probably best to read this previous post here http://knitmidleton.com/2012/07/23/everybody-keeps-asking-me/

 

Basically, we cover up all the shelves and lay out as many tables as we can fit into the shop; on top of these we put all the yarn we’re discontinuing.  There could be whole ranges of yarn, shades of yarn and some you might not have seen before.  There will be odd balls, several balls and packs of balls, no matter what, all balls are €3 each.

 

There are things to consider: you have to book your slot, you only have 20 minutes (you’re timed), you have to prepare, dig out the patterns, check your favourites on Ravelry, make sure you know how much double knit/aran/chunky you need.  Have a look at the post linked above if you’re not sure and make sure you book your place quickly before they all go.

 

This is what you should be expecting.

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Happy Knitting!

 

Everything Has Gone Square

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As you might expect my life is being dominated by squares at the moment. In my naivety I thought this latest charity collection would be lovely and simple – really! What was I thinking?!

So there’s the making of the squares, that bit is simple. Except I’ve had to take an executive decision and forgo the making part to move onto the blanket stage. This involves the all important selecting of the squares and laying them out into a blanket. (this can take a while)

Then there’s the sewing:

  1.   Sew 4 squares together to make a strip
  2.   Sew 5 strips up to make a blanket
  3.   Sew all ends in
  4.   Crochet the border

 

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Now to be fair to blankets look absolutely beautiful, particularly because they’re made up of multi-coloured squares that you probably wouldn’t put together if you had the choice. Mixing the colours and styles up really adds to the eclectic feel of the blankets and hones in on the popularity of ‘Shabby Chic’ at the moment. Truthfully, you could probably sell the blankets in a vintage store FOR A LOT OF MONEY with the current trend in all things handmade. Don’t worry I won’t.

I won’t…HONESTLY.

The good news is we have 40, yes 40 blankets in various states of completion, which is fantastic and has made all the work worthwhile.  We still have approximately a week left to get as many squares in before we have to send of the blankets, so please keep at it.

In the meantime I’ve just discovered that I’m short of a square to complete the blanket I’ve been sewing up, so I’ve had to crochet a quick one.

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Happy Knitting!

 

Wow, How Hot is It?

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It seems like ages since I managed to get on here and post up a little snippet of life in the shop.

For the past 2 weeks we’ve been so busy with the blankets that it feels like we’ve done little else.  Given the time restraints for the collection (3rd August) it’s very difficult not to get absorbed with knitting & sewing squares.  I have managed to get a pair of socks knitted and think I could become obsessed.  They’re the first pair I’ve made using the two circular needle method as championed by Cat Bordhi.  If you’re interested in seeing this method check out her video on youtube.com http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=mcafee&p=cat+bordhi+socks

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If you were on Ardmore Beach this week you could have possibly spotted me trying to get ahead with my Autumn/Winter Samples.

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If that wasn’t enough the Innocent Smoothie/Age Action Campaign is back again, more about that another time.  I’m off to knit or sew, or both if that’s possible.

Happy Knitting!

Squares Everywhere

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Our blanket collection for The House of Hope in Vanadzor, Armenia is well underway and there are squares everywhere.

I’ve got piles of them sorted by size, strips already sewn to be made up into blankets and several finished blankets complete with crochet border, a very basic crochet border believe me.

We’ve calculated it takes approximately 7.5 hours to sew the squares together, sew in all the ends and crochet the border.  So we’ve been trying to sew the squares up as they come in to try and keep on top of things.  A big thank you to those that have been sewing as well as knitting.

As you might expect, the squares initially came in, in various sizes and dare I say shapes.  Undeterred all squares are being used and as you can see the blankets are beautiful when sewn up.

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Please keep your squares coming in as we would love to be able to give as many residents as possible a blanket each.  It might be a little ambitious though as there will hopefully be 80 people, nothing like a challenge.

Happy Knitting!

Look What We All Did?

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I’ve spent the last few days trying to gather up everything we’ve collected in for the The Kyl Assylum in Belarus.  As you can imagine my office tends to resemble a very untidy wool shop at the best of times but there are times when the whole thing just gets out of hand.  Lately the problem has worsened as the sample balls of wool fight with my stash, the paperwork and the ever increasing number of carrier bags containing donations.  As if that wasn’t enough, my son shares the office so I can keep a watchful eye on his computer use and ‘spend some time’ with him whilst he battles aliens on his XBox 360.

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It was lovely to go through everything again, some of the items are so beautiful.  In total there were 30 Scarves and 24 hats to send to Kyl  via the Bureen Chernobyl Project.  In addition to the hats and scarves we also received a couple of boxes of toilitries to pass on and we had a good rummage and found a good few jumpers too.

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Some of the donations that came in have been more suitable for children so I have separated these out and will be forwarding them on to The Children’s Chernobyl Trust for them to pass on to needy boys and girls.  In addition to the 31 hats and 13 pairs of gloves we’ve had 13 baby and toddler cardigans donated too to pass on.

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Thoroughly, embracing the tidying up bug I also managed to go through the XBox king’s old clothes and sorted out everything that he’s grown out of to send off with The Children’s Chernobyl Trust items.

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Happily there’s now space to house all the knitted squares were hoping for.

Happy Knitting!

Moody Blanket Update

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I thought it was time to update you all on the progress of my ever increasing blanket which is now 54.5″/138cms.  As you can probably imagine knitting the 2 rows per day is taking much longer now on account of the blankets size.  To be on the safe side I need to make sure I have three quarters to an hour spare when I start to knit.  Unfortunately, our weather is anything but May like which has inadvertently been a godsend as there is some warmth from the blanket.

Sitting under the weight of it whilst knitting in heat is not great.

I think I have a little over a months worth of knitting left before I’ll reach my target length of 6 foot.

In order for you to judge the length and to give you a bit of a giggle you can see me modelling the blanket so far.  I’m 5ft3 on a good day.

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Here’s Another Idea For The Blanket Squares

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Some of you may recall we knitted 14″ blankets for the maternity hospital a couple of years ago now and the pattern many of us used was knit on the diagonal.

20cms/8" or there abouts
20cms/8″ or there about

The beauty of the pattern was that you started with 1 stitch and increased by 1 stitch on every row until you’d reached your desired size.  You then knit one row plain and begin decreasing 1 stitch every row until they’re all gone.

Easy peasy!

8inch/20cm Charity Blanket Square

 Materials

Any weight of yarn

Appropriate size needles for yarn

 Eg: Double knit yarn = 4mm,

      Aran weight = 5mm

      Chunky yarn = 6.5mm

      Super chunky weight = 10mm

     

Abbreviations

K – Knit

KFB – Knit into the front and the back of the next stitch

K2Tog – Knit the next 2 stitches together

Instructions

Cast on 1 stitch

1st Row – Knit into the front and the back of the stitch, (2 stitches).

2nd Row – K1, KFB, (3 Stitches)

3rd Row – K1, KFB, K to end, (4 Stitches).

You can see that by increasing in every second stitch a decorative border is produced.  Repeat row 3 until either of the sides is approximately 8”/20cm (please note you are working on the diagonal). 

Next work one row in knit without any increase.

To decrease K1, K2tog, K to end.

Repeat this decreasing 1 stitch on every row until only 2 stitches remain, K2Tog

Cast off final stitch and sew in ends.

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Needs blocking

Blanket Squares

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GMI logo jpegOK so I’ve got the knitting needles out and had a good rummage through my stash so I can give you a couple of ideas for 8″/20cm squares.

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A really unblocked stocking stitch square

Stocking Stitch Square

 

Using 6.5mm needles and standard chunky yarn cast on 25stitches loosely.  Working in stocking stitch (1 row plain, 1 row purl) knit until your piece of knitting is square ending with a wrong side row.

Cast off loosely.

Hint The best way to check this is to fold the bottom right corner over to the top left corner diagonally.  If the edges meet on the left side your piece is square.

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Moss stitch square

Moss Stitch Square

Using 6.5mm and standard chunky yarn cast on 24 stitches loosely.

1st Row: Knit 1, Purl 1 to end of row

2nd Row: Purl 1, Knit 1 to end of row.

Repeat these 2 rows until knitting is square (as above).  Mine took 44 rows.

If you’re making squares remember it’s easier to block slightly smaller ones to 8″ but we can’t make larger ones smaller.  Having said that we will use them.  You can also use 2 strands of double knit yarn held together to make a chunky yarn.

Happy Knitting!

Lap Blankets For Armenia

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As our collection of winter woolies for Chernobyl draws to an end we are happy to announce our next charity project.

GMI logo jpegGlobal Missions Ireland (Charity No: CHY13718) is a Cork based charity that undertakes in missions both at home and around the world. Locally they run feeding programs to reach the people in the City of Cork.

On foreign missions they work with the local church to reach out to the most vulnerable and marginalised in society. The charity’s main aim is to run mission trips, which provide people with an avenue to work abroad or help a community, which they feel, are in need.  They send people from the medical field, construction industry, teachers, housewives any sector that they find will help in the country that they are working in.

 
This year  Global Missions have got a team going to the ‘House of Hope’ retirement home in Vanadzor, Armenia. Here there are 80 men and women taken out of deplorable conditions to live in safety and comfort. It was set up to house the elderly community who had been living in derelict buildings and containers since the earthquakes in 1988.
 
The team will be running feeding programs, giving bread made in the ‘ House of Hope’ bread factory to those in the community that are in need. They will also visit with social workers other in the locality that are in need of help to try and rehabilitate and rehouse them into better conditions.
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These elderly people need our help as they have very little and Global Missions has specifically asked if we’d be interested in making lap blankets.  These will help to keep the residents that little bit warmer whilst at the same time giving them a gift of kindness they can cherish.
Calling all of you that knit and/or crochet for your help.  We’d also welcome those of you that sew or can be a little creative with felting old jumpers.
What we’re after?
  • As we’re making lap blankets these can be either the complete, finished article or 20cm/8″ squares which we will sew together to make blankets 100cm x 120cms/40″ by 48″
  • Squares can be made using any yarn however, please remember these blankets will need to be washable and warm.  Chunky yarn will knit up quicker and remember that you can always use more than one strand of yarn together.  Two strands of double knit worked together is the same as using a chunky yarn.
  • Squares can be in any pattern/design of your choosing and we have no colour preference.  knit, crochet or as I mentioned before sewn or felted it really doesn’t matter.  Take this opportunity to use up your leftovers.
  • Spread the word – we’d love to hand over as many blankets as possible.  Tell other knitting groups, schools & colleges, residential homes, church groups, etc.
  • The closing date for our collection is Saturday 3rd August.  It would helps us enormously if you are making squares if you could send them in sooner if possible to allow time to sew them up.  Even if it means giving them in in batches.

There are absolutely loads of lap blankets available on www.ravelry.com

There are also loads of patterns available for 20cm/8″ squares out there in cyberspace, just type ‘knit a square’ into your web browser.

The Knitter/Simply knitting Magazine ran a campaign for Refuge last year in which they asked for squares the same size to be donated.  You may well have a copy of the magazines neatly filed on a shelf.  Crocheting a square should be simple enough as you just stop when you’ve reached the right size.

I intend to pop up a few square patterns when I’ve knitted some examples but I wanted to get the collection underway.

Technically speaking if your tension is correct, casting on 28sts (loosley) with chunky yarn on 6.5mm needles will give you 20cms horizontally.  Knit in stocking stitch until square is 20cms vertically and cast off loosley.

Hint: I’m terrible for casting on/off too tight so I use a needle at least one size larger

If you want to have a closer look at what the charity does checkout their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Global-Missions-Ireland/119741718073281

New Magazine – Reloved

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New Magazine
New Magazine

It seems we’ve finally got a hold of ourselves and tightened our belts (not sure mine was ever loose), we’ve seen the error of our ways and realised that everything isn’t disposable.  There’s a whole upsurge in people learning how to remake, reupholster, upcycle and transform.

Change the sleeves on your dress
Change the sleeves on your dress

Hopefully there were very few of us that simply threw away a blouse if the buttons had fallen off but how many of us have given a dress away because we no longer like the style? Perhaps you cast away a piece of furniture because it didn’t fit in with your new contemporary styled living room?  Can you see the charm in everyday objects from charity shops and house clearance stores if given a little love?

Reloved is a new quarterly magazine dedicated to restyling, transforming and revamping your world.  In the first issue ‘Spring 2013’ there are 26 projects covering everything from transforming your clothes to upcycling your furniture.  There is a masterclass on reupholstering a drop in seat pad chair and quick makes to create in an evening.  There are several features including one on the original ‘Make Do & Mend’ series from the wartime upcyclers.  Last but not least, there’s a guide to upcycling and knitting (ahem… of course).

The magazine welcomes you to a shabby chic lifestyle, full of colour and a renewed love for all things eclectic, mismatched and homely.  Of all the projects some of my favourites are Changing Sleeves (above) and the Lacy Doily Lampshade which are really cool.  In my house they’d have to be stained or painted though as the dust would turn them grey in a matter of minutes.

Lacy Doily Lampshade
Lacy Doily Lampshade

On page 16 and 17 there’s how to create the Vintage Cake Stand, all the rage at the moment and much cheaper than some of those to buy in the shops.  I think they’d look really good made out of old mismatched plates and full of naughty teatime treats.

Vintage Cake Stand
Vintage Cake Stand

Loving all things knitted it goes without saying that the knitted Vase Covers on page 32 – 35 get my creative juices flowing and there’s also a lovely knitted footstool in the magazine.  It’s cream and would again be a dirt magnet here, better to be done with it and make it in a tweedy grey for my home.

Vase Covers
Vase Covers

Last but not least and my absolute favourite item in this issue is the ‘All Wrapped Up Chair’ which has actually been taken from the book Granny Chic.  If I ever get the time expect to see very similar looking chairs in the shop one day.

All Wrapped Up Chair
All Wrapped Up Chair

The magazine has been extremely popular and you may find it difficult to get hold of a copy however the digital edition will be available soon on Apple Newsstand, Google Play and Pocketmags.com.  You can get further information on the Reloved website http://www.relovedmag.co.uk/

Happy Knitting!

(or should that be creating?)