Follow along and discover your next inspiration as we cast on for projects we love, explore new techniques, and dish about the latest and greatest from Knit Picks.
Meet the team »
Kelley talks about when you’re just not feeling right about a project
and switching to a new pattern.
Books Reviewed
Take Along Knitting
Toe-Up Socks for Every Body by Wendy D. Johnson
One of my favorite things about working with the Independent
Designers is finding new projects for myself! So when we started up the Crochet Along,
I immediatly choose Lauren
Osborne‘s beautiful Adva for my project, as I’ve been eying it since we recieved it. Lauren
has many beautiful patterns, both knit & crochet and I am so
thrilled she is in IDP.
Pam Daley is one of our most prolific IDP crochet
designers – she has 5 so far in the program with several more on the
way. And all are super cute! We enjoy getting the samples of her
designs & ooing and ahing over them – oh and putting them the KP
babies!
(that’s baby Ella, the newest member of the KP team, wearing Pam’s Sweet-Heart
Hat)
If
you’ve joined our Crochet Along
group (you haven’t? Why not?), you may have seen Allison
Harding posting some great hints & cheering all of us newbies
on. Allison is one of our Independent Designers and we are so happy to
have her help out with the CAL – she is a wonderful and innovative
designer, both for us and her own website. I recently did an interview
with her so we can all get to know her!
Most of you know me as the Independent Designer Partnership
Coordinator (quite the mouthful of a title isn’t it?) but another
wonderful part of my job is working with local charities. While most
of our yarn stock is in Ohio, we do end up with quite a bit here in
Vancouver – leftovers from projects or photoshoots mostly. Lots of
people ask what we do with all of it – and no, we don’t take it all
home with us. We actually donate all of our discontinued yarns &
colors it to a couple of lovely local places. One of those places is Friends Of The Children,
a nonprofit group in Portland that provides the most at-risk children
with intensive and long-term mentors. We’ve worked with them in the
past and they have a group called “Crafty Friends” that loves playing
with our yarn & teaching children (and mentors!) to knit or crochet.
Since we are discontinuing a bunch of colors right now to make room
for our fall stock, I went down to the small warehouse we have here to
load up a box for our Friends. That box turned into two..
Wool socks are really so much more than a fashion statement or funky
accessory. They are a wonderful year-round garment that will be worth
their weight in gold when you’re caught in the snow, a freak summer
rainstorm, the middle of the desert, or even the mall.
Lee Gant
is an amazing designer & knitter – she has 12 patterns already in
the IDP program and always has more in the works! Her patterns cover a
wide range of styles, from beautiful spring & summer tops to lovely
cold weather sweaters, both for children & adults. She’s one of our
favorite designers to work with & we wanted to know a bit more
about her…So here it is in her own words!
What a nice thing to do on this dreary Monday morning – announcing our Mastering Color Knitting winners! So I picked out some comment numbers this morning using my trusty Random.org number generator. And here are your winners!
I’ve been knitting for over 20 years, and I’ve learned to latch hook,
embroider, sew, do needlepoint, and a lot more. But I was undeniably
terrible at crochet. Really, really bad. I would love to show evidence
of some of my epically failed attempts, but I threw them in the trash
years ago. The trash never forgave me.
When we started getting more crochet books, and several of my
coworkers mentioned an interest in learning to crochet, I thought, hey,
why not? It’s been years now, maybe my old crochet hooks have forgotten
what I’d subjected them to. I decided that this time, I am actually
going to learn to crochet, and remember it. We were all talking about
goals with our crochet – everyone else is going to make things.
My goal is just to crochet something that is not utterly horrible. Like,
it looks like I meant to do that.
So, Nina and I signed up for a learn to crochet class! I could chain
when I got there, but that was it. I then learned how to single and
double crochet, and then it clicked – I was terrible at crochet because I
did it completely wrong. So, with my newfound confidence, I kept
going with my little swatch. In the class, the instructor suggested we
make a little bag out of it, so I began to crochet in the round
(correctly! …mostly). I realized that it was going to be a very ugly
bag. Very, very ugly. So… In my typical fashion, I completely ignored
what I was supposed to be doing.And the results…
