Warming up Afghans

Just a brief post today to share some information for local Ottawa and Toronto knitters.

I'm sure many of you have heard of afghans for Afghans and the great work that they do supplying warm blankets and clothing to people in remote, impoverished parts of Afghanistan. Like many of the wonderfully worthwhile international relief charities that seeks donations of wooly knitted items, the cost of postage is often a barrier to participation for me and many others. So I usually knit a few items for local charities.

That's where the folks over at the finding forty gathering knitting blog come in. They have started a project here in Ottawa as well as in Toronto to collect items for afghans for Afghans, and they'll look after the shipping. What a great initiative! Here are the details from their flyer:

YOU KNIT, WE SHIP

Calling all Ottawa and Toronto knitters! How about dedicating some of your stash to an outstanding summer project? Yarn Forward (Ottawa and area knitters) and the Knit Cafe and Knitomatic (Toronto area) are teaming up for this worthy cause.

afghans for Afghans is a humanitarian and educational people-to-people project that sends hand-knit and crocheted blankets and sweaters, vests, hats, mittens, and socks to the children of Afghanistan.

Helpful hints
· Wool and animal fibres offer the most warmth and perform best in rugged conditions. Please avoid synthetic yarns – they cannot be shipped.
· Knit or crochet your favorite patterns or try something new. For sample patterns see the AFA website, below.
· Please do not use representational images (e.g. faces or animal designs) or religious or national symbols.
· Avoid white or very light colors. Feel free to mix a bright and cheery palate from your yarn collection!
· Please assume standard garment sizes. You are knitting for a Canadian climate. Hats need to cover ears, sleeves need to go the wrist and torsos need to be long.
· No used items or scarves please.

Drop off and Deadlines
You can drop off your projects at the following locations:

Yarn Forward 581 Bank Street, Ottawa
Yarn Forward 474 Hazeldean, Kanata
Knit Cafe 1050 Queen Street West, Toronto
Knitomatic 1378 Bathurst, Toronto

The dead-line for the next shipment is September 30th, 2007.

A visit to the website reveals that they are especially looking for wool baby blankets, baby hats, and baby socks (not booties) for a hospital in Kabul this year. I'll be dropping off a few items at Yarn Forward sometime in July before we move. There are lots of links to free patterns on the website too.

For those located in other parts of Canada who wish to participate, you can actually mail finished items to Elann.com, as they are acting as a collection point, to save on postage to the U.S. (and presumably to avoid problems with customs).

Time to get knitting... as if I needed an excuse!

Progress shots

Not much time to chat today, but here are a couple of shots of what I've been working on.


Soleil is almost finished. Once I get the knitting done, I'll just have to seam the shoulders, crochet an edging, and block it. I have a new summer skirt that's going to look great with this!

And I'm also making progress on that baby blanket. Unfortunately, I just looked at the photo and realized that I got the Q and the O in the wrong order! Argh. I think I'm going to let it go though. The acrylic stash is significantly reduced, but I did have to go out and buy a little more to do the border. If I survive the monotony of the long moss-stitch borders and don't get distracted into starting another new project, this should be done soon too.

Multi-tasking

After finishing a bunch of long-languishing projects this spring and beating myself down to only two works-in-progress, it appears that I must have let my guard down. A bunch of new projects seem to have lept into my knitting basket when I wasn't looking. 8 projects of the WIP list?! How did that happen? And I think there may be one or two small unreported ones besides! Obviously this is getting out of control. The latest offender:
I'm still on a quest to clear out odds and end from the stash. I had a huge bag of mismatched acrylic bits, which seem to have morphed into a pretty psychadelic baby blanket. I pulled these out one night, and thought of knitting more mitres, but instead I found an old pattern for a girl's alphabet sweater, with intarsia blocks. Pulling colours at random, I knit this in verticals strips that have been mattress-stitched together. I think it still needs about two more columns, taking me up to R, but unfortunately the pattern that I've been using only goes to L. So I need to sit down and try to graph a few more letters in the same style in order to continue. I also ran out of interesting images from the sweater pattern early on, so I've been pulling them from different sources. Nursery Knits by Debbie Bliss is great for that, and my favourite, the lady bug, is from Animal Knits by Zoe Mellor. I think I will knit a mitred border in moss stitch, similar to the last baby blanket I showed you (the animal one). The finished blanket is destined for the Warm Woolies donation box, and will just about fill it up. The latest addition to the box:


Again, this was a response to my recent obsession with getting rid of yarn ends. Cute, no?

My recently aquired ADD has also manifested itself in starting a new cardigan design. It's a pretty plain little black cardigan with lace edging in Patons Fresco, which I have ooodles of in the stash. I'll try to get some photos next time I pull it out. Having a cat in the house these days means I can't leave too much yarn lying around in open view, so most my WIPs have been carefully stored for the time being. She did manage to shred a little ball of acrylic that I left lying around one night, so I'm not taking any chances!

And of course, the knitting continues in fits and starts on mansock #2 and on the Soleil tank top.


Somebody stop me before I start something else!

Home again

Well, I arrived safely back in Ottawa around 2:30 this morning, after only a three-hour flight delay in Winnipeg. By my standards, that's actually pretty good!

I didn't get too much knitting done in my travels. I knew that I had a very busy weekend conference ahead of me, but I didn't even knit much on the plane. I was so tired I slept most of the way back. I did get one man sock finished, and Nick was kind enough to model it:


His feet are a little bigger than Dad's, so it's a tad over-stretched in the ankle here. I like the striping in this yarn, but it's not a particularly regular stripe interval. I don't think it will be possible to get identical socks out of it - I don't remember the last time I managed to get identical twin socks out of a self-striping yarn anyway! It is turning out to be a little splitty to knit with. I added a strand of black reinforcing thread in the heel, but I forgot about it for the toe. It probably looks better without it in the end. On to sock number two.

I thought I'd photograph a few more of the knits I've done for Warm Woolies over the past few weeks.

Good Friend Cable Vest

Assorted hats. The top one is felted.

The box is getting fairly full, but I think I can still cram in another couple of hats and socks. Did you see that flash of fur in the hat photo above? We're kitty sitting this little cutie for a couple of weeks while our friends are on vacation.


I grew up always having a cat and a dog around the house, but Nick has never had a cat, so it's a fun new experience for him. So far so good!

Going Home!

Now that it's official, I can finally share my fantastic news. I've landed a job! Not just any job, but a great full-time job in Newfoundland! I'm almost finished my third university degree, and have been living and studying in Ontario for almost 11 years. Finally, it has all paid off, and we get to go home.

Nick and I are both from the same town, just outside St. John's. Our family members all live there still. We have always thought that we would like to go back there one day, but it seemed unlikely that I would find a good job there in my field. For those who are unfamiliar, Newfoundland is not the most prosperous part of Canada, and has been better known in recent years for the high numbers of people leaving the province in search of work. Very few of my high school friends are left. So we had kind of resigned ourselves to having to settle on the "Mainland" and make the best of it, for the sake of rewarding careers. I've worked too long and hard at school to settle for a job that I could have done with a bachelor's degree.

And then this opportunity fell out of the sky. I stumbled across a job ad, decided to give it a shot, and it turns out to be the perfect job for me. The official offer came in yesterday.

I'm a little overwhelmed by what I have to get accomplished before I start (at the end of July). I still have to finish my thesis (it's getting there, really!), submit and defend, besides organizing a cross-country move, and buying our first car. It's going to be quite the adventure!

So how does this relate to knitting? Well, a couple of weeks ago when it really started to look like this was going to happen, we started to look at moving companies, and evaluate the amount of "stuff" we have to move. We started drawing up a list of stuff to sell or give away, and suddenly, I felt an urge to blow through a bunch of stash yarn that I really didn't feel it was worth hanging onto. I started digging into the partial skeins, and at around the same time, I discovered the Warm Woolies website, through a link from the Stash and Burn podcast site. This is a charity that sends warm children's clothing to orphanages in Russia, as well as to others in need. What caught my eye was the cute vest patterns, and the fact that they want REALLY warm stuff, in bulky wool, or worsted weight held double. Well, that sounded like a great way to use up my big bag of wool remnants, and help a good cause. My plan is to fill a box, which is currently sitting in a closet holding excess stash, with as much warm wooly goodness as I can finish before we move, and send it to the volunteers in Denver who are collecting it. In the past, I had thought about knitting for Dulaan, or other charities, but the cost of postage was a bit of a turn-off, so I chose to knit for local charities. But now that the moving company will be charging by the pound, it doesn't seem so bad.... and the stories I have heard from friends who have adopted in Russia recently, well let's just say that I think there are a lot of children there who could really use a warm pair of socks.

Here's the progress so far:

Vests, in both the 6-8 yrs and 3-4 yrs Warm Woolies patterns, 3 pairs of Magic 28 socks (thanks for the link, Marianne!)...

3 hats, in patterns made up on the fly (there's a fourth one awaiting felting)...


And one baby blanket from Animal Knits by Zoe Mellor. Actually, the blanket was knit last year some time, from acrylic bits and pieces (baby blankets are the only items accepted in acrylic). So I'm going to throw it in too.

These double-strand projects in little kid sizes just knit up so quickly, and most of them are simple, which is good at the end of a long day of thesis revisions. I'm having fun playing with colour combinations, and feel like I'm accomplishing something on a couple of fronts - warm children and stash reduction. I'm just going to keep knitting until the box is full or the yarn runs out.

Enjoy the long weekend, for those who get Monday off. I'll be at the office for most of the weekend, but I always make time for a little knitting at the end of the day.