Drop by and see what I'm working on at the moment!
Bundle!
It’s all kicking off on the Ravelry boards … words flying, comments censored, needles aimed … the cause? A post submitted by someone working with Vodafone in Ireland on a ‘Cheer Up Ireland’ campaign which involves a bit of urban knitting (although there’s no mention of the project on their website.)
The idea is not a new one but started out with the best of intentions by Eilish Tuite, a third year sculpture student in Limerick school of Art and Design. She is working on a project called Urban Knit, the aim of which is to cover a disused building in Limerick City. The cover will eventually be chopped up into smaller blankets and donated to St.Vincent’s Charity (hopefully washed and repaired after much exposure to the elements?), although as DeadlyKnitshade points out in her post, the charity don’t seem to be asking for knitted blankets, more “help financially and/or by giving of your time”.
Eilish has been calling for contributions of wool since the beginning of February, and I’m not sure whether Vodafone approached her after the project had been initiated or if it was the other way round.
Then a post popped up on Ravelry yesterday encouraging people to submit knitted squares. The contributor who started off the thread (under the username of Slkav) had joined Ravelry the same day - no profile, no knitting projects, no other contributions save this post. Their email address suggests they work for a company called Simply Zesty - an online pr and social media agency who frankly should know better.
After a few initial encouraging messages, the mood has changed as knitters have started to voice their resentment at the attempt to lure them into a corporate campaign.
Miss Marple Vintage Scarf - Skiff stylee
It all started with an email through the website from a lovely lady looking for a pattern for a keyhole scarf she’d seen on an episode of Miss Marple. I sympathised - I’ve been known to grab the camera and take snaps of the TV screen myself when something knitted takes my fancy, and what do you know, here was another TV-knitting-snapper.
I thought the pattern had to be out there so did a search on the web but with no luck - what would Elizabeth Zimmerman do in these circumstances (assuming she was a Miss Marple fan)? Grab her needles and some graph paper - and a pen to write down witty, bone-dry comments - and make up her own, so in the spirit of Zimmerman I did the same (minus the witty comments). I ordered some fine yarn (UK Alpaca Super Fine DK in ‘Fawn’), did some tension swatches and off I went. Okay, a scarf’s not the most difficult of things to create, but after a false start I was steaming ahead and feeling pretty chuffed, especially when the keyhole segment worked like a dream.
I typed up the instructions, hit the .pdf creation button … then inevitably found the pattern by chance (through Ravelry of course). My version doesn’t differ that much, the stitch is a little finer and the approach to the keyhole section differs where I went off-road and did a simple graft onto the original body of the knitting. Either way, it’s a sweet scarf … I’m planning another one in black with some white crocheted edging for a dressier version.
