Thursday, July 24, 2008

The Incredible Kindness of Knitters!

I have been meaning to get a post up for days but I had hoped to have pictures to go with it. Since that doesn't seem to be happening any time soon, I figured I had better just go ahead and post. Hopefully, I will get some pictures next week.

If you have been a part of the knitting community, either in real life or online, for any length of time, you know that knitters are incredibly generous when it comes to charity. Just look at Kristy's Hat Quest for example. Kristy came in to our LYS Hooks & Needles in very early May and mentioned she was going to the Ukraine in September and needed (gasp!) 300 hats for the orphanage she was going to visit. It seemed nearly impossible at the time but between blogging and Ravelry, she already has over 260 hats in hand and more to come! Then, of course, there is the Yarn Harlot's campaign to raise money for Doctors without Borders through her group Tricoteuses Sans Frontières (Knitters without Borders). They have raised nearly half a million dollars since the start of the group! There are many other examples all over the web of knitters raising incredible amounts of money in rides to cure Aids, Breast Cancer Walks, and many other charities.

What you may not know about knitters is how incredibly generous they are among themselves. Of course, if your friend is short of yarn, or needs to borrow a stitch marker, or a darning needle, or someone has a deadline to finish umpty-jillion water bottle cozies, you are going to help out however you can. It's part of the definition of friend, isn't it? Then there are the folks who will willingly help out someone they may have met at their local yarn store. But I am talking about total strangers, who out of the blue, are totally willing to help out a fellow knitter.

You may or may not know that the latest "hot" yarn, at least from what I can see with the Loopy Groupies et al, is Wollmeise. This gorgeous yarn is dyed by Claudia, who lives in Germany. The Loopy Ewe is the only distributor in the US and let me tell you, it is nearly impossible to get your hands on some. Last week, Sheri (proprietress of the Loopy Ewe) posted over 300 skeins for sale at 9 pm CST and it was all sold out in under 5 minutes! Here's a link if you want to see some of the gorgeous colors. (Hmm, looks like you will have to scroll down and search for Wollmeise. Trust me, it's worth the time.)

Anyway, I digress. I have tried multiple times to get my little paws on some Wollmeise. The crazy thing is, I had never even seen it in person but had read so much about it that I knew I just had to have some. However, it seemed as though that was going to be an impossibility. I just don't have time to sit in front of a computer screen for hours, refreshing the page to see exactly when this yarn comes up so I can attempt to get some. Apparently, I was not the only one feeling kind of low after missing out yet again. TracyinMichigan (Ravelry link), who is the "mom" on the F5ing thread of the Loopy Groupies on Ravelry, started a thread to share the Wollmeise love. Wollmeise "virgins" posted their requests for Wollmeise on this thread and would receive a PM if someone wanted to help them out. Long story short, I am now the proud owner of two skeins of gorgeous, luscious Wollmeise! I received my yarn from two different ladies in Colorado who sold it to me for exactly what they paid for it, plus shipping! I eventually found out that between the two of them, they helped out 11 different knitters, none of whom they had ever even heard of before this thread. I know that many other generous knitters did the same thing. Can you believe that? Like I said, knitters are the most generous of folks.

PS Hopefully, I will have pictures of this luscious yarn to post next week. Right now, I need to catch some zzz's. Tomorrow I head up to Oroville to help out a friend who was burned out in the Palermo fires about 6 weeks ago. They just got power yesterday, and we will be hauling stuff to the dump to make room for the new triple wide she hopes to have in place in the not too distant future.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Water Bottles Need Love Too!

Well, maybe not love exactly but ... A friend of mine ran across this picture in my photostream
lacy water bottle cosy
and found it rather strange. Actually, Keith, there was a very good reason for knitting a water bottle cozy. One of the gals I knit with at the Escalon library every Monday has a daughter who is going to the Netherlands to play in a soccer tournament. Each player is responsible for bringing enough small gifts to exchange with each member of one of the teams they play. Joy's daughter is taking water bottle cozies. They are done in patriotic colors and they keep the bottle from "sweating" all over whatever they are set down upon. That being said, Joy needed to come up with 17 of them! I don't know about you but knitting 17 of anything can get a wee bit monotonous. I told her that if she had some extra yarn, I would be happy to knit up a cover or two. Of course, if you have read much of this blog at all, I very seldom knit anything in plain stockinette or garter. Thus, the lacy water bottle cozy as well as this one based on the Odessa Hat pattern by Grumperina.
closeup of Odessa cosyOdessa Hat
I just love that swirl pattern and it is so amazingly easy to do.

The hat is naturally going to Kristy's Hat Quest. The last I heard, Kristy now has 177 hats in hand. I received 3 more on Monday to go along with the Odessa hat and the group in Santa Fe, NM has at least 21 hats ready to ship on August 1 with more coming in all the time. The new goal is 400 hats so that once each child at the orphanage receives a hat, there will still be some available for new children arriving long after Kristy makes her way back home. The generousity of knitters is just amazing!