Charity Knitting

Yesterday evening I participated in a charity knitting event at Twisted Yarns in Spring, TX and what an event it was. I arrived at the stated start time of 5:30 pm and the parking lot was already full. There were two projects avaiable - a cute little bear for chidren in stressful times and a knitted cap for the troops overseas. All of the yarn was donated either by Cascade yarns or by the shop itself.

Every possible sitting surface was in use including the floor and the step stool for putting yarns in top shelves. I estimate that there were about 40 people there and I even knew a couple of them.

This was a much more open group than the WWKIP group last weekend and I think it is because we were all working on identical projects that were relatively simple.

I chose the hat project but after seeing how the little bear came together I think I will do that with my leftovers. The hat is very basic:

Cast on 80 stitches of a worsted weight yarn on size 7 or 8 needles - circular or straight.

Knit 1 1/5" to 2" of a rib pattern like K1P1 or K2 P2

Knit in stockinette stitch until the whole thing is about eight inches long.

Then, every other row, knit 6, knit 2 together reducing the stitches between the K2T's by one.

Keep going until there are 8 stitches left, close the top, weave in ends, sew seam (if using straight needles) and you are done.

This makes a very basic watch cap style winter hat. It can be cuffed or not but I think most men would use it wthout a cuff for more coverage.

Mine is almost done and, if I hadn't spent so much time shopping, I bet I could have had it done by the end of the evening at 8:30 pm.

There are many chairty knitting sites on the web and I encourage you to check them out. Most do not require a lot of skill or yarn to get acceptabe results. My personal favorite is the Red Scarf Project that I have participated in for the past couple of years. They limit the number of scarves they will accept to five per person or organization. I have already completed two from scrap yarn and I have another skein that I picked up last night.

When I get my hat and new scarf done I will post pictures.

Thanks to Twisted Yarns for the opportunity to discover another way to use my knitting for the benefit of others. The shop's on-going project is caps for pre-mature babies. These use up left over sock yarn and I have a ton of that so I think I'll try to make a couple of those as well.

Have a great weekend and consider making something for someone you don't even know.