#[knit -

[sosuperawesome]

Knitting Patterns // Erica Heusser

[thypandatetor]

✨ Finished ✨

I gave it a tiny face

TO HELL WITH ALL CURRENT PROJECTS, I GOT SOFT MAIL:

Time to spin and knit me a peach!

My dearest @fossilfibers made the discord our own existential peach colorway since we try to see how many screaming peach stickers we can find when we get new friends lol

[slimeanimal]

Scrap yarn project... my beloved... ❤️

[thebarrenspinster]

i seriously need to upgrade from my cheap acrylic interchangeables that literally pop off the connector while i am knitting so i have a very important question for knitblr

my current ones are knit pro/knitters pride trendz and i think you can already tell how i feel about them. the two listed are the two i have been considering most heavily. my main drawback on the chiaogoo is the price but i have heard amazing things on facebook so i want yalls opinions here

[gornwen]

In the pre-Covid times, one of my fellow yarn-slingers was in the very beginning of her career as a pattern designer. Even though she possesses a runway-approved body, she wanted to make sure she was designing size-inclusive patterns and make sure she was doing it right. So a couple of the folk at our stitch night were enlisted to pattern test the larger sizes for her for her soon-to-released v-neck sweater.

Said sweater was designed to have a deep v-neck. Very sexy, like many of her patterns. But when grading her pattern up to the XL/XXL (the sizes that we were testing at stitch night), she didn't really take into account the fact that... well... you have to change the decreases as you size up. The finished sweaters were very sexy, scandalously so. And frogged. And reknitted with new math. The test knitting was absolutely vital in order to ensure that the final pattern was truly size-inclusive.

Anyways. Said designer still regularly uses our gorgeous XXL model/test knitter for almost all of her patterns.

i've seen a couple of Knitting Authorities (TM) recently in passing imply that test knitting is an optional extra stage a pattern can go through, while tech editing is necessary, and while I agree that tech editing is necessary, and I agree on principle that from a pattern accuracy point of view you don't need test knitting, but I think overall the idea that test knitting isn't important is a very thin people take. It's like buying any clothing, if you don't see it on a model that in some particular has a somewhat similar body to you, you have a greater hesitancy and distrust around that pattern. It's not that I'm never going to buy or make a pattern that hasn't been test knit by someone roughly my size, it's just that I'm going to be more confident of my investment, and I guess I feel that a person who doesn't see that that is an important part of the experience of choosing patterns isn't necessarily going to understand the experiences of people in larger bodies in general

[fiberfantasies]

Fiber arts is just Math in sheep's clothing

[iknityounot]

(Long post, sorry y'all)

A little more than two years ago now, my grandmother passed away. She and my grandpa had moved down to my home town a few years before so we could take care of them. I brought them groceries once a week, helped them write checks, fixed tvs, and found lost things. I was really close with my grandma.

In addition to her hilarious personality and dry wit, one of my favorite things about her was that she was a painter and a crafter like me! She used to crochet, and I took her to the craft store a couple of times so she could get more yarn and books on crochet. But her arthritis and the shaking in her hands kept getting worse, so she eventually had to stop.

She kept her most recent project, a granny square blanket, safely packed away in a plastic bin. She told all of us she was going to finish it one day.

Her hands never got better, and when she got sick, and we found out it was cancer, she rapidly deteriorated.

After she passed, I went to work helping my mom clean out my grandparents apartment so we could move my grandpa in with her. In our frantic cleaning, I found that bin again:

DOZENS of granny squares, dozens of half used skeins. I asked my mom what she wanted me to do with it, and she said she didn't care. I set it aside and later took it home.

Maybe a month later, that tumblr post about the Loose Ends Project was going around. It felt like a sign--I was never going to learn to crochet in order to finish my grandmother's blanket. But they might be able to help!

So I filled out the interest form. They got back to me SUPER quick. And maybe 2 weeks later, I was paired with volunteer in my state (only 2 hours away!) and the box of yarn, granny squares, and my grandmother's crochet hook were in the mail. That was at the end of January this year.

Over the next couple of months, my "finisher" emailed me regular updates on her progress, and asked me questions on my preferences for how she constructed the final blanket.

At the end of August, the blanket was done!

I had always intended the blanket to be a gift for my mother. So I cleaned it up, put it in the only bag I had big enough to fit it, and drove to my mom's. I gave the blanket to her and she was gobsmacked. I explained to her all about Loose Ends, and how someone volunteered to finish the piece for us. She was speechless. (I was quite pleased with this, because I am not the best at giving gifts, so this was a pretty exciting reaction!)

She said that it was the most thoughtful gift she had ever been given. She said "your grandma would love this". To which I replied, "yeah, I know she really wanted to finish it a couple of years ago". But that was when my mom dropped the bomb of a century on me--she told me that my grandma had started making those granny squares OVER 30 YEARS AGO. She had started the blanket when my grandpa was staying in the hospital, but that was back when my mom was younger than I am now! My grandma had packed them all away, planning on finishing it, when my grandpa was sent home from the hospital. Then it went from house to house, from condo in Chicago to their apartment in my hometown. All that time and my grandma had wanted to finish it, but couldn't. First because she was busy, then because she forgot how to do it, then because of her arthritis, and then because of the cancer. My mom said she had given up on expecting my grandma to finish it. 

She said I brought a piece of her childhood with her mom out of the past.

And really, all of this is to say, if you have seen or heard about the Loose Ends Project and have an uncompleted project or piece from a loved one who has passed away--these are your people. They were so kind and treated my project with such care. That box probably would have been found by my own grandkids one day if I hadn't heard about Loose Ends.

Five stars, absolutely worth it!

(From what I understand, you can sign up to volunteer too! If you have time to share, it might be worth checking out!)

[noirandchocolate]

Several weeks ago one of my coworkers called me over into her cubicle and gave me a very unexpected gift. Her mother passed away recently, and she'd been packing stuff up at her condo to give to relatives and sell, so the home could be sold. The mother was an avid knitter and crocheter, and when my coworker came upon her stash of equipment, she told me, she "immediately thought of me as someone who might get some use out of it."

So, I have inherited a varied collection of knitting needles and crochet hooks, cable needles, sewing needles, and, best of all, now-out-of-print pattern books, mostly for blankets, because that was what this lady loved to make most. Plus, I also have a bunch of gauge swatches she made, pinned to little bits of card covered in perfect schoolteacher handwriting setting out the patterns they were made to test.

And also...

My coworker brought another bag, full of yarn and...knitted blanket squares. Her mother's last started project, before she got too sick to continue. And she asked if there was anything I could do with it.

It turned out, there are twelve completed squares, and I quickly located the pattern book they are from amid those given to me. It's a book of 60 patterns, meant to be put together however the maker wishes into blankets of 20 squares. I figured out which of the numbered patterns were already made, and selected eight more that I thought might go well with them.

So now! I am working on completing! My coworker's mother's last knitting project!

And I really am feeling very good about doing it.

[bisonwares]

LAST CHANCE FOR SWEATER PRE-ORDERS!

Sweaters are restocked and up for pre-order in every size till March 20th at 8pm CST!

Some designs will not be returning!

If your size was sold out before it's available now!

XS-3XL!

Shop here!

[thypandatetor]

I got this peach braid from @fossilfibers some time ago (time is fake especially when life is stressful) and I just finished today! My ✨emotional support peach✨

Progress post here!

[lphaneuf]

Sitting in a waiting room yesterday, the receptionist told me I could sell these socks. She said she'd be willing to pay as much as $12 for them.

[zegalba]

Yohji Yamamoto: Bat Sweater A/W 2008

[peachesingreece]

Reminder to avoid buying anything crochet new from big stores. Crochet (unlike knit) CANNOT be done by a machine and must be done by an actual human being. The person who made it was definitely not paid an appropriate amount for their labour. Most big stores use sweatshops anyway and I know it’s hard to completely avoid buying anything from a major store. But if those specific items don’t sell, we can send a message to companies that we don’t want items made fully by hand using slave labour

This summer, avoid any new crochet items. You don’t need THAT specific top that badly

[knit-happens]

I knitted a psychedelic rat for a friend 🐀

[Image description: a knitted rat with a multicoloured body and pale pink inner ears, feet and tail. First image is a view of the front, second image is a view of the side. End ID]