January Meeting Recap

We had such a great time with Annette and more than 80 knitters on Thursday night!  

Drawing on her experience working at several local yarn stores she ran us through the ideal process to knit a sweater, be it your first or your eighteenth.  

First you need to know yourself, your knitting style and pace, and your main knitting location.  Then you need to think about shapes that you enjoy and find flattering, look at sweaters you already own, measure them.  Then you start researching options, people watch, lurk on ravelry etc.  Next comes the actual pattern and yarn purchasing, just have one ball wound at first in case the yarn doesn’t end up being right for the pattern you chose.  Then you swatch!  First for fabric and then for gauge.  Next you read through the WHOLE pattern, yes, read the whole thing first.  This will help you identify any points where you have to do two things at once, or where you find the instructions confusing.  Then, and only then, do you cast on.  Annette recommended knitting the sleeves first (if possible) so that you can see if your gauge swatch lied, because we all know that they do sometimes.  

At all stages your local yarn shop is an amazing resource!  They can help you understand garment shapes, yarn selection, confusing instructions, and any math that might result from your gauge swatch not matching the pattern.  

So go forth, pick a pattern that matches your abilities and that you will love wearing, buy the yarn of your dreams/budget, swatch your heart out, read the whole dang pattern, and knit like the wind!

Knit Purl generously donated a sweater kit  for the Fresco sweater out of their new yarn Birch for our door prize!  its a great first sweater pattern with clean lines and garter stitch.  

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P.S. We're looking for a new space, preferably on the east side and not too far south.  We need an accessible building with good lighting, chairs, and a screen or wall to project on.  Please email us if you have any suggestions.  Thanks!!