KTC: Warm the World Project

Amanda is always posting pictures on her blog of things she has knit for Warm the World which is a great charity organization that provides handmade (knit, crochet, quilted etc) blankets to children in need all over the world. A few days ago Amanda stated that she intended to do a huge amount of knitting for this charity this year and declared it her own personal "Year of the Square".

I instantly thought - wouldn't it be cool if we got together enough squares from KTC members to donate a KTC blanket?! I suggested the idea to Amanda and she put out a call on the KTC site.

Details of the project are:

1. Have fun, go wild, make as many or as few as you like
2. Please make 7 inch squares
3. No yarn specifications, or gauge specifications
4. They can be knit, crocheted, woven how ever you choose to make them but please make them out of some sort of yarn
5. Please have a "white" border around each square (I think it will help with making the blanket look more uniform) this is included in the 7 inch square
6. Oh and if you can (no worries if you cannot) maybe incorporate KTC into the square (either the letters, the whole phrase or something that you feel represents KTC).

Tentative deadline for squares is April 30, 2006. By the end of May I hope to have the blanket together and I will take tons of photos (of each of the squares too), I think I will make a flickr album just for the KTC 2006 blanket and ship it off to Nan at Warm the World sometime late May early June.

I thought this was a great project to help use up old stash for the Stashalong I joined. I started going through the stash and found some beautiful yarn. But then I started thinking about the practical aspect of things. I realized that this blanket really would need to be washable, which means either a superwash wool (which I don't have much of) or a washable acrylic. I'm also in a bind over the idea of the white border for the squares. I don't have any white yarn in my stash - white just isn't a color I like much - and I don;t want to add to the stash by buying anymore yarn. However, I do have TONS of a very pretty, very soft acrylic that I bought super cheap at AC Moore. I think I had the idea of making a cabled coat or jacket with it but later realized that the yarn is possibly too soft to really make a crisp cable (I like 'em crispy!) and being acrylic, it may not block and hold it's shape very well.

So, since I have tons of this yarn I decided just to make an entire baby's blanket to donate to Warm the World. I have picked out a design from one of my knitting stitch books. The first pattern I tried out tonight didn't work out - I decided that the coloring of the yarn was too subtle and the stitch pattern was too subtle too. So I'm a froggin that one. Unfortunately this is all I knit tonight - all through the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

(And yes - I supposed to be knitting for Team DPN, and no, the blanket is not being made on DPN's. So, what am I doing knitting a blanket instead of socks during the Olympics?? Well, that's why I also joined the Eddie Along - because I'm a free spirit, a knitting non-conformist. Plus I basically like to just do as I damn well please - I'm the Bode Miller of Team DPN. I'm sure I'll get around to the socks sometime in the sixteen days.) :)

Anyhoo - that's it on the knitting front here. We are supposed to be getting up to a foot of snow over the weekend. Hooray! I LOVE being snowed in!! So it looks like I'll have plenty of time to make up for lost ground.