It's a small world

Charity knitting is a good way to pass time when you are unsure just what to knit next. It is also a great way to use up your stash. I decided to knit a wool pullover with some stranded knitting around the body and sleeves. My self imposed challenge is to use left over yarn, yet create a nice finished project.  The charity group needs larger sizes and so I allow myself to buy a skein of the main color but the coordinating stripe or stranded knitting yarn must be from my stash. My goal is to ALWAYS end up with a project that I'd proudly put a grandbaby in.

I didn't have any stranded knitting graphs, so I began searching knitter's heaven, ravelry. I found some great people. "blanchn" of Quebec, Canada gave me a great stranded pattern to go on the thope hat and also pointed me to "stoperror" in Germany who has some very nice stranded graphs available on ravelry. I'd been marking time in the knitting world, searching for my next learning experience. After some emails back and forth, "stoperror" suggested that I look into Lopi patterns. I decided on The Best of Lopi:

I received the book yesterday and today I ordered the yarn for the two NorDak grandkids 2011 Christmas sweaters!

Sadie Lou Who's 2011 Christmas Sweater

The Tiger's 2011 Christmas sweater (on the left)

I'm not being very adventurous, I was able to order the colors suggested in the book - just had to get creative and order from two different sources. My LYS doesn't carry the yarn because the owner feels it's to itchy! I'm hoping that it's similar to Elizabeth Zimmerman's unspun Icelandic yarn - itchy until soaked all night and then blocked!

These sweaters are said to knit up as warm as coats, perfect for the North Dakota weather. A quote from the book states. "Matching hats and mittens add Mom-pleasing warmth, especially the traditional hats with ear flaps (very useful in Iceland, the Dakotas, and Siberia...)." I hope to have enough extra to knit hats - that is if The Tiger will change his mind about ear flap hats being "girlie".

Here is the charity sweater that started it all. It is also the reason I'm going with the book's yarn colors - look carefully for the gold stranded knitting around the body of the sweater, I wish I'd done it in brown or in the burgandy. Live and learn!

Charity Sweater

Very hard to detect stranded knitting.

So with some help from my new friends in Germany and Canada I've created a very nice looking warm sweater for a little one in Afghanistan. And I'll soon be knitting Nordic sweaters in Icelandic wool for my grandkiddos!  It truly is a small world.