Major Knitter

Warm Up America Finished Blankets

Yeah!  I finally have several finished Warm Up America ("WUA") blankets to share with you.  These will all be donated to Westport's Interfaith Housing Association which has three homes in town.  Specifically, these first blankets will go to the Bacharach Community Center which provides shelter for mothers and their children in need of safe emergency housing.  I hope to take some of the extra swatches that were donated and make special blankets for the older children that will hopefully have a playful theme to cheer up the children and provide some comfort and warmth.

Here is the first blanket that Tara B. and I made (along with a few other donors).  Tara's mother, Brenda B, did the wonderful crochet edging.  I learned a lot when sewing this one up.  The next blanket will be crocheted together for a smoother look.  I'm so excited to finish some more blankets.  Since I'm a perfectionist, though, I'm trying to make additional swatches in coordinating colors so that the blankets have a "designer look" with a chromatic scheme. 

Now let's look at some of the baby blankets for WUA.

This beautiful crochet bed of roses was done entirely by Brenda B.

Here is an original design we made for the Westport Young Woman's League WUA project.  This one was knit by Jen W. of the WYWL.  Isn't it just precious?

Here's the Criss Cross Diamond Oh So Soft Baby Blanket I designed for the WYWL WUA project.

Mock Cable Swatches

Four more swatches completed for Warm Up America.  This time I made three Mock Cable swatches and another heart swatch.

I♥U

I've been doing some Fair Isle knitting and some Intarsia knitting for Warm Up America.  Wanna see?

I did the purple & red swatch on the bottom in Fair Isle knitting, but I found that it was time consuming and not that nice looking so I switched to Intarsia knitting and whipped up these next 5 swatches.  I think they'll look really nice in the completed purple themed WUA blanket.  If you'd like to make this swatch, try this graph.  These are the dimensions that worked for me.  You might need to adjust the size of the needle or the number of stitches to make the graph work for you.  Once you figure it out, make a few swatches at once.  It makes it so much easier to quickly make your WUA blanket grow.  This is a very fun swatch to make and will add lots of character to your blanket.

Download wua_heart_color_swatch.xls

Purple Warm Up America Swatches

I managed to start knitting my WUA swatches for the heat of the summer.  I made these two patterns using size US 7 or 4.5 mm straight needles and the donations of Red Heart worsted weight yarn in purples.  Here you can see the Basketweave Swatch and the Heart Seed Stitch pattern.

Warm Up America Button

Molly was so kind to make me a button for my Warm Up America project the day she's going on vacation.  Can you believe that?  I'm sure it was the last thing she needed to get done before catching a flight, but she did it anyway.  Isn't she awesome?

Here's the button that will take you to my WUA webpage

Thank you Molly!

Last year Lizzie made me a Major Knitter button to link to my blog.  I didn't really know how to add buttons to my sidebar, though.  Molly helped me figure that out, so I've added the Major Knitter button, too.  Thank you Lizzie! 

* PS - Sorry for the correction and delayed credit, Lizzie.  thanks for keeping me honest!

If you can't stand the heat...

try knitting small things.

Last summer I couldn't bear the thought of knitting large heavy warm projects during the heat of the summer.  If you remember I knit hundreds of kitchen washcloths using Lilly's Peaches N Cream.  That was fine for last summer.  I think I'll go beserk if I repeat that effort again this summer.  So, I'm back to knitting swatches for the Warm Up America project.  I received SO MANY BOXES of acrylic yarn for my project that I could knit all summer and still have some left over.  So I think that knitting up hundreds of 7x9 inch swatches is just what the doctor ordered for the heat of the night. 

I made a separate web page for all the Warm Up America work.  Please check it out here.  I'll post information about my progress, donations, completed afghans, baby blankets, lap blankets, etc. 

If you'd like to donate swatches or yarn, I'm always happy to receive donations.  Maybe you'll want to take the summer challenge and do this with your acrylic stash, too.

I'm also looking for someone to donate their talent to help me create a button that will link to this webpage for the Major Knitter Warm Up America project. 

Thanks in advance for your help.