Happy Pancake Tuesday from Limerick SnB

We hope you got to enjoy some pancakes.

It’s hearts, flowers, chocolates day on Thursday.

If it’s a day you enjoy celebrating then we hope you have a wonderful day.

If it’s a Hallmark hyped day that you’d rather forget then happy Thursday!

Our next meet up will be this Sunday, 17th February.

How are your Focus squares coming along?

See you on Sunday!

Charity Knitting

At our 2nd meet up we discussed a variety of things.

Amid talk of offspring, sugru and upcoming nuptuals we discussed charity knitting.

The specific charity we have in mind is Focus Ireland.

With the recent cold snap, the thought of being outside for any length of time is shudder inducing.

The thought of having nowhere to go and be warm is heart rending.

As an immediate and practical thing, any and all of us can donate what we can financially. There’s a donate now button on the website. That goes for any other charity. If you have cash to spare then donating cash is a splendid idea.

As we are a bunch of crafters we have decided that we’re going to knit squares of fabric and sew them together into a decently large blanket or blankets and donate them to our local branch of Focus Ireland.

We’ve decident to use DK weight yarn as that’s what most of us have to hand in our yarn stashes.

Would you like to join us in our endeavour?

We’d be thrilled if you would 🙂

Here’s what you’ll need to do.

Get a pair of 4mm needles.

Get a ball of yarn – either from your stash or from your local yarn store.

If you’re buying yarn then a 25g ball of DK will do nicely – it can be any colour or colours you like.

Cast on 51 stitches.

Using any stitch pattern you like work 50 rows.

Cast it off.

I’ve taken my stitch and row counts from Issue 10 of The Knitter.

The Knitter provided sample patterns for knitted fabric squares in aid of the MacMillan Cancer support comfort blanket campaign.

The resulting sqaure (51 stitches x 50 rows) should create an 8 inch x 8 inch or 20cm x 20cm square.

It doesn’t have to be exact.

The earth won’t stop turning if you decide you’d rather cast on 49 or end up with 52 stitches. That’s one of the great things about knitting. It’s a forgiving kind of pursuit.

We decided on this project as it would give us a way to build on the little crafting community that we have in Limerick. It’s something that people can become involved in with very little knitting know how. In fact, if you don’t know how, we’ll show you! 🙂

If you can’t get to our regular meet ups and know how to knit then you can still feel involved by sending us the squares once you have them done.

We’ll figure out a sensible address to send them to.

It would be lovely if other bloggers could share their progress with us. We could even create a group on Ravelry and share our squares and our progress on our various social media sites. Ohhhhh! The excitement! 🙂

It’s nice to be part of something and to contribute to a larger project that will create a positve result at the end.

We don’t think that our knitting will solve the problem of being homeless.

What we do think is that it’s nice to give, it’s nice to focus our creativity in a practical way and everyone should have something made with with care to keep them warm.

If you fancy, I’m sure that hats, mittens and scarves would also be welcome.

But let’s start with the squares first shall we?

Our next meet-up dates are:

Sunday, 3rd February

Sunday, 17th February

Venue: Zest Cafe, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Pery Square, Limerick.