Vogue Knitting Teams with Debbie Macomber to Knit for Charity

Vogue Knitting LIVE has announced a partnership with Debbie Macomber and World Vision’s Knit for Kids to encourage more knitters to knit for charity, particularly at the upcoming VK LIVE event in Chicago this October.

Macomber — the bestselling author of romance novels and knitting-themed fiction — is now serving as the international spokesperson for Knit for Kids, and she’ll be hosting a Knit for Kids Knitter’s Lounge at the event where knitters can take a break and knit a hat or scarf for charity (she’ll be in the lounge at announced times for knitting fun, too).

The VK Live website has a PDF of basic hat and scarf patterns (courtesy of Knit Simple) that can be used for the donations and they’re encouraging people to start knitting now (and of course you can contribute even if you aren’t going to the event).

World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization that distributed more than 66,000 handknit and crocheted items last year to children living in poverty in the United States and around the world. Knit for Kids typically focuses on sweaters, and you can find patterns for those on the World Vision site linked above.

Lots of craft designers are understandably frustrated about the proliferation of AI “designed” patterns and photos of projects that have no basis in reality. People who don’t know how to tell if a project is AI are often also frustrated when they see a picture for something but there’s no pattern because it’s not real, or they buy a pattern that doesn’t actually explain how to make the thing or ends up looking totally different from the picture.

Some designers have taken it upon themselves to try to make some of those AI patterns that we see online, often with hilarious results.

Katherine Foster was inspired by a famous AI elephant to make what she calls “AIlephant,” which is now a free knitting pattern on Ravelry.

Her prototype uses worsted weight yarn, but you can use whatever yarn you like to make different sizes of elephants.

The elephant features a cable running down the trunk and a different cable pattern on the back. It’s worked in pieces that are joined and stuffed as you go. It uses German short row shaping on the body and includes written instructions as well as a chart for the cable patterns.

Reading through the pattern, it sounds a little fiddly, which makes sense because it was designed to look like a pattern that isn’t real. But it’s doable, as evidenced by the handful of projects you can find on Ravelry. The ears on her version aren’t quite as big and round or maybe don’t sit in quite the same place as the AI version (which if you haven’t seen it there’s a photo of that on the projects page, too). But it’s a pretty honest replica of a dishonest photo, and a really cute elephant in its own right.

If you make this one I would love to hear about it!

You can grab the free pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Katherine Foster]

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