Eighth-Grade Knitter Wins Entrepreneurship Contest

Baltimore eighth-grader Lily DeBell has been knitting for about 5 years and has built her passion into a solid business called Lily’s Legwarmers.

She says her class did an entrepreneurship unit in seventh grade in which students had to do research and develop a plan for a business. She went even further, opening a shop to sell her legwarmers online. She recently won a contest with a $25,000 prize from the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, and she hopes to use the money to expand her business.

Her legwarmers, which you can buy on etsy, are hand knit using wool and alpaca for more warmth and breatheability than synthetic fibers would provide. They retail for $32 a pair.

She says she wants to partner with local senior centers to hire residents to help produce the legwarmers, and she’s also looking to wholesale her products.

We wish her luck!

[Photo via Llegwarmer shop on etsy.]

Next Pattern:

As I write this, it’s probably time to start thinking about winter knitting if you haven’t already. And it’s definitely time to think about gift knitting if you have any of that you plan to do for the holidays.

The Dreamy Waves Scarf from Knit Picks, designed by Stacey Winklepleck, would be a great project to go in either category.

It uses two different multicolored yarns and a simple repeating wave pattern to make a project that looks a lot more complicated and dramatic than it is. The gradient look happens naturally just by switching which yarn you’re knitting with.

This pattern uses worsted weight yarn so it’s a pretty quick project even though a scarf is large and this one is pretty wide. It measures 8.5 inches (21.5 cm) wide and 63 inches or 120 cm long. Of course you can make it longer or shorter as you like. As written it takes one ball of each color so it’s a pretty economical project, too.

It’s rated for intermediate knitters but if you know how to do various increases and decreases you’ll be all set. The pattern uses knit 2 together, make 1 left and right, centered double decrease and slip slip knit. All of the stitches are explained in a glossary in the pattern so even if you haven’t done all of them it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.

The pattern also includes tons of options for different colorways in yarn that Knit Picks sells, so you can see how different combinations knit up before you buy the yarn. That’s such a great idea!

Of course if you already have two multicolored yarns with long color runs on hand, you can absolutely use them, too. It might also be fun, but would give you a totally different look, to use a solid color and a bunch of scraps or one multicolored yarn to see how the different colors play together. So many options!

You can grab this free pattern and check out all the color options at Knit Picks.

[Photo: Knit Picks]

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