Help American Angels Support Our Troops!

This is a cause that is close to my heart as I have a son who is currently in Iraq. Just saying that makes me cringe, but, yes, it was his choice, there is no draft, and we support him 274% (and want him to come home SOON!)

The following is taken directly from Knitting For Charity’s website:

A World of Ways to Make a Difference
If you love to craft, American Angels can use your help. There’s almost no skill they can’t put to work helping a soldier or their family, and knitting is certainly not an exception. Just a few things you could knit for this worthy charity include:

–black hats for winter helmet liners
Pattern here (personally, when I make these, I make the neck ribbing a bit longer so it covers more of the neck, oh, and just an FYI… make them out of superwash wool, or they will shrink. Ask me how I know. Ugh!
–slippers for soldiers overseas or in hospitals
–Christmas stockings, tree skirts, or ornaments
–an afghan (or “comfortghan”) for a wounded solider.

In addition to all this, American Angels has two subprojects that really stand out: the Baby Project and Heroghans.

The Citizen Sam website, here, has more ideas.

Oh, and, Merry Christmas Everyone!! Go out and play in the snow today.

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If you’re looking for a sweater knitting pattern that uses up some of your stash and allows you to make just the sweater you want, the Marlina Rib by Shay Johson might be just the thing.

It’s worked with two strands of fingering weight yarn held together to make a DK weight gauge, so you can use the same two yarns throughout or change one or both regularly for an even more colorful look.

The pattern has options to make it either a crewneck or a henley style with buttons, tapered or relaxed sleeves, and a straight hemline or a split hem with buttons (which sounds so cute if you do the henley with split hem and match the buttons on both parts).

It’s also knit from the top down so you can make the body and the sleeves as long as you want. There are 10 sizes available in the pattern, with a chest circumference ranging from 32 to 68 inches, or 81.5 to 172.5 cm. It’s meant to be worn with 4-6 inches/10-15 cm of positive ease at the chest.

The pattern page on Ravelry includes tons of measurements and yardage estimates so you can make sure you’ll get a good fit for your body before you even buy the pattern. Shay also shows a few variations of the sweater so you can see how different options look before you decide how you want to put them together.

The stitch pattern is 1×2 ribbing, which is really easy to do and gives a look almost like fisherman’s rib that’s relaxed and easy to wear.

This sweater looks like a great option for people who are somewhat new to sweater knitting or those who love to have lots of customization options (because it’s like getting multiple sweater patterns in one!).

Check out all the details and grab a copy of the pattern for yourself at Ravelry.

[Photo: Shay Johnson]

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