Stitching in the Storm and More Ways to Help

I’m loving this story I found on the Washington Post website about using downtime from the storm better known as Sandy to knit. It’s also about color, Kaffe Fassett and how knitting from someone else’s pattern can and should be a creative act.

I love it in part because I can relate when author Anne Midgette says hurricane knitting is “comfort knitting,” the same stitch repeated over and over, something that can be worked by candlelight. I had this same experience about four years ago when a much smaller storm robbed my house of power for three days (I was knitting a garter stitch sweater which Istill haven’t finished, but I’ve been thinking about pulling it out again).

I know a lot of yarn companies and individual designers and yarn crafters have been affected by the storm, and I wish you all speedier recoveries than a lot of people have gotten so far. I told a friend in Brooklyn that it’s ridiculously normal in the rest of the country right now, but that doesn’t mean we don’t feel guilty about it. My heart is with you all as I stitch through the storm, too.

The other day I told you about one way knitters near and far can help with relief efforts: buying the Hurricane Socks pattern. Some other designers are donating money from pattern sales to the Red Cross; there’s a good list going at Metaphor Yarns’ Facebook page. If you know of more feel free to add them here.

[Photo: Sweetheart by Pauline Gallagher, via Ravelry]

Fall will be here before we know it, and that means there are holidays coming right behind where we might be entertaining at home. It’s always fun to have a hand knit touch in your home for other people to see, and if you’re going to be in the kitchen all day you might as well have some nice knit dish cloths to use.

I love this little plaid hand towel from Darling Jadore. Use a little bit of leftover cotton yarn from another project for the plaid portion. It looks like the horizontal stripes are worked as you knit and the vertical stripes are done with duplicate stitch, making this a quick and easy project even newer knitters can make.

Combine garter stitch and an easy eyelet pattern worked sideways to make the Annette Dish Towel from Cluck Cluck Boots, which is meant to be reminiscent of flour sack towels. It calls for DK weight yarn and you can work it in one color or two (or even three!).

Add a little more texture with this set of kitchen towels from Whileberry Creative. They’re mostly worked in garter stitch with borders in easy knit/purl patterns, and you can work them in sport or worsted weight yarn.

Two of Wands Shop has another cute allover knit and purl pattern they call the Seersucker Textured Tea Towel. It’s an easy repeating pattern worked in worsted weight yarn, and there’s a chart in the pattern you can use, but don’t have to, if you want to practice knitting from a chart.

The Classic Cloth dish towel from Handmade Home by Connie is another one that can use a little leftover yarn in a contrasting color, or you could color block it our use stripes throughout the pattern. This one uses worsted weight yarn and another easy repeating knit purl stitch pattern.

If you like to hang your towel on the oven handle or elsewhere but it’s always falling off, try the Stay Put kitchen towel from Fancy Step Knits. This project is worked in garter stitch and includes a hole partway through so you can pull the towel through itself over a rod or handle. Stripes are optional but a nice addition.

Have you read?