Free Patterns, Tutorials and Project Ideas
Go to the Worldwide Knit In Public Day website to find the nearest event, or if you want to host your own, you’ll find info there, as well as a database that you can add your event to.
It’s held the 2nd Saturday of June and you can find lots more info here: http://www.wwkipday.com/find_kip.htm
One of the fun things about knitters is that we will use a holiday theme on any kind of project. From Easter bunny socks to Christmas sweaters, there’s no combination of holiday motif and knitwear genre we won’t combine.
Case in point: Halloween cowls.
This fun cowl from Sweet Vireo Designs features large carved pumpkins and little cats and skulls. It uses two colors of DK weight yarn and I love the multicolored yarn for the background color on this one. And the braids! So cute.
Spooky Season by Jocelyn Tunney (also on Ravelry) uses fingering weight yarn in two colors to make a design with crescent moons and eyes. There are two circumferences and two heights available so you can make it a neck hugger or a slightly bigger project if you like.
Make more moons with the Broom Riding Cowl from Vanessa Ewing Knits. This two color pattern looks extra fun with a multicolored yarn for the colorwork, but you can use a solid as well. It calls for DK weight yarn but there is also a fingering weight version if you have some yarn in your stash you want to use.
Jinx Made has another fun Halloween cowl, this time covered in skulls. South Philly Skulls uses DK weight yarn and comes in two lengths, and there’s also a matching hat pattern, both of which can be found on Ravelry.
The Ghost Stories cowl from Melissa Knit Wear is a two-color cowl with ghosts of different sizes on the body. It uses DK weight yarn, and average sized skeins will allow you to get two cowls out of two skeins. It also calls for stitch markers to help you keep your place in the chart.
Or stitch up a cowl with a giant bat on it. The Nightling Cowl from Jen Immer uses DK weight yarn in two colors and has moons and a large bat on it. This pattern can be found on Ravelry.
How about spooky trees? The Weirwood Cowl from Andrea Krüß-Anders is inspired by the weirwood trees in the Game of Thrones books, and is worked in two colors of fingering weight yarn. You can find this free pattern on Ravelry.
If a bandana cowl is more your thing, try Cowloween from Tellybean Knits (on Ravelry). This colorful design is worked from the top down and features pumpkins, ghosts and candy colored stripes, and is worked in a light fingering weight yarn. There are kid and adult sizes available.
I thought the key to high sales in the retail or restaurant business was to bring new buyers into the store and keep the old ones coming back. Yet when we went to restaurants, coffee shops and grocery stores in our area to say, “There are 12 to 20 of us and we want to hang out in your place of business for two or three hours,” we were told “No” or received no response. I didn’t get it.
A columnist for our local paper published an article informing the public about our search for a site for Knit in Public Day. We received only two invitations from the entire readership. I was totally confused by the lack of response. Why weren’t they fighting for our business? We are the buyers! We decide where we will buy groceries or clothes and school supplies for our children. We decide where to take our families when we eat out. In addition to the loss of whatever money we might have spent that day, is the loss of good will and future sales.
Then, suddenly, it came to me! We are not seen as the buyers. Today the public perception of knitting and knitters is negative. Many people think that knitting is only for old ladies who have nothing else to do. Many men refuse even to try because of this image. It does take some effort to learn something new, and time to develop it into an art, but some men are self confident enough to have made the effort. People of both sexes and all age groups take knitting seriously.
That may be a fact, but businesses in our area are ignorant of that fact, and will continue that way unless knitters make some effort to change the public perception of who knitters are, and what it is all about.
We desperately need Knit in Public Day. In fact, it is important to make every day Knit in Public Day. New knitting groups are organizing all the time, but most are still somewhat behind closed doors. They are held in homes, yarn shops, community rooms of a church or library. We need to get into the restaurants and coffee shops where there is more exposure to non-knitters. Whatever posters and fliers we distribute should be going into the entire community; not just in the knitting community. We should be looking for the opportunity in everything we do to get positive press for knitters and knitting.