Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Donations

I've written before about our role as knitters, when it comes to donating.  I think it's an ingrained, psychological need of knitters to donate.  If you've never knitted a pair of mittens or a hat to donate, then please do!  It is SO appreciated by the recipients.  There are tons of places and ways to donate...NICUs, homeless shelters, churches, animal shelters, First Nations reserves, teen mom centres, cancer care centres....whatever sort of item you like to knit--you can find a place to donate to.

The machine knitting group that I'm in is actively involved in providing items for a couple of different places.  I didn't contribute anything last year, so wanted to make sure I got some items in this year!

(Still having trouble selecting more than one photo at a time.  Anyone else?)

 The stockings get donated to a group/resource centre that fills them (sorry I don't know more!).  The burgundy one was made on the Singer 155 with the standard punchcard from the basic set.  The burgundy is an old Mary Maxim yarn.  It weighs 119grams, which is less than the green one, made from an unknown yarn and Bernat Satin for the cream (126gr).  The green one was made on the LK150 and Meg (who just turned 7) helped with all the straight parts (except the foot).  She loves helping out with the machine!
I also made two pairs of mittens.  They are both with Patons Decor and done on the LK150.  The other pair is a greyish blue and I finished them at the meeting, so no picture.  About size 8.  The blue ones I did a "star decrease" top so I wouldn't have to graft them LOL.  I wish Patons had a superwash worsted weight yarn. I know I was asking for a superwash DK weight last spring and they came out with that (can't get it local though), so maybe they'll hear my pleas for a superwash worsted weight!  I just find 25% wool to not be enough wool, esp. for kids that are playing in the snow.  But for donation mitts, I don't want handwash wool.  These mitts were 33gr, so I'm going to assume the blue ones were too.  However, there was a lot of ends trimmed off so I'm going to round them up to 35gr :)

Yarn In:  19 015gr
Yarn Out:  315gr + 15 468gr = 15 783gr
Balance: 3232gr more brought IN than used up
Costs:  $468.34/338 days =  $1.39/day

2 comments:

Marg said...

Great job Tracy - I delivered the mittens and other goodies after our meeting yesterday. They were so tickled to get everything now that the cold weather has set in. Really does make one feel our efforts are really appreciated. The Christmas stockings will be filled with donations from several stores in the area to the shelter. There again the shelter loves to have our Christmas stockings as the "package" for each bed in the shelter. Keep up your wonderful knitting and of course we will always keep donating to our causes - after all it does keep us knitting!

Sheryl Evans said...

Hi Tracy, Cascade 220 has a superwash worsted weight wool. Have to google it & see if you can find any. They also have a DK weight superwash. I buy all my wool from them uaually, but for some unknown reason I decided to try the Knit Picks 'Wool of the Andes'. It came yesterday & I have knitted up a swatch & felted it. It came out nice & thick & will be a good wool for the Afghans charity, I think.

I really enjoy your blog. Keep it up!!