Diana Fay joins team Bury the Dragon!
.... and ideas about how to raise money
My little sister, Diana Bradley has joined team Bury the Dragon and will be climbing with us in Salt Lake this September. I'm so excited! The Team now has 9 people and has raised nearly $12,000. DAMN.
We've been trying to think of different ways we can raise money.... So far I've made email requests to family, coworkers and friends, and I am SO impressed with everyone's generosity. The next two avenues I need to look into are donations from the companies I work for. EMS will match any donations I make myself. So thats great. At HP, they would do the same. I was going to email the head of JBoss HR this week to see about a JBoss donation, but I believe they'll be a bit busy in the coming weeks, so I'll wait til things calm down -- I've got til September.
Sam and I are quite avid knitters, so one idea is to sell some of our knitting -- hats? scarves? I think with some of the neat stitch patterns I recently acquired will come in quite handy to make some really cool items.... we've just gotta figure out where we can sell them. Colleen and Taramin are knitters too -- so this may be a great avenue. We'll see where things go!
I like pretty stitches
... or
We went to Barnes and Noble today after dinner (another tasty tasty meal at Joe's Peking Duck). I wanted to get a stitch dictionary. As I mentioned before, my current project is... kinda boring: knit, knit, knit, knit, knit. cut yarn. join yarn. knit knit knit knit. knit. repeat. So I want to try someting "fun" for my next project. Experiment and play.
I think its amazing how many interesting effects you can get out of two simple stitches: knit and purl. Its just a matter of figuring out how to combine them -- that's what the stitch dictionary is for. Sam mentioned that one way we might be able to raise money for the Climb4Life event is to sell hats, and I think we could make some snazzy hats just by playing with stitch patterns. They had a few different books there that I flipped through so I thought I'd write up my thoughts on what I saw:
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The Ultimate Sourcebook of Knitting and Crochet Stiches: Over 900 Great Stitches Detailed for Needle Crafters of Every Level ISBN: 0762104058 Format: Hardcover, 320pp Pub. Date: May 2003 Publisher: Reader's Digest Association, Inc |
things I liked: I crochet as well as knit, so the fact that this book included stitch patterns for both was a huge plus. Other than the breakup between knit and crochet patterns, there are smaller categories of patterns and each category has a nice introduction explaining what constitutes the patterns within. There's a nice index in the back and a decent table of contents in the front as well as in front of both the knitting and crochet halves. There are over 900 stitch patterns! things I didn't like: Each pattern is shown in a different color yarn, which can be a bit distracting. There are no knitting charts shown with any of the patterns. |
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Vogue Knitting Stitchionary: Volume One Knit & Purl ISBN: 1931543771 Format: Hardcover, 240pp Pub. Date: September 2005 Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc |
As with most of the Vogue books and magazine that I've seen, this book has a very striking look. things I liked: There are only 2 or 3 patterns on each page, so it has a very clean look. The full swatch of each pattern is shown. I think that point is important because it lets you see how the "square" swatch is twisted and affected by the stitch pattern. Each pattern is shown in the same yarn -- so your eye isn't distracted by the color or the yarn, and you can concentrate on the pattern itself. things I didn't like: There are no stitch charts shown that could help you to better understand the pattern. There is very little commentary in the book -- there's no text introducing each of the three main sections, and I think it would have been nice to give some context or introduction to each section |
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Big Book of Knitting Stitch Patterns ISBN: 1402727631 Format: Paperback, 288pp Pub. Date: August 2005 Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc |
The book claims to have 500 some odd patterns. Certainly an impressive number. things I liked: Each pattern has a corresponding knitting chart that helps to describe the stitches. There's a huge number of patterns. things I didn't like: Each pattern is shown in a different color yarn, which I find a bit distracting. |
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365 Knitting Stitches a Year: Perpetual Calendar ISBN: 1564774325 Format: Paperback, 384pp, ringbound Pub. Date: June 2002 Publisher: Martingale & Company |
Unfortunatley, I couldn't really inspect this book... It comes sealed in shrink wrap, so I wasn't able to flip through it and see the format, the stitch detail, the instructions or if they offered any chart. things I liked: I like the fact that it's a flip book -- it would be easy to prop up the one page and use the pattern, as opposed to balancing an open-faced book on one leg while I rested my knitting on the other. things I didn't like: Don't know, couldn't open the calendar to find out. |
I ended up buying The Ultimate Sourcebook of Knitting and Crochet Stiches because (as the title infers) it has both knitting and crochet stitches -- and with 900 patterns for $24, its hard to argue with the value. When I came home I looked up each of these books online and found that Barnes&Noble.com has the Vogue Stitchionary for $21, as opposed to the in-store $29. PLUS, the 2nd volume comes out next month... and there's a 3rd one in the works. That'd be cool to have all three. Good marketing scheme I think... its may just be workin on me.