The Business of Knitting.

The vendors get me every time...

This past Saturday was the Madison Knitter's Guild Annual Knit-In. This is a one-day extravaganza of yarn hobbies - specifically knitting, crocheting, and spinning. There are classes and speakers and a nice-sized vendor room (which is the siren that hypnotizes me every time.)

The Madison Knitter's Guild has been around a while and has a large, active membership. As a result, they're able to attract incredibly good guests to their monthly meetings and nation/international yarn-centric folks for the Knit-In. Granted this doesn't mean much to the average bear but, if you're a yarn hobbiest, names like The Mason-Dixon Girls or The Yarn Harlot or The Team from Ravelry make you weak in the knees. These are our celebrities (among many others) and, because knitters are all pretty friendly, these folks are actually accessible while being famous within our community. This is a huge draw.

The Mason-Dixon Girls @ 2010 Knit-In (Madison)

This year's "celebrity speaker" was the core team from Ravelry.com. We've spoken about the site a lot here at Ooo! Shiny!  There are myriad reasons to sing the praises of Ravelry - not the least of which is how incredibly well-thought-out the site is - so the possibility of hearing the founders and operators of the site speak was pretty irresistible.

The lovely folks from Ravelry

These are, essentially, kids (well, they're about 1/2 my age) who came up with a good idea, developed it a bit, and then took its evolution so slowly that they were able to make good business decisions along the way. While stumbling forward they've kept their values and their humility and they are still seemingly shocked at their own success. And this is my one, huge complaint...

I realize that, when you're consumed by a project it's easy to have a skewed perspective, but it's really annoying to learn that they are SO humble about their project that they don't even seem to realize that they've changed the face of our community. I have no idea HOW they can't know this, but they don't - or, at least, they put on that they don't. As a business person, this drives me insane because all I can see is a giant pile of opportunity being approached with a very zen-like, slow-moving attitude.

I want them to have a little swagger and some better business acumen and make a boat-load of money. At this point, they seem so devoid of actual strategy (other than ensuring that the site stays free and that they don't bum anyone out) that I'm afraid that they're ripe for a buyout. And that would suck because we'll lose the one thing that makes Ravelry really different from, say, Facebook - the values of the owners.

Of course, the right buyer would make them really, really rich and, in the end, they really deserve that.

- Alex

Knitting 101

One of the most wonderful things about knitting is that, with a two basic stitches (knit and purl) and a couple of simple techniques, myriad patterns can be achieved. There's so little to actually learn and so many variations that it's kind of mind-boggling.

The two stitches just mirror one another. As you're going down a row, if you "knit" a stitch, you place a bump of yarn on the side facing away from you. If you "purl" the same stitch, the bump goes in the front, on the side you can see. These little bumps and indentations, done in a particular order, will create a pattern.

Garter Stitch is made by knitting every row:

Stockinette Stitch is made by knitting one row and purling the next, alternating throughout the fabric:

Seed Stitch is made by alternating your stitches - knit one, purl one - across a row and then doing the opposite on the next row - purl one, knit one - then repeating these two rows throughout the fabric.

Moss Stitch is made by alternating your stitches - knit one, purl one - across a row, repeating this for the second row then reversing the stitch pattern - purl one, knit one - across rows 3 and 4. Then repeating these four rows throughout the fabric.

It's deceptively simple.

Every knitter has their favorite patterns, and I'm no exception. For me, moss and seed stitch are very appealing. I recently started doing eyelets which requires making "holes" in your pattern by knitting two stitches together. Also, one of my crafty resolutions for this year was to do my first cable project - like the cables you see on sweaters. This is a very interesting technique that requires taking stitches off your needles and picking them up again later to place them "over" the other stitches.

When I attended the Crafting for Democracy at the Madison Capitol building, I made friends with a lovely woman named Colleen. She was knitting a pattern I'd never seen before and that I instantly fell in love with. For some reason, this pattern really sang to me.

"Colleen's Pattern" is a four row sequence. Row one - knit all the way across the row. Row two - knit one, slip one (slip the stitch, without knitting or purling it, to your right-hand needle) all the way across the row. Row three - knit all the way across the row. Row four - slip one, knit one all the way across the row. Then, of course, you repeat this four-row sequence throughout the fabric.

And this is what you get:

"right" side

"wrong" side

The best part of this pattern, in my opinion, is that both sides are pretty - even though the one side is supposed to be the "wrong" side.

Right now, I'm just making a scarf but I'll probably make something more impressive with this pattern at some point. It's just so gorgeous. If I do, you can bet you'll be seeing pictures of it here.

- Alex

Sheep in the City

This past Saturday, Alex and I took a much needed break from the current craziness in Madison. We headed down to Milwaukee for some fun with yarn people at The Sheep in the City event. Last year we weren't able to attend and were pleasantly surprised at some improvements since our visit in 2009. Some of the changes we noted immediately were: the event is now held at a larger hotel with a bar and restaurant, the trade show area was much roomier and was able to accommodate more vendors and there is a lovely auditorium for listening to speakers.

Main trade show room...the center had room for spinners and knitters.

Unfortunately we weren't able to attend any of the classes...but we did what we do best, make friends and spend money! There were some really neat vendors we were able to visit, these are a couple of our favorites:

Corny Goodness
Yes, they can make yarn out of corn these days. The 100% corn yarn is quite soft. It reminds me a bit of Rowan's milk cotton, except it seems even more "splitty". This is why I chose to purchase the corn/wool blend yarn. It has really nice stitch definition. I think that is why the patterns that they sell with their yarn shows off that fact.

The crocodile hat is just one of their patterns using this technique.

The Corny Goodness yarns come in a nice variety of colors.

This is my corn yarn purchase, I have no idea what I am making yet.

Happy Hands Yarns
These generous-sized skeins of yarn are all hand-dyed in yummy colors. Soft, lofty, candy for knitters. Now, I'm not a big fan of variegated yarns, but she does have some subtle colorways that I find quite appealing. This is what her overflowing tables looked like:

Shiny happy yarns holding hands.

My Happy Hands 100% Merino purchase. I told you it was subtle.

There were so many cool things that we saw that day, but these might be my favorite:

Sheep and alpacas made from mohair. 10pts on the cute-o-meter.

It was a great day... aside from the snowy ride home! We had fun, met some fun people, and bought interesting yarns. It is getting me excited for the upcoming "Knit In" event in Madison!

–Cassandra