Hello, lovely knitters!
I so appreciate all of your lovely comments on Clearview, and my last post. Today, I’m here to kick off another year of my Year of Sweaters KALs. Some of you have noticed that we’re overdue for the “Deep Winter KAL”, which would ordinarily have started a month ago – I held off a bit because I wanted to change them up this year.
Don’t get me wrong, the last couple of years of KALs have been amazing. I’ve loved watching all of the garments you’ve finished. But I felt the KALs needed some perking up, in two main ways:
First, I wanted to slow things down: The pace of previous years’ KALs meant that many knitters couldn’t finish a sweater within the time frame. This is sad! And while there’s no perfect solution – any timeframe will always be too short for someone – I wanted to stretch them out a bit more. So there will be four KALs this year, loosely focused on the seasons:
- winter/spring KAL: 1 february – 15 may
- spring/summer KAL: 15 may – 1 august
- fall KAL: 1 august – 15 november
- gift KAL: 15 november – 1 january
(If this timing works, next January I’ll start things a little earlier for the winter/spring KAL, in order to give the spring/summer a bit more time.)
Second, I wanted to up the inspiration a bit: Past KALs have been intentionally broad in scope – any of my patterns, or anything you do through CustomFit, qualified. And I like that breadth! With sweaters in particular, we all have different tastes. So nothing will change about what constitutes a “qualifying” project…
…but I do feel like we’re missing out on one of the best parts of a KAL, and that’s focused inspiration. Seeing the same pattern, or idea, reflected in yarns and projects as varied as their knitters is incredibly inspiring, at least to me. So in 2017, I’m adding optional themes to each KAL – an idea or concept around which we can focus our daydreams. Here are the concepts for 2017:
- winter/spring KAL: texture
- spring/summer KAL: lace and/or light yarn
- fall KAL: cables
- gift KAL: stripes
Within each KAL, I’ll try to have a theme-focused new pattern (or two) to tempt your needles, and I’ll highlight the theme through blog posts and my own knitting. Again, this theme is totally optional – play along if it inspires you, leave it if not! Hopefully it will provide a nice bit of extra “togetherness” for our knitting.
And with that, today kicks off the winter/spring KAL:
Here are the details:
- It will run from today, february 1, through may 15
- Participate by knitting any of my designs, or one you make up yourself through customfit
- Join the conversation on ravelry, instagram, twitter, facebook, or right here (@ me if you’re posting online so that I can see, and use the ravelry tag winterspringsweater for your project if you like)
- I’ll choose a winner in the week after the KAL ends; winner will receive 2 free months of maker-plus subscription to CustomFit and a 30-minute consult with me. If you also
I’ll personally be starting off by finishing up two projects that aren’t tied to the theme:
These babies have been waiting patiently while I finished some deadline knitting early in the year, and I can’t wait to get back to them. After they’re done, I’ll have a new texture-licious pattern to share with you, and some more fun knitting to share.
So, are you ready? Are you set? Come and knit with me!
Amy Herzog Designs