World Wide Knit in Public Day 2010

It was a wonderful day at the Hillsboro Farmer's Market with lots of knitting, yarn destashed - some went to new homes to become future chemo caps, comfort shawls for hospice patients and other useful items. We had lovely door prize donations from Jami at The Knitting Bee. I was even lucky and won a pretty shawl pin. We had a male knitter, EvanP (Rav link sorry) who had a lovely sweater project but didn't get to chat. We had a young lady knitting that impressed the knitters around her. There was also Noriko who came down from Bellevue just to knit with us. I wasn't going to ask who was the oldest, not polite! ;-)

Now off to start packing for our trip. I'm going to take the laptop, but don't think we'll have internet connection. Maybe when we're in Leavenworth? If not, know that reading, knitting and sewing will be happening along with walks and resting.

Goody Bags for WWKiP 2010

Tomorrow is once again our local World Wide Knit in Public day event. We are at the Hillsboro Farmer's Market this year. This is our third year and our third location. I think this will become our home location so long as things work out with the organizers of the market. We also will be back there again for World Wide Spin in Public in September.

Once again local knitters stepped up and volunteered to make project bags and stitch markers. Debby and Sara both returned with bags. Angela and Chandra stepped up to add in their bag styles. Rachel and Rachel both made stitch markers as did Dorothy. Trtlgrl made 40 and Rachel 20, with Dorothy's 10, I found myself 10 short of being able to give each bag 2 stitch markers. I put out a call and then remembered that I had the equipment to make some so came up with another 10.

Local indie dyers were contacted, but they seem to be busy getting ready for Black Sheep and a few headed off for TNNA. Thankfully, Valeska of Chic 2 Geek had contacted me long ago to volunteer some yarn samples so the bags have at least one yarn sample in them this year.

Here's the collage of bags, stitch markers and yarns:

Sharon at Stitchjones has donated two skeins of her hand dyed yarns as part of the door prizes:

The Knitting Bee will also be providing some door prizes for our lucky participants. They have been a sponsor of ours since we have been doing this event. Okay, if you've been reading here long enough, you know this is our third year. ;-)

The bags are all assembled and packed in carry bags to get them to the market. I have a knitting project ready to take with me (historically I get about 15 minutes of knitting done in the three hours). The tickets for the door prizes along with the draw container are along side the bags. I have a sling for Leeloo made (sewn last night and I made two!) and her water bottle ready to be filled. I'll need to stop for a bit of cash for snack/lunch. Need to get Brandon to pull out a chair in the morning. Sunscreen will need to be rounded up, I burned the first year and don't want to do that again!  Camera batteries are charging. I think I'm set!

World Wide Knit in Public Day

We had a successful day! Some of us planned to arrive an hour early to setup canopies and tables so that we'd be ready when people started arriving at 10am. Surprise! People must have been eager to get their goodie bags because we had a lot of other people also showing up early.

I took pictures and others took pictures. The coolest thing was that the Center took pictures and then burned them to a CD for us. I popped all of my pictures up on a Picassa Web Album for easy viewing.

World Wide Knit in Public Day, June 13, 2009 Hillsboro Oregon

We had 50+ knitters, crocheters and spinners there. Wow! I think we could have had the largest number of people participating. Wonder if it was the knowledge of 40 goodie bags? Bobbie did an awesome job of luring people in to the wonders of drop spindling. We'll see if any of them show up to our Wednesday morning spinning group at the Grange. ;-)

Peggy has posted about us on her Oregonlive blog. JoAnn of the Hillsboro Argus joined us and not only knitted but learned how to drop spindle. Here's her article on our event. (I'll also connect it up to the icon on my sidebar for future reference.)

Cindy brought one block and I had a block for the Sock Summit Doctors Without Borders Barn Raising Quilt blocks project Larissa Brown has going. Cindy also completed a block (even with me challenging her and dragging her off to help out with things) at the event.
Cindy's blocks:

I made a block out of leftover Bollywood by Stitchjones. I'd made a baby dress for Rachel's Trtlbby:



I took the samples that I received in my goodie bag from Fearless Fibers (the denim blue), Frog Creek Fibers (Stormy Sound) and Abstract Fiber (Improv) and made up a block. I still had leftovers from the Improv sample so I whipped up another one.


ETA: I've challenged other goodie bag recipients to whip up some more blocks from their samples. Hopefully will have a lot more photos to share on Thursday. (Wednesday is their deadline.)

I'm putting together thank you cards for the three local yarn stores that gave coupons and door prizes for our event - All About Yarn, Kathy's Knit Korner and The Knitting Bee. If you were a winner, do please consider sending them one too! I also have one going out to Glenn & Viola Walters Cultural Arts Center as our location host. I'll be asking about using their location for next year's event. Yup! I'm already planning!

Wonder if next year the local eatery businesses will be willing to do coupons? 50+ people enough to make it worth their while do you think?