What started out as a Larch Cardigan knitalong has morphed a bit into a free-for-all Amy Christoffers KAL. Larch has been around for a little while; I know Preita‘s knit one, and Sarah of knityorkcity finished hers a couple of months ago, along with 200 other people who have fabulous tastes in knitwear. Since this is an older pattern, and quite a few people have knit it, and another Sarah asked about opening it up to any Amy Christoffers pattern so she could play along and finish her Acer Cardigan, I thought “what the hell” and am opening it up to all patterns by the amazingly talented Amy.
To keep this as cohesive as possible while we’re all knitting our own things (or Larches), here are some general guidelines:
- Choose one Savory Knitting garment to knit. There’s lots to options. Thirty, actually. Surely there’s at least one in the thirty available patterns that calls to you.
- Choose your yarn! Stash dive if you have the stash that allows for sweater quantities of yarn, or if you’re not as picky about knitting from the stash, go crazy at some place like WEBS or Mr. Yarn or your preferred LYS/online yarn store. I will say that I picked up the 15 skeins of Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light I need for Larch for a steal from WEBS, thanks to their discount program.
- Already have a Savory Knitting pattern in progress? WIPs do count, but if you can hold off until the official start day so you can play along with us in “real time,” that’d be awesome. If not, no worries, I always encourage people to finish projects. A few of my real life knitting friends would tell you I find “encourage” to be synonymous with “harass.” They’re probably right.
- Official cast-on date will be February 1, because by then I should have my red yarn and will be back from a mini-vacation and work to-do and will be able to read a pattern. Swatching prior to February 1 is not only allowed but encouraged, and wash and block your swatch. Yes, swatches can lie, but they’re a bit more honest than “winging it” and discovering your gauge will yield a sweater two sizes bigger or smaller.
- Official bind-off date will be March 31. That’s two months! You can do it!
- Leave a comment here to let me know if you’re planning on participating, and be sure to include a link to your blog if you have one. Also indicate which pattern(s) you’re considering, as there is strength in numbers and if multiple people are knitting the same sweater, you’ll have a mini support group. Alternatively, I’ve started a thread in the 2012: A Sweater Odyssey group on Ravelry, so you can post status updates there as well.
- Tag your projects in Ravelry with “savorykal“, and use that hashtag if you mention your knitting progress on Twitter.
- I’ll discuss my progress on my Larch as I go, but I’ll be posting or linking to updates on other projects if participants are cool with me talking about their projects. We won’t be as structured as a Sweatshop of Love Knitalong (and I will do one of those one day), but hopefully relatively frequent check-ins will keep everyone on track and at the end of two months, participants will have a brand new awesome sweater!
Am I missing anything? Does anyone have any questions? We’ve got almost a month to iron out details, and that’s plenty of time to play eeny-meeny when choosing a pattern and procuring yarn (and swatching).
edit: We’ve had some folks step up and donate a few prizes for people who complete their sweaters by the deadline, including an Amy Christoffers pattern (donated by Amy herself!), a skein of Roman Hills yarn, a handmade row counter from Velvet Hippo, and stitchmarkers from Madam Tootsie. Please let me know if you’d like to donate a prize!
