THE OFFICIAL NEWSLETTER OF K2TOG THE KNITTING GUILD ASSOCIATION CONTENTS 1 August 2019 2 TKGA and Program News 3 Yarn Bands 4 Meet a TKGA Member: Lisa Pannell 6 2019 Design Contest Prizes August 2019 August 7 Magic Motifs 8 Knitting Tips, Knitting in the News 9 Guild Renewals August 2019 Summer is winding down, kids will be heading back to school soon, and hopefully Fall weather is somewhere on the horizon— and with it the chance to wear our hand-knits again! In this issue, there is an informative article on yarn bands, a review on Magic Motifs, an interview with a recent Master Knitter, and more! Enjoy, and Happy Knitting! 1 TKGA and Program News TKGA Education, Certifications, August 2019 August and MHK Your Co-Chairs have suggested that you take a look at these pages prior to sending in your submission. The photos on the We have updated our website! project pages have been selected as good examples of each K2TOG K2TOG swatch. You can compare your work to these. While you might miss more subtle errors in your work, obvious mistakes If you are enrolled in a Correspondence or Certification can easily be identified and fixed prior to submission, saving course and need to contact your instructor, or you want more you a resubmission. information on one of these courses, you can now click on the instructor’s name found in the description of the course to email your question directly to the instructor. Go to the dropdown menu under Education for Correspondence courses, or Certification for Certification courses, then choose the course you are interested in. Guild News New TKGA Affiliate Logo For the Master Hand Knitting Program, we have added some A graphic that can be used to identify guilds as affiliates of helpful pages. Under Certification in the dropdown menu, TKGA has been placed on the Member Guild Materials you will see a category: Master Knitting Useful Information. page. Feel free to use the logo on guild flyers, programs, Links can be found on this page to PDFs concerning other publications, blogs, and websites. Each January a new Reference Books, References by Topic, Information on dated logo will be available. Remember to log on as one of Yarns for the Program, and a List of Changes in the 2018 the two IDs that have member guild access. directions. Also are direct links to the Pattern Pages on Ravelry with photos of the swatches for all Levels and some projects. You do not need to be a member of Ravelry to view these pages. If you’ve forgotten or lost your Co-Chair email, you can click on the Board and Committees listing at the bottom of any page under “About Us.” Located here are direct links to all Co-Chairs and all Board Members. Correspondence and Mini-Course Graduates Basics, Basics, Basics Susan Stayer — Yellow Springs, OH Maria Golberg — Edmonton, Alberta Canada 2 Yarn Bands By Nancy Simet Yarn bands, also called ball bands, are the paper labels wrapped around, or tied to, yarn balls and skeins. They contain much information to help you choose the right yarn for your project. August 2019 August Fiber content is always listed, usually as a percentage. If you want your project to look and drape like the original, you need to choose a similar fiber. For wool, you can substitute a wool or wool blend or another animal fiber, like alpaca. Plant fibers like cotton will behave differently; for instance, cotton is heavy and can stretch under its own weight and won’t rebound the way wool does. For more information on fibers and their properties, I recommend Clara Parkes’ book The Knitters Book K2TOG K2TOG of Yarn. The yarn weight (as opposed to skein weight) will also be given. Companies are starting to include a symbol (which looks like a yarn skein) with a number inside, ranging from 0-7, with 0 being the finest, thinnest yarns, and 7 being the thickest yarns. Yarn weight can also be determined from the knit gauge, which is given on the ball band as stitches per inch or stitch- es per four inches; the more stitches per inch, the thinner the yarn. Choose a yarn with the same weight as the original, or you’ll need to recalculate the number of stitches throughout the pattern to get the same size; this can be a challenge with a complicated garment. The Craft Yarn Council publishes a chart of yarn weight standards: https:// www.craftyarncouncil.com/standards/yarn-weight-system Also listed is the number of grams and/or ounces of fiber in the skein, as well as how many yards it contains. Skein sizes vary, as do their number of yards, so when substituting a yarn, it is not enough to buy the same number of skeins the pattern calls for, nor the same number of grams; you must make sure you purchase enough yards of the yarn. Suppose, for exam- ple, the suggested amount of yarn is five 100-g skeins containing 220 yards (or 1100 yards total). To substitute yarn in 50-g balls containing 104 yards, you would need 10.6 skeins to reach 1100 yards (1100 yds needed divided by 104 yards per skein), so you would need to buy 11 skeins to make sure you had enough. Note the dye lot on the band when purchasing multiple skeins of yarn. Color can vary from one dye lot to another, so make sure all the yarn for a project is from the same dye lot. Buying an extra skein is a good idea since, if you later discover you need more yarn, you may not be able to find that same dye lot. The band also recommends a needle size with which the listed gauge was achieved. You, however, may need a different needle size to get the same gauge, or you may prefer a denser fabric, or a looser one. Knitting small samples with different needle sizes will help you find your best needle size and calculate your gauge. Care instructions are also included, usually given in symbols. A chart of the symbols and what they mean can be found here: http://www.textileaffairs.com/c- common.htm With all this information at your fingertips, you can more confidently choose the perfect yarn for your project. 3 Meet TKGA Member: Lisa Pannell in LevelLisa her 3 sweater Ravelry Name: Turbogal August 2019 August Ravatar: K2TOG K2TOG City/State: St Louis Park, MN Lisa was our first Master Knitter of 2019. I caught up with her recently and asked her some questions. K2TOG: How long have you been knitting? Where and how did you learn to knit? LP: I don’t quite remember learning to knit – none of my family knitted. I learned to crochet from my grandmother, and then I think I learned to knit from a craft book. I crocheted quite a lot but then gradually put it down. In college, I was staying with a family in Holland and the wife was a knitter. She got me started again – my first project was a sweater, and I’ve been knitting more and more every year since. That was more than three decades ago! complete Level 3, eventually – I wanted to learn more! I say I learned in the program, but it’s not anyone teaching K2TOG: How did you find out about the MHK you. It is very self directed – you research the topic, you program? learn about it. I’ve taken classes on topics – all to get LP: A friend in my knitting group said she wanted to do better at the different techniques required by the program. the Master Knitter Program and asked if anyone else in the group wanted to join her. After hearing about it, I thought it sounded like a fun thing to try. K2TOG: How long did it take you to work through the MHK program? LP: Level 1 took me two years. I started Level 2 five years K2TOG: What did you gain from working the program? later, and that took me three years. I started Level 3 a year What are your personal goals? later, and that took me five years. LP: When I started Level 1, I was a pretty experienced knitter by then, and figured that it would be mostly about proving what I knew. It just goes to show you that it’s true K2TOG: What have you learned? What was the biggest “you don’t know what you don’t know.” I had no idea insight you’ve had in any of the levels? how much I’d learn from the program. I went into the LP: Before I went through the program, I would seam program knowing one way to cast on, one way to decrease, sweaters by just sort of sewing them up. I would pick up one way to increase, etc. I could knit anything I wanted, stitches by just picking them up wherever. Learning mostly because I knew one way to anything that was mattress stitch was amazing – suddenly I didn’t mind asked. I couldn’t believe how much I had to learn and (Continued on page5 ) how my knitting improved. After Level 1, I knew I would 4 ceremony”. How fun! ceremony”. Lisa and and Lisa fellow MHK friendand at their personal “pinning (Continued from page4 ) seaming at all! And learning how to pick up stitches so they actually looked great in the finished object – my finished objects all looked so much better. I had no desire to become a knitting designer, but in Level 3 I learned the August 2019 August skills to design a sweater from scratch and make it fit.