Fundraising – Knit-Spin-Quilt

Halloween Collaboration Kit

A Halloween-themed collaboration kit with the Periwinkle Sheep, featuring purple spooky mushroom print drawstring project bags and fingering weight yarn dyed to match!

I’m so excited to announce a collaborative kit with The Periwinkle Sheep!

Karin and I met at the Massachusetts Sheep and Wool festival several years ago. Karin is a knitter since childhood, a former yarn shop owner, and indie dyer of yarn for nearly 18 years. She holds a MA in English in feminist critical theory. As owner of The Periwinkle Sheep, she has brought us a wide array of colorways that want to jump onto your needles!

This year we decided to work together to bring you a Halloween-themed kit!

I picked out a few fabric choices and we settled together on a spooky purple mushroom print, for which Karin dyed up a custom colorway that matches perfectly!

The designer of the fabric (dotpatterns) was kind enough to re-scale it for smaller bags, so the print scales with bag size.

Each bag is made of 100% quilting cotton and lined with a black and white bats-and-cats print. The ties are 3/8” grosgrain ribbon.

The sock (medium) bag will hold 2 skeins of yarn easily; the shawl (large) bag will hold 4+ skeins of yarn; the sweater (xl) bag will hold 10+ skeins of yarn.

The yarn for the kit is a 100% superwash merino fingering weight (4-ply) yarn that is usually only made available to wholesale sellers! You can see how it works up in both knitted and crocheted swatches below:

In addition to the kit colorway, Karin has selected two other colors of yarn that coordinate (the black and yellow-green skeins above) and made them available as add-ons to the kit.

Pre-orders for the kit are open only until August 20th!

Order your Halloween collaborative kit here!

Once orders are closed, I will get down to work sewing up your bags, and the kit will ship on (or before) October 10th.

One last note:

We know the world is a scary place right now. That’s why we are donating 10% of the sales of the kit to World Central Kitchen, earmarked specifically for their efforts to fight starvation and famine in Gaza.

Both Karin and I feel strongly that we need not only to speak out against the horrors happening in Gaza but also to take action: we will post at the end of the preorder period about our donation total.

Covid-19 Shop Update

Hello to everyone. I hope you and your loved ones are holding up in these trying circumstances. I won’t tell you to be chipper or keep your chin up: I will tell you that I wish you all the best.

Things have been exciting here: I am holed up out of NYC with a dear friend. Since the shop is my only form of income, and most of it is in Brooklyn, I have been scrambling to get ducks in a row. I am safe: I am sheltering in place at home. I have arranged mail pick-up once a week, and I sew in my bedroom, so I am able to keep going for the time being.

I will be focusing on drawstring bags and DPN cases at first. If you have a particular request, PLEASE tell me. My contact form, Instagram DMs, Twitter DMs and email are all open to you, dear customers. If I have access to the fabric in question, I will be happy to sew up a custom bag at no additional cost. (I do hope you’ll understand that my access to fabric is limited at the moment, due to circumstances beyond my control.)

Because I believe strongly in putting my money where my mouth is, KnitSpinQuilt will continue to donate 15% of item prices to charity. In 2020, I have chosen the Ali Forney Center, a charity that works to alleviate homelessness in LGBTQ youth in New York City. The Ali Forney Center cannot close under current circumstances, because it provides housing to at-risk youth, and is in need of support now more than ever.

Please keep safe, keep indoors, and keep on keeping on. This is going to be hard, but the only way forward is through.

2019 Donations & Wrap-Up

Hello, everyone! It’s been quiet here for a while, because I’ve been keeping very busy.

I had a lovely three months in England from February 2019 to May 2019, and after coming back to the USA, I re-opened the shop, and was honored to share a booth with 1 Geek 2 Craft All at Indie Untangled.

In 2019, thanks to income from KnitSpinQuilt’s Etsy shop and show sales, I was able to donate $775 to RAICES Texas and $100 to Planned Parenthood.

Screenshot from PayPal confirming a $100 donation to Planned Parenthood from KnitSpinQuilt

Screenshot from RAICES confirming a $27

It’s incredibly important to me to be able to put my money where my mouth is: supporting issues of justice and equity for all persons, including and focusing on those who are marginalized by and victimized by our current administration’s policies and institutionalized racism in America, where I happen to live. So 2019 was the year I donated to migrant and refugee justice and to reproductive justice.

I’ll post again soon with plans for 2020, because my donations will be going to a new charity.

Best wishes to all as we move onwards into the future, no matter what it may bring.

News & Upcoming Shop Hiatus

Thank you to everyone who came by to say hello at Vogue Knitting Live in New York City! It was a whirlwind of a weekend, and great fun, even if it was a bit overwhelming at times. If I was distracted, I apologize: there was an awful lot going on!

It’s been a busy winter here in Brooklyn! I have received funding from my graduate program to go abroad for three months to do research on medieval libraries!

This means that I’m going to have to shut down the shop from February 22 to June 1, 2019 — there’s no way for me to fulfill orders from the archives in London, and as a one-woman operation, I don’t have anyone to do it for me.

If you’ve been on the fence, now is your chance to get something before the shop closes for three months. (While I’m gone, those of you in New York can still find my bags and stitch markers at Knitty City and Woolyn in New York City, and at The Endless Skein in Cold Spring, when it opens!)

Before I go, though, I am excited to have some box bags back in stock. These bags are fully lined in white or low-volume print fabrics, have a handle long enough to loop over your wrist or (my favorite) to attach to a clip and hang from another bag, and use long-pull zippers with broad blunt teeth, the better to not snag your yarn.

There are also a variety of sock-size drawstring bags and shawl/sweater-sized drawstring bags: the medium (sock) bags will hold two skeins of yarn, but are most often used for socks; the larger bags are good for larger projects (though perhaps not your bulky sweater-coat, as they top out at about four skeins of yarn unless you shove).

Two drawstring bags and a box bag on a quilting cutting mat

There are also new rainbow llama stitch markers. Do you love coffee? Tea? Wine? There are stitch markers for those interests too.

Four sets of knitting stitch markers featuring silver charms themed around tea, coffee, llamas, and wine

I’m excited about archival research, and can’t wait to share pictures of England with you on my Instagram while I’m gone: @knitspinquilt

Remember — the last day to place an order before I leave is February 22!

Indie Untangled Countdown

I can’t wait for Friday — I’ll be sharing booth 23 with One Geek to Craft Them All and LexiCorp Knits at the Indie Untangled trunk show.

If you’ll be there, drop by and say hi!

Down to the Wire — in the best way!

I’m prepping up a storm right now, because I’m delighted to announce (belatedly!) that I will be a vendor at the Indie Untangled Trunk Show in (eeek) less than three weeks.

Find me at booth 23 with One Geek To Craft Them All!

I’ll have DPN cases and box bags:

Pile of fabric double pointed needle cases in several prints

Photograph of stacked box bags in a variety of fabrics

I’ll also have a lot of drawstring bags, which I’m still frantically sewing up:

Stack of drawstring bags inside out half-sewn with coral fabric and rotary cutter

Come by and say hi! And watch this space later this week for a very exciting announcement!

Collaborative Kit Goes Live!

KnitSpinQuilt is branching out into collaborations with yarn dyers!

This very first kit is a project bag, yarn, and pattern collaboration with Yarn Over New York and Gannet Designs. Customize it and make it exactly what you want: you get a project bag, one or two skeins of yarn, a shawl pattern designed for this yarn, and a stitch marker.

The project bag – a medium drawstring project bag sewn by Alisa of KnitSpinQuilt – is made from a fabric whose pattern was designed by Naomi of Gannet Designs. The lovely, lovely yarn is dyed by Jessie of Yarn Over New York.

You get to customize the kit in several ways. We’re offering it in three different colors (green, blue, and purple) and two different yarns: Times Square Sock (merino/nylon) or Astoria (alpaca/merino). Choose your color, choose your yarn base. Finally, choose whether you want one skein of yarn, or two skeins of yarn.

The kit comes with a pattern for a brand new shawl: the Semiramis Semicircular Shawl, designed by Alisa of KnitSpinQuilt using Gannet Designs lace patterns. You can make a shawlette with one skein of yarn, or a large shawl with two skeins. You’ll also get a custom matching stitch marker as a little bonus.

ShawlGreenOpen
You can pre-order the kit at Yarn Over New York’s new website. Orders will only be open for two weeks, and the kits will ship by August 20. You’ll receive a Ravelry download code for the pattern as part of your purchase — don’t have Ravelry? We’ll print it and mail a physical copy of the pattern to you with the yarn — just make a note in your order.

Lady Astronaut-Inspired Bags!

One of my favorite authors, Mary Robinette Kowal, is releasing two lovely books in the Lady Astronaut of Mars universe: The Calculating Stars, and The Fated Sky.

I cannot wait to listen to the audiobooks of these books: Mary is an embarrassingly talented writer, and has been tweeting all kinds of amazing details about her research at NASA for the books.

So when I saw this fabric, I knew I had to make bags inspired by the books:

These bags are available in my Etsy shop, and as always, 30% of the ticket price will be donated to the Hispanic Federation.