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It’s another slightly tardy podcast as we prepare for the start of a new school year here in Australia! But I have news about the prizes for our Curious Handmade KALs from last year (The Handmade Sock Society 2, The Shawl Society 4, and Knitvent 2019) as well as some specifics about how my destash charity auctions for Australian Bushfire relief will work. And last but not least, my new word for the year.
Show Links
KAL News
All the 2019 Curious Handmade KALs are ending this Friday the 31st, so add your FO photos to the Ravelry thread for a chance to win a lovely yarny prize.
A couple of housekeeping notes to keep things tidy:
- Make sure you create a Ravelry project page for any design you’ll be entering!
- For the individual shawl and sock threads, you can post one photo per completed project. So for example, if you knit two Sea Gleam Shawls or two pairs of Sailing School Socks, you can post each one separately for a chance to win.
- For the Grand KAL Threads, please make one post per collection. You can use a collage type photo or photos of each finished object, but put them all into one post.
- For the Knitvent 2019 FO Thread, you can make one post per finished item, however many you knitted from the collection. So one post for the Homebody Socks, another for the Habitation Throw, etc.
- Remember that these are no-chat threads (to make drawing winners easier) so you should also post the same photo over in the chat threads so we can admire it out loud!
The Shawl Society Season 4:
- Sea Gleam Shawl FO Thread
- Floating Shawl FO Thread
- Rockpooling Shawl FO Thread
- Sunset Skies Shawl FO Thread
- In The Dunes Wrap FO Thread
- Gathering Driftwood Wrap FO Thread
- Grand KAL FO Thread for 5 or 6 completed shawls
The Handmade Sock Society Season 2:
- Shell Cottage Socks FO Thread
- Samphire Socks FO Thread
- Cliff Walk Socks FO Thread
- Cornish Cream Tea Socks FO Thread
- Sailing School Socks FO Thread
- Dorsal Socks FO Thread
- Grand KAL FO Thread for 6 completed pairs of socks
Knitvent 2019:
I will use a random number generator to draw a winner from each of the following threads on January 31st, 2020.
Destash Auction to Benefit Bushfire Relief
I am going to be holding my destash auction on Instagram. There will be a post for each lot, and people can enter their bids in the comments. We’re working across a lot of time zones, so I’ve done my best to choose a time that will work for most people. In UK time: the listings will go up on Thursday and bidding will be open until Saturday February 1st at 10pm
I will cover shipping internationally as part of my contribution.
Other things I talked about:
Join the Sockvent KAL in the Woolfield Studio Ravelry Group
Birch Hollow Fibers on Instagram
Show transcript:
Welcome to the Curious Handmade Podcast. You’re listening to episode 280. This podcast is all about crafting a life of happiness and creativity. I’m your host, Helen, and you can find me on Ravelry as Hells Bells and on social media as Curious Handmade. You can also find full show notes and transcript on my website at curioushandmade.com.
Hello and welcome to the show. I hope you’re having a good week. As you can probably tell, this podcast is late again this week. Kids are still not back at school, but we are in the last week of holidays and I am just working on getting things ready, finding school bags, making sure that there are enough socks, and exciting things like that.
So apologies again for a late publishing of the podcast and also as a result, this will probably be a pretty short and sweet episode. But I have a few announcements and reminders, so I wanted to record and not skip the whole week.
This week I’ve been really trying hard to set up my office and studio. I wanted everything ready for when the kids went back to school so that I could hit the ground running, finally, and get back into work in designing and podcasting on time and things like that. But yeah, I just struggled a little bit.
I had ordered a KALLAX, which is the Ikea cube shelves for my office because after I’d got lots of stuff out of boxes and was starting to organize things, I had piles and piles of stuff on the floor. I just realized that I needed more storage, even if it’s temporary while I’m de-stashing. I’ve just got tons of books and lots of things that I can’t get rid of straight away, even though eventually I would like to pare things down a lot.
But I just find that these things take time and I’m not there yet. So I decided to be realistic. I ordered some shelves. They were meant to arrive on Monday and Ikea delivered two number one boxes instead of a number one and a number two, because it came in two boxes, and so we got halfway through constructing it and realized that I didn’t have the right pieces.
Rang Ikea, they said they would deliver it on Wednesday. Wednesday came and went, so I rang them again and they said the picker didn’t pick it off the shelf. So they rescheduled for Friday.
Friday came and went and I rang them again. They said that the picker had picked it but it hadn’t managed to make its way onto a truck for delivery. So it was rescheduled for Saturday, a whole week after I started the process. Meanwhile just had a half built shelves in the office, which just did not do very much for my mental state and it was very distracting all week. That was a real pain.
Anyway, finally got it delivered and shelves put together and with it very quickly I could get myself fairly organized. Unpacked a few more boxes and things like that. But yeah, that was really, really distracting for the week. I know it’s first world problems, but still.
Eventually I was able to go through some stash and I have chosen prizes for the knit alongs that we have had going from last year. The cut off date for the knit alongs is the end of January, so 31st of January. We have a knit along for The Shawl Society and that is I’m going to do a prize draw from each individual shawl thread as well as the overall thread. And for The Shawl Society, if you post five or six shawls, if you’ve knit five or six shawls from the last year’s shawl society, you can go in the grand prize draw.
And similarly for The Handmade Sock Society, I will do a prize draw from each individual sock, finished object thread in Reverie as well as the overall thread where people can put a compilation. For the socks I’ve made it you have to have knit all six. I figured with the shawls they’re a bit more of a commitment, so I am letting people enter if they’ve knit five shawls. But for the socks you have to have knit all six for the grand prize.
And then for Knitvent we just have one thread for Knitvent. So anyone who’s knit anything from Knitvent 2019, can post in the finished objects thread and there will be a prize for that as well, a grand prize.
So overall that makes six shawls finish object threads, six socks, and three grand prizes for Knitvent, shawl society, and handmade sock society, which has 15 prizes.
So just be sure if you finish something to post a project page and link to it in the finished object thread to be in the running for a prize draw.
All the prizes are a skein of fingering weight yarn and for the grand prizes I will also add in a project bag and probably some stitch markers as well. These are all things from my stash as part of my de-stashing efforts, or just really lovely, beautiful skeins and bags that I’ve collected over the years. Whenever I go to a yarn festival I’m always very tempted by the beautiful things on offer and so usually purchase way too many things than I can actually use or need. So I’m very happy to offer them as prizes for the knit alongs.
We will draw those after the 31st. On the 1st or 2nd of February and announce winners in the newsletter and podcast that follows that, which is probably next week’s podcast. I think. I have a vague idea of what day it is because I have to be conscious of what day to get the kids back to school. But I’ve been pretty hazy on which day of the week and what date it is for a while.
The other project that is happening is I am planning a big de-stash and the proceeds of that are going to go to fire relief charities to help out people and animals affected by the major Bush fires that have been happening here in Australia for several months now. And so again, I went through my stash and have pulled out a small fraction of it to donate to the de-stash. I am going to do this on Instagram and it’s going to be an auction style event.
I’ll have, I think, about 12 bundles of yarn. Some will be single skeins, some will be twos, some will be sets of three or four skeins. I’m going to have individual posts for each of those. People can bid in the comments. It’s going to happen this week and it’s going to happen Australia time, Friday morning to Sunday morning, but the rest of the world is going to be Thursday to Saturday. Well, Australia and New Zealand is going to be Friday to Sunday. I’ve worked at dates. I spent some time playing around with different times because I figure that if it’s going to be an auction style event, we want a clear finishing time so that people can get in any last bids that they want to and they know when it’s going to be cut off.
I worked out that if I make it say UK time, 10:00 PM, finishing on 10:00 PM Saturday night, which is 8:00 PM Queensland time, and I think, I can’t remember New South Wales. Queensland is on a different time zone to New South Wales., IE Sydney and Victoria. We’re a bit out of sync up here in Queensland.
Anyway, but I figured it’s going to be Sunday morning in Australia, basically, Sunday morning in New Zealand, Saturday night in the UK and Saturday during the day in the US, and Saturday night in Europe as well, but slightly later than the UK. I think that’s the best I can do so that people in both Australia, Europe, and the UK are awake. It might be a little bit late for people in Europe and a little bit early for Australians on a Sunday morning, but I think that’s a pretty good time for everything to finish up.
It will kick off on Thursday, or Friday morning if you’re in Australia, and finish Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, or Sunday morning, depending on where you.
Anyway, I’m going to publish all this on an explanation post on Instagram as well as on my website just to try and make it all clear. But basically while the auctions running you can just make a bid. You just find the last bit in the comments and if you want a bid, make a higher bid. I can’t think of any other roles at the moment.
I am going to pay for the postage as my contribution as well as contributing the yarn. I’ll pay the postage. I think I’ll make the prices in US dollars just to have something that most people are familiar with rather than have it in Australian dollars. It might be a bit confusing as most people either operate in pounds or US dollars, I suppose. I’ve just decided on US dollars as something probably hopefully the most familiar. It’s going to be international and all the proceeds are going to go to various charities for fire relief for the bushfires here in Australia.
With all of my organizing and planning and unpacking, I haven’t done a lot of knitting, but I have done some. I’ve been knitting some socks. I’m not sure if you saw it on Instagram in December, but I participated in Sockvent, which was a really fun lead up to Christmas and organized by Warfield Studio. She has organized this for the second year in a row now. This year was much bigger than the year before.
I contributed a pattern for the Sockvent and there was, I think, 18 of us and we each put a pattern up in the days leading up to December the 24th, with 40% discount off that pattern for the day.
Now there is a knit along with all the patterns from the Sockvent that all the designers contributed and that’s being hosted on Nicole Warfield Studios Reverie group.
I cast on the terracotta socks by Woolfield Studio, Nicole, for my Christmas Eve cast on and I haven’t even had time to take a photo of them or post it on Instagram, whether it really happened or not.
Anyway, I’ve been knitting away on those. Really enjoying them. It’s a super simple design but really cute. I’ve been using some gorgeous yarn that I had in my stash from Birch Hollow Fibers and it’s a really gorgeous, yellowy, creamy base with some beautiful pinky speckles through it. Very subtle, very beautiful. Birch Hollow Fibers sock yarn.
I finished the first sock quite quickly. I think I finished that before, in the between Christmas and New Year’s week and I’ve just gradually been working away on the second sock. So there’s been some lovely knitting and I do have on my list to take a nice photo of it and post it in the knit along and on Instagram. Haven’t quite got there. But that’s about the extent of my knitting, but I have been doing some. It has been quite comforting to just knit a very simple pair of socks.
The other thing I’ve been thinking about is my word for the year. I have been choosing a word for the year for a while. Last year my word was intentional and it was pretty good word. I did use it as a touchstone for making decisions and just keeping myself calm through lots of upheaval and packing and change and making lots and lots of decisions about random things. So, intentional was my word last year.
This year my word is healing and it applies to both physical, mental, and emotional. I was quite stressed by the end of last year, so I need to calm down and work out ways to de-stress and really heal my nervous system, my cortisol levels, and things like that. Also physically I could do with some stretching, some fitness work, dealing with aches and pains, like my RSI, instead of just ignoring it and pretending I don’t have a painful wrist. Just concentrate on my health in a really deep way. So that’s my word for the year is healing.
Hopefully by the end of the year I’ll be a little bit healthier, feeling more energetic, and feeling really good. That’s the goal with that word of the year.
I think if I’ve had a particularly good word the year before, I also keep that one in mind as well. So I had a good word with intentional and also a couple of years ago I had the word ease. I might bring back ease as well because I think that will go nicely with healing and being intentional about things.
As always, I love to hear if you’ve chosen a word for the year and what that is. I’m always looking for ideas and very interested and curious about what other people have chosen for their theme or word for the year.
That’s all I have for you this week. Don’t forget to post any finished projects you have for last yeah’s sock society, last year’s shawl society, or Knitvent in the finished object threads in Ravelry to be in the draw for some lovely prizes and look out for them being announced in the next show.
As well as I’d really appreciate it if you either participate or share about the de-stash I’m doing this week for the bushfire relief. Thanks so much for tuning in and sharing this time with me. I hope you have a fantastic week and I’ll talk to you again soon. Happy knitting.
