The Knit Before Christmas

Hello friends,

The Knit Before Christmas has some great new features, but I need your help to make them interesting.

1. The Community Map

• the flags on the map represent Christmas at Sea knitters.
• Clicking the flags will display information about a particular volunteer knitter or knitting group

How can you or your group get on the map? By leaving a comment or sending an email with as much information as you would like displayed. If you don’t want to display your address, simply send me your zip code.

The community map is one more way that CAS knitters can connect with each other.  Maybe you are knitting Mariner’s scarves all alone in Toledo and want to join a group. Maybe your knitting group needs more members. Maybe you just want to represent your town.  I’m looking forward to seeing a well populated map.

 2. The Gallery

We have a fantastic new gallery, just waiting to be filled with pictures of CAS knitters, finished objects, works in progress and knitting groups in action. So send your pictures to me and I will be happy to post them. Please include any caption you wish, or if you’d like me to write a caption, just let me know.

I’ll be waiting to hear from you.

Jeanette

Hello friends,

Well, as you can see in this picture, I was not able to knit the whole sock this weekend. And I had such high hopes!

I went out of town this weekend and happily packed my sock in my bag, confident that the road trip would give me all the time I needed to meet my goal. Moments into the ride, however, I broke a needle and had to stop knitting. boo.

I think socks are great projects to work on when I am traveling because the are so small and portable, but I cannot figure out how to stop breaking needles in my bag! I’ve tried wooden ones: they actually broke before I even cast on!, I’ve tried bamboo: they are my favorites, but also break. I though metal needles would redeem me, but their too sharp points hurt my fingertips. These latest casualties were plastic, and I thought surely they would be strong enough to endure one small trip. Do you have any tips for me? Please leave them in the comments.

Maybe I should stop carrying bricks and rocks around in my bag…

Although these are called Seafarer’s Socks, we actually distribute them to both seafarers and inland mariners. They are a very popular item, of course! Who doesn’t love handknit socks?

 P.S. We use the term seafarer to describe someone who works deep sea, an inland mariner describes someone who works on an American River.