Sunday, November 19, 2006

The story behind Stranded: The Colorwork Challenge



Last year I started the Norwegian Knits-Along, a 6-month knitalong that eventually grew beyond Norwegian-style knitting into Fair Isle, Latvian and miscellaneous colorwork. The participation was great--50 plus knitters and bloggers joined in, some for the first time ever. It was a great experience for me to see all the beautiful progress photos, finished projects, and meet some new people. I promised I'd host the KAL again.



This year, I knew I wanted to do more colorwork, and host a knitalong, but I didn't want to limit it to one particular style. There are quite a few unique styles and patterns out there, and I didn't want to turn down anyone because they weren't knitting Norwegian-style colorwork. After discussing the KAL details with Andrea and Mary-Heather, debating on names and categories, we decided to:


  1. Create an all-types-of-colorwork knitalong. This means, if you're interested in doing stranded colorwork, this is the place for you.
  2. Create categories based on the colorwork style of a person's project. If you're making Selbu mittens, you're in the Stranded in Norway category. If you're making a Fair Isle vest, you're in the Stranded in the Fair Isles category. Simple, eh?
  3. Make a separate blog for the KAL. Not that we have grandiose plans of duplicating the Knitting Olympics, Sockapalooza, or Socktoberfest, but we do anticipate a bit of traffic. Besides, having a separate blog frees your three hosts from excessive bandwidth usage. (Let's be practical here.)
  4. Divide hosting duties. Last year, with 50+ blogs and emails to check, I slacked off on a couple of updates (well more than a couple). This year, Andrea and Mary-Heather actually volunteered to do updates. He he. Uh, thanks girls!
  5. Host a gallery of finished colorwork projects. Click-thru statistics from my site showed that last year's gallery was quite popular. You know you love seeing finished objects!
  6. List resources, vendors, books, online groups, and other colorwork information. Don't know where to find a great first project? Or are you looking for a pattern from an old book that's no longer in print? We'll post information frequently.




So. Here's my line: are you interested in doing colorwork for the first time? Do you have a colorwork project that's been languishing in the back of your closet? This is the KAL for you. Our targeted start date is December 1, 2006, with no targeted end date. If you're interested in joining, send an email to strandedcolorwork at yahoo dot com. Get your pattern books out, the Colorwork Challenge is here!

Photos © 2005-Present MJ Gumayagay.

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