Birth Announcement!

That's right, rug#1 has been born. It still has a lot of growing to do, but I'm sure with all the nurturing in this knitting group it will grow up beautiful and warm! My fingers are too sticky to knit tonight after covering our little notebook, but I've done my first bit, so that's okay. The rug will be meeting it's new foster mum (aka knitter!) Helena on Wednesday evening when we plan to have a knitter's supper to hand-over. I am really looking forward to the hand-over as I get to meet up with Helena, and munch on homemade apple pie while we mull over patterns and show off our projects.

It took just over 50gms wool to get the required 7cm. I did the majority in a parallellagram knit/purl pattern so I didn't get lost in so many stitches as I haven't worked with rows that long before, and then finished with a few garter stitch stripes to get the extra distance with some left over yarn.

So the rug is officially on the way! Happy knitting!!

And we're off and knitting!

Thankyou to everyone who has joined up so far. Sign-ups have now closed for Rug#1 as we now have enough knitters but I will continue to take expressions of interest and put people down on the list for Rug #2 so that when we get enough knitters for that one, we can start that too.

For the moment we will be working on Rug#1, a rug for a lucky little GIRL. We have a wonderful group of knitters to work with, who have added some excellent suggestions during the sign-up phase, some of which I would like to incorporate into our project.

1. Knitters will be organised into a list based on where they live, so we will have the rug go through all the knitters in a state before moving onto the next state. This will save us postage time (it generally only takes a day to post in the same state) and also allows people to meet up and hand the rug over in person if they so choose, which just goes on to build the comunity spirit that exists amongst knitters worldwide.
2. It is suggested that if you are able (don't feel you have to do this if you are already paying a bit in postage), you can not only add a small gift for the next knitter to the parcel, but also a stamp or two which will help some of our knitters towards the end of the list that will have a heavy rug to put through the mail.
3. There will be one knitter doing 14cm of rug instead of 7cm. These knitters will be Susan. These ladies will get an extra 2 weeks (4 weeks total) to knit since they are doing twice the work. Thanks for volunteering so we can get the rug underway. Edited to change that to just Susan doing 14cm - thanks for volunteering Kylie and Lynne, but I accidentally left two of our knitters off the list so you only need to do 7cm now.

I have started on the rug, and have done about 5cm in purple so far. My estimate is that it would take about 50g of yarn to do the required 7cm. I will finish my knitting off in the next week and pass it on to Helena, who is our second rug knitter in the list. You can find out when you're up and a rough estimate of when you can expect the rug, here (we will keep track of the rug here so you will be able to see a more accurate estimate as we go) :

1. Joy SA (14-27 May)
2. Helena SA (31 May -13 June)
3. Leonie SA (18th June - 2nd July)
4. Kylie VIC (6th-20th July)
5. Kerry VIC (25th July - 8th August)
6. Jenny TAS (August)
7. Leah ACT (Aug)
8. Lynne NSW (Sept)
9. Donni NSW (Sept)
10. Belle NSW (Oct)
11. Jenifer NSW (Oct)
12. Lesley NSW (Nov)
13. Corrie NSW (Nov)
14. Susan NSW (Dec)
15. Jane NSW (Dec)
16. Peta-Anne QLD (Jan)
17. Karen QLD (Jan)
18. Dawn QLD (Feb)
19. Dianne QLD (Feb)
20. Cathy WA (Mar)
21. Joy SA (back to me to finish and donate in time for next winter) (Mar)

I underestimated the time it would take to get all of your details in my spreadsheet and add you all to the addressbook and group and have now decided that I must go to bed... zzzzz... but I promise those that are not added to the blog or bloglist at the moment will be added in the next few days.

I look forward to working with you all and would like to thank you in advance for your generosity. Pictures to come of the start I have made on Rug#1! Keep your eyes peeled!

Woops - sorry Donni and Leah- you're in the list now - please forgive me - it was very late at night!