Volunteer knitting and update on club project

On Sunday, June 2, 2013 I did some volunteer knitting for the ADMK Knit Lab. The building at 2015 South 4th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19148, where I did the knitting is the Shivtei Yeshuron- Ezras Israel synagogue. The building’s facade will be “wrapped” with a machine knitted crazy quilt during the last week of the Hidden City Festival, June 26 through June 30, 2013. The Festival is between May 23 through June 30,2013. If you are interested in helping to create this knitted quilt you can contact Andrew Dahlgren at admknitting@gmail.com, visit the ADMK website www.admknitting.com, visit the Festival’s website at festival.hiddencityphila.org/projects/8 or visit their blog at festival.hiddencityphila.org/projects/8/blog_posts.

Creating a “sweater” for the 100-year-old former storefront turned into a synagogue is a very ambitious project. I took photos of some of the “panels” knitted for the quilt. Check them out below. On the day I visited the Lab, Melissa Choi also volunteered. A fellow graduate of Philadelphia University, she is a very talented fashion designer. I checked out her website, www.senpai-kohai.myshopify.com and saw the garments her company designs. I just loved the East India influences in her garments. One of the things I appreciated about Melissa was that until she voluneered she never worked on a knitting machine. Now she seemed “hooked” because this was her second visit to the Lab. How cool is that! Hope some of the machine knitters in the Philadelphia area will be inspirted to help out with this project. Here’s wishing the project great success.

Andrew Dahlgren and Melissa Choi knitting. 

 Melissa Choi showing her "cat" knit panel for the knitted quilt.

The knitted panel by Donna Streets on the knitting machine.  It's a tuck stitch pattern. 

A close-up view of the "cat" knit by Melissa Choi. 

Andrew Dahlgren at the bulky knitting machine.

In our continuing effort to strengthen our member’s ability to design their own patterns and then knit them, I did a second version of the hand knit stripped child’s sweater on a standard gauge knitting machine. I knitted the project using the Singer 700 and took advantage of the knit contour feature. I just wanted to let our members know that a pattern is a pattern and it can be adapted for any yarn, any gauge and any knitting machine.

 The child's stripped sweater knitted on the standard gauge machine using the knit contour feature.

The back view of the stripped child's sweater.

To anyone interested in checking out the Sophisticated Stitches club our next meeting will be Saturday, June 22, 2013 at the First United Church of Christ, 145 Chestnut St, Spring City, PA 19475. All are welcomed.

Regards,

Donna Streets
donmarie@fast.net