And the winner is...

Last Sunday Seoul Stitch'n Bitch held our second (Annual? this might have become a tradition, who knows?) Ugly Blanket Raffle!! We were so excited to end this project (finally... oh, me and my crochet hook are tired) and send the blanket off to its new home. And we raised a lot of money for a great cause.

In total, we raised 376,000 won, more than double what we were able to collect last year. Over half of that was thanks to the efforts of Marie and Greg and the wonderful generosity of the teachers and staff of Eunhaeng Elementary School and Seohae Middle School in Siheung City. Thank you so much for your help!! All of the donated money went to the Korean Sexual Violence Resource Center in their efforts to help raise awareness and help victims of sexual violence.

Marie shook up all the tickets for us, so they would be well mixed, and then Greg did the honors.

And the winner of Ugly Blanket #2 is .... our very own Angie!! She's currently in Australia but will be back in Korea in February. It seems fitting that she would win this blanket, since she is the one who initiated this idea of knitting an ugly blanket for charity. Our other winners were Riah, who received a skein of gorgeous handspun, and Eunhaeng Elementary's music teacher, who received a braid of fiber. Presumably this will go to her daughter, whom Marie taught to spin at her winter Fiber Camp last year. ^_^ Both of these prizes were donated by the lovely Etsy seller, The Good Sheep.

I'll leave you with some more pictures of the blanket in all its wonderful glory. Thank you so much to everyone who donated, both in time, money, and ugly yarn/squares. The KSVRC was so excited to hear about our project, and it was a lot of fun to organize. I hope you guys had as much fun as I did, and I can't wait to do it again next year! In the meantime, work on some squares and save your extra cheon-wons for tickets... ^_~

- Siobhain

I think I need this.

Not want, NEED.

Kirby's Epic Yarn

(And here is a review, in case you need coaxing.)

Random tidbits

There are two crafty bloggers, Kat of Kat Knits and Susi of Craft Room, who are taking on the Project Runway challenges and using dolls as their models. Seriously awesome.

Speaking of awesome, um, True Blood plus Snoop Dogg. Fanfic-tastic!

Okay, one more. I heart Carlton. I know you do, too, don't lie.

Ugly Blanket 2.0

So this year at WWKIP Day (World Wide Knit In Public Day), Seoul SnB started working on their second Ugly Blanket.

The Ugly Blanket is made up of a number of squares knit by various members of our community and crocheted together by one lovely Ms. Siobhain. It's being raffled off to raise money for the Korean Sexual Violence Relief Center. We did the same thing last year and raised quite a bit of money. At 2,000 won a ticket this year we're already reaching 200,000 won and tickets are still on sale. Our draw date is November 7th at our SnB meeting. 100% of the money goes to the center.

Below is the blanket in progress and some closeups of the squares. If you're interested in buying a ticket please contact marielynn AT gmail DOT com or siobhain DOT rivera AT gmail DOT com. You can watch the progress of the blanket on Ravelry.

The yarn in the following two squares was actually dyed and spun by students at Eunhaeng Elementary School during our Fiber Arts Winter Camp. Most of the students brought their yarn home with them but some left it behind. After months of waiting for it to be picked up, I used it to knit some ugly blanket squares.

And in case you're wondering what last year's blanket looked like completed. Here it is:

Happy Crafting and I'll be sure to let you know the results of the raffle.

motivation

i've been silent for a long time. truthfully, i've just been a slacker at knitting for the past several months, and that makes the little hater in me go, "you are disqualified from knitting circles, nyah!" but it came to me that perhaps i'm not the only one with this motivation problem. it almost always hits me at the same time as the hot weather--i suddenly lose interest in knitting and fixate on something else. in my case, that would be the beach/ocean.

i suppose there's comfort in the fact that at least this particular inconstancy is cyclical?

in any case, here's my question for you folks:

Do any of you suddenly lose your knitting mojo for an extended period of time? If so, do you just trust that it'll find its way back and wait, or do you make a conscious effort to power through the slump?

KIP Day is coming!!

Or, for those of you who don't share my love of acronyms, Worldwide Knit in Public Day. It's almost here! This Saturday, June 12, in fact. Seoul SnB is having a meetup to celebrate, swap yarn, and chill.

Details!

Yarn Crawl at Dongdaemun Shopping Town: Meet at Dongdaemun Station, lines 1 and 4, exit 9 at 1030 am. (If you're coming, give me a heads up by emailing me or leaving a comment on this post siobhain.rivera at gmail.com) My phone number is on the google group thread for KIP Day if you get lost or are going to be late.

Meetup at 2 pm: Euljiro 1-ga Station, line 2. Exit for Korea Electric Power Corporation. (Walk away from the underground plaza in the center of the station toward the underground arcade to Euljiro 3-ga, it's the second exit on your right.) Walk straight out of the exit toward the main part of Myeongdong. It looks like this:



We'll be doing a yarn swap, so bring stuff to trade! It shouldn't be raining, but if it is, there are myriad cafes we can escape into. We're also going to be working on another ugly blanket to raise money for the Korean Sexual Violence Resource Center; last year we ended up donating about 150,000 won to them with all the tickets we sold, and it would be great if we could top that! So bring your 6" squares for the blankie and I'll start selling tickets then. (Don't worry, I'll be selling tickets/collecting squares for a few months at least.)

After the meetup: Subway Knitting!! We'll be getting on the Green Line (Line 2) and going around the circle. It will probably take an hour and a half or so, but of course feel free to get off at your stop, or whenever you feel like it. But think how awesome it would be to have a bunch of us knitting on the subway together! Bet that would catch some attention. (Beware the ajumma! They tend to grab knitterly things out of your hands to examine them.)

So... We'll see you there, right? Great! I'll post afterwards with pictures and possibly some video. I'll leave you with a video of our interpretive yarn dance (read: detangling) from last year's KIP Day.

Meeting Schedule

Seoul Stitch n Bitch currently meets every Tuesday evening and Sunday afternoon. Bundang Stitch n Bitch meets every Saturday.

Here is our Google Calendar.



You can find directions to our meetings on our Google Group page.

If something seems odd about the above schedule and you're not certain it's correct, please email seoulsnb@gmail.com for clarification.