Stitch and Bitch

And yes, I'm using the term advisedly ;)

The group that is sponsored by the DeKalb Public Library will meet tonight at Border's Cafe at 6:30. Our regular fourth Tuesday group will meet tomorrow night, the 28th, at 7:00 at Starbucks.

Be there or be square!

Favorite bloggers

Do you have any favorite knitting or other blogs? I thought I would post one of mine, Knit and tonic She has just come up with a new sweater pattern that some of you might like. I know I do!
Sorry this sounds like an advertisement. Her blog is also funny as heck.

Knit Alongs!

Woo... I joined the sexy knitters kal and the sew?I knit sew along... well tried to anyway, I'm going to have to wait until the next project for both of them to officially join, but I'm still excited. The "Sew? I knit" sew along is pretty cool, it's for knitters who want to change it up and do a sewing project, which I was just planning on doing. Although I can't join for the skirt making sew along, i'm making one anyway. It's the Butterick's 4025 style A pattern, it's going to be so cute! On another note I'm making some headway on the cabled gloves and will hopefully have them done in the next two weeks! yeah! Here's a picture of the pattern I'm making. Oh yeah, I listened to the podcast on stitch and bitch and found that most annoying... that stupid forum only has 250 members... that's not really that much to be throwing a fit over. The main thing that annoys me is that they are essentially pissing off the people who should be their customer base, oh well their loss I suppose, the whole thing is still just annoying and it really won't matter in the end because sew fast sew easy is going to run out of money if they keep suing people.

Stitch and Bitch

I'm sure most of you already know the little knitting brouhaha. Sew Fast; Sew Easy clearly (and quietly) trademarked the name Stitch and Bitch Cafe. OK. They did it. But now they claim that they were the first to use the phrase -historical evidence notwithstanding- and they are suing Debbie Stoller, author of Stitch and Bitch and Stitch and Bitch Nation. They have also gone after small, purely social gatherings of knitters who refer to themselves as "stitch and bitch" groups, in spite of the fact that there is no commercial risk to their trade name from these groups. Moreover, they have an open letter to the crafting community in which they refer to Stoller as "Debbie Stole-it" and claim that she gives feminism a bad name. (Do a google search; you'll find it. If I post a link, it will artificially raise the standing of their blog on RSS feeds.)

I was sort of vaguely amused that knitters could be so riled up over the Stitch and Bitch name. I mean, honestly... people are starving to death, and knitters are getting up in arms over the right to call themselves bitches. Perspective, if you please. But now I'm irritated. Surely Sew Fast; Sew Easy can do better than name-calling and having a (male, by the way) marketing executive claim to be the arbiter of what constitutes legitimate feminism.

As Franklin says on his Cafe Press shirts, "I have two needles. You have two eyes. Don't mess with me."

And you really might want to listen to Brenda Dayne's podcast from last week, Bitch and Bitch. She has a great essay on just this subject. Follow this link: Cast-On.

D'oh! I nearly forgot to tell you guys!

My Stitch & Bitch group gets together on the second & fourth Mondays of every month, and we'd love to have y'all come & join us!! Our next meeting is this Monday the 13th, at Borders (in the cafe part) at 6:30. This group started out as a crochet club, but most of us have migrated on to knitting, and sometimes we bring other things to work on as well (cross stitch, embroidery, mail art, one girl even made chain maille once). It's a very laid back kind of group, and we're always happy to have new folks come & keep us company. This week, we'll probably be showing off the progress some of us have made on our Olympic projects (I know mine has been pretty hard-won!). Grab your latest project & come join us...we'd love to see you there! :)

Knitted Digestive System and Shoe booties and other useless things

I thought this was worth looking at, if only to see a section of a pattern that was titled anus: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=3f594897ee73cfbbf627ee8c6a06c1f0;topic=60206.0
Links to parts of the pattern follow all of the pictures.
And knitted shoe booties: Vickie Howell's Knitty Gritty program had the designer on
http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/shows_dkng/episode/0,2046,DIY_18180_40470,00.html
and then Alison of The Blue Blog knitted a pair:
http://alison.knitsmiths.us/cat_these_boots_were_made_for_knitting.html
I don't have any comment. The pictures speak for themselves.

2006 Knit-a-Longs

Here's one of the many updated lists of knit-a-longs for this year: 2006 KALs. I know Terry is in at least one for the Aran cardigan. I'm in a felted bag KAL, one for the #($- Shamus, which I will, for the love of all things decent, finish during the Olympics. I've dropped out of the Six Sox Knitalong, but am looking for another sock KAL. The company definitely kept me focused on producing socks at a reasonable enough pace. SixSox was especially good for learning new techniques and for producing gift socks, if that's what you're looking for. I'm even considering joining the Sexy Knitters KAL, although it's hard to imagine anyone less qualified for membership in THAT group.

So which groups are YOU in?