Knitting Along and Giving Together

Our next installment in our Year of Gifts knit along was released on Tuesday, and we’re so thrilled by the response we’ve received so far. Kate and I loved doing the Year of Hats last year, and when thinking about 2020 we really wanted to come up with a promotion that felt meaningful. We love knitting together, and I sometimes think - no, I know - that the act of knitting is more pleasurable than having the finished thing to wear. I think it’s why a lot of us knit!

We wanted each design to be thoughtful and fun to make, and something someone would want to knit (or crochet) again and again. The goal is that each pattern becomes your go-to hat, mittens, or whatever! Additionally, each design needed to be easy to complete within in a month, go beyond just hats (although you know we love a good hat), and use a maximum of 100 grams of yarn. If we could follow these guidelines, then we knew we would be able to create the kind of year long knit along we could be proud of.

But what to call it? Year of Great Things to Knit? Year of Random Small Projects? Year of Projects I Want to Make More Than Once? None of those really worked. Then one day we thought: what if the whole point is that these are all projects that you want to share with the people you love? So much of making is tied up in gift giving and showing someone how much you care. Keeping someone warm is, next to feeding them, one of the kindest gestures we can bestow upon our fellow humans. And so, the Year of Gifts was born!

Each month’s kit not only comes with the yarn and pattern, it is packaged in a cute gift-worthy project bag and contains surprise mystery items we think crafters will love! These are little things you can choose to give or keep, and they’ll change each month. Some of the extra items are custom made exclusively for the Year of Gifts, and I have to say, designing and making them has been really, really fun.

We sometimes forget how amazing it is that we get to knit a lot for work, and we don’t always know what happens after we send our yarns and patterns out the door. We have heard from a lot of our retailers that they are hosting un-boxing and knit along parties in their shops. Maybe we will find a shop who wants to video chat and knit with us!?

We look forward to seeing you share your finished knits with your friends and family. Share your progress on Instagram with the hashtag #KWyearofgifts, and watch this space for the full year of releases!