Knitting Today 2019 Knitting Together

Welcome to knitting and design in 2019 here on knitting.today! Traditionally, we start our new year by publishing our motto and main focus for the year ahead, so here we go: The knitting.today 2019 motto is Knitting Together.

We also have a coupon code for you as every year in January: Use “welcome2019” (without the quotes) during checkout to get 20.19% off your next purchase, both valid here in the shop and on Ravelry. Hello and welcome in 2019!

Knitting Together

This year’s motto might seem obvious and simple at first. I mean, almost everybody likes knitting together with others, especially when sitting on a comfortable couch and sharing a good cup of tea and having a chat is part of the game.

If you take a closer look, there’s more to it than what’s visible at first glance. Knitting together is not only about sitting and knitting together. It’s also about helping each other out and being excellent to each other. It’s about being kind to others, teaching others about the things we know, and about sharing our knowledge in knitting and design.

We chose Knitting Together as motto for 2019 because this year should provide a new perspective for how we perceive us, our knitting, and our adventures in knitwear design.

Let me explain this a bit further.

Sometimes We Lose

It’s the first year after a major loss in our family (as well as in our team): Last October, we lost Steve (Stephen John Moore). He passed away after a sudden heart attack, and sadly did so without any warning signs or symptoms. From one day to the next, he was just gone.

He was my husband and the stepfather of our daughter, and he also was part of the team of knitting.today – he was in charge of our customer support.

He handled both jobs more than well. Since then, our lives have changed very much.

Sometimes We Gain

Fortunately, I experienced huge support which made me want to go ahead and feel confident enough for a restart, both personally as well as with my knitting ventures. The support came from both family and friends as well as from my readers and customers.

Support also came from complete strangers: People who only know me from Twitter or other social media platforms helped us out by crowdfunding Steve’s funeral and a place to remember. I did not expect such huge resonance at all, I was just amazed and completely overwhelmed how much people really care about others.

Be Excellent to Each Other

I’m living my life according to the principle “be excellent to each other” as good as I can. I love giving, sharing and taking care of others. I seriously believe making other people happy is our purpose in life. Being kind is a good thing. Karma is real. 

Do I sound too esoteric? Well, I’m a scientist after all. No intention on being esoteric at all. I’m just happy how much love and care and being excellent to each other I experienced recently and I really feel like it’s time to start giving again. So here I am asking you to make a wish.

Make a wish!

It’s time to ask you what you want from us, and what KT can do for you this year. We made a lot of plans for 2019 (you can read more about our plans for this year below), but knitting together means not to make plans on our very own but to share our thoughts and discuss how we can improve exactly this: how we are knitting together, and how we can make it better and turn it into a great experience for everybody.

So let me ask you:

• What are you wishing for? 
• What can I do for you this year? 
• What do you want to learn? 
• How can I help you? 

Please tell me your wishes here.

I’m looking forward to hearing all of your wishes, and be assured they will be heard. All of them. Thank you for your participation! <3

Knitting.Today: Preview 2019

We tried to anticipate your wishes for this year (and considered our own ones as well, to be honest) when we sat down recently to draft our schedule for knitting.today in 2019.

Besides the seasonal topics we do every year (spring cleaning, summer projects and holiday knitting) we came up with three major projects for 2019: Teaching more shawl design, making shawl design easier for aspiring designers, and creating new knitting patterns.

Teaching More Shawl Design

Back in 2012 I started my series Shawl Design in Plain English which has turned into a classic and the number one resource in shawl design. It is currently available in its third edition and there will be a fourth edition in 2019.

Besides the book itself, the information in it has always been available for free here on this website since 2015 – at least the better part of it.

The book goes into greater detail, has more illustrations and examples, as well as much more pattern templates and also example patterns which are not freely available.

There will be a fourth edition of the book as well as a complete relaunch of the free shawl design course available as articles called Shawl Design for Everybody (which started here in early 2015 as free article series about shawl design and has been updated continuously since).

January will focus on resizing shawls and how to make shawls adjustable in size, and also Adjustable Shawls will be available soon in an new edition as well. The article series about Adjustable Shawls will be rewritten completely, starting with an update of the main post Adjustable Shawls.

February and March will focus on Shawl Design for Everybody and April will be the month focusing on the new edition of Shawl Design in Plain English.

Making Shawl Design Easier

Back in 2017 I realised how repetitive the task of creating new shawl designs really is if you got beyond the point of understanding shape independent construction principles and the mathematics of shawl design.

I am aware that although it’s not rocket science for me – being a nuclear physicist really helps here – it actually is as complicated as rocket science for most people. If you feel overwhelmed by all the details involved in shawl design, relax: You’re not alone. Most people feel the same.

The good news: There’s no need to fully understand everything to be a successful shawl designer. All these calculations have a common method, and as such it can be implemented in software.

To make a long story short: There will be an app for that. It’s called knitr and is planned for beta release in 2019. May and June will be the focus months for making shawl design easier with software in general and especially for getting to know and improving the knitr app.

New Knitting Patterns & Pattern Collections

There are plenty of plans and new knitting patterns in the making for 2019. First, we’ll focus on adjustable shawls and how to knit and design shawls which can be easily resized.

Adjustable shawls are not only a matter of changing size itself. Sometimes, the bigger adventure is to knit or design a shawl and not to run out of yarn, especially when dealing with hand spun yarns.

In July and August we’ll focus on how to knit and design shawls with hand spun yarns, and we’ll see plenty of example shawl knitting patterns for hand spun yarns: the knitting pattern collection Hand Spun Shawls.

September and October we’ll focus on two shawl pattern collections: Knitting With Lambs (patterns inspired by British music and yarns) and Knitting, Watching Cronenberg (patterns inspired by the director David Cronenberg).

November and December will focus on holiday knitting as every year.

Welcome to 2019.

I’m looking forward to this coming year – and I’m more than happy we are going to spend it together – and with knitting together. Lots of love, and happy knitting! <3