knitting

Knitting for Blokes, with Mike Dickison

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Knitting for Blokes, 7pm, Thursdays from 3 October, Christchurch

Christchurch men, your chance to master knitting is here! Man knitter, ukulele player and bird expert, the deftly dexterous Mike Dickison is in town and running knitting classes just for guys at The Make Café in Riccarton. Learn to wrangle needles and yarn, and maybe even qualify for a place in the League of Knitting Gentlemen! Knit a dishcloth, hats, scarves, a iPhone sock, and also learn the secret of making cable needles out of No. 8 wire.

Blendy Knits Again

Grab your needles and your favourite sock yarn, then ponder over which charming pattern to choose from the second book New Zealand knitting designer, Belinda Too (Blendy) has created. Following on from the success of Blendy Knits Socks, this new book offers 25 patterns to suit just about everyone – cute hats, legwarmers for all ages, delightful fingerless gloves, lace scarves, socks (including larger sizes) and gorgeous cardigans.

Runaway penguin jumpers

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Last week I posted a story about the Rena oil spill and a project initiated to help care for the penguins rescued from the sorry mess. The call to crafters was sent out via an email newsletter which requested the help of knitters to produce jumpers for the little birds to stop them preening their feathers and ingesting toxic oil during their recovery.

As it turns out, the project, although a well-intentioned request, was founded on miscommunication and unfortunately once it went viral there was no means of slowing it down. Despite checking my sources having received the email newsletter, it appears the information I published was incorrect (you can read the whole story here, along with some handy tips on how to manage an online volunteer campaign), so if you were inspired by the story to knit a penguin a jumper, I do apologise. Rest assured I will be triple-checking my facts before publishing in future!

On that note, if you’re now all cast on with no place to go, I know for sure, without a shadow of a doubt, that Container Love in Christchurch is still going strong and would love your help with their container cosy to raise spirits in Sumner.

Knitting for penguins caught in Rena oil spill

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Off the coast of Tauranga, the oil spill from the Rena is having a disastrous effect on wildlife and the environment. A number of little blue penguins have already been caught in the oil and there are growing fears that more will be affected. Sabine of Curiouser & Curiouser and the team at Skeinz are rallying the crafty troops to help with the penguin rescue effort by knitting penguin jumpers, which help protect the birds and prevent them from preening their feathers and ingesting the toxic oil.

Container Love in Sumner, Christchurch

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When you don’t like the way your surroundings look, you have two choices. You can either live with it, or you can do something about it. Technically speaking you could also move, but that’s not an option for Christine Reitze who lives in Sumner, Christchurch, because she loves being near the sea.

“I was looking at the containers which are being used to protect our streets from falling rocks and finding them really unattractive in that context. Normally I quite like shipping containers, but in Sumner they are just an ugly reminder of the June earthquake, when the cliffs started to come down. I decided I needed to do something,” says Christine.