I am so excited about the mystery knit-along (MKAL) I am hosting with my dear friend and fellow designer Sarah Alderson! I’ve known Sarah for several years now through the Huddersfield-based knitting group we both belong to. She has become a great friend, and it is a delight to have such a good friend who also happens to be a fellow hand-knit designer.
Towards the end of last year a general chat in our knitting group about knit-alongs (KALs) ended with Sarah and I agreeing to lead one together. We would create interchangeable designs for fingerless mittens, and split them into weekly clues for the other members of our knitting group, and anyone else who wanted to join. Little did we realise how popular this idea would prove; as I write nearly 150 knitters have signed up! The popularity seems to be because a joint MKAL is a unique event, and this one promises to be a great knitting adventure. So I invite you to join us too!
The MKAL is designed to stretch your creativity by giving you not one, but two options for each section of the fingerless mittens; one designed by Sarah, and one designed by myself. Each week we will send out the two options for one section, and the choice becomes yours. You may decide to make both mittens the same, or On The Other Hand you may decide to make them different. The sections can be mixed and matched giving you eight possible pattern configurations for each mitten, and 56 possible configurations for an unmatched pair!
We’ll release part one of the designs this Friday (February 5th); part two will be released next Friday (February 12th); then part three will be released on February 19th. The final full pattern will be revealed on the 26th, with winners chosen and prizes announced for those who have posted pictures of their completed mittens in our Ravelry group forum page. You will automatically receive an email with the pattern update on these dates to download the next section.
We will be holding hands with you throughout the MKAL with online video tutorials and advice on our blogs, Periscope, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook groups. We would also love you to join us in our Ravelry group where we will have forum threads for each update, spoiler threads and a finished mitten thread as well as chat and prize giveaways. We love seeing your colour and yarn choices and sharing with you the fun of a MKAL. To sign up you need to buy the MKAL pattern. You can download the preliminary information immediately after purchase, and if you are a Ravelry member it will automatically be added to your Ravelry library. The preliminary information includes details about the mitten sizes, suitable yarns, needle size, and tension/gauge requirements.
The MKAL pattern will be £3.50 throughout the MKAL, then will rise to £4.25 once the full pattern has been shared. Do buy it while it costs less and you can join the fun!
