Knit Night On The Brain!

This past weekend in Hamilton was amazing. Supercrawl was so so good. The best ever. I was so impressed and thrilled to share such a great Hamilton event with some friends and family who were visiting. And we completed our giant knit façade of The Brain, which we've been working on since June/July.



We were literally knitting and piecing the installation together as it was going up. And many of us were knitting non-stop in the week leading up to the deadline. Towards the end we pulled out the big guns to speed things up - mega huge knitting needles! Thank goodness for chunky yarn and big needles.



We couldn't have done this without our friends and family. In addition to all the knitters that helped with the actual creation of the piece, we could never have installed it without the tireless help of Gary. THANK YOU GARY! Sky Jack operator extraordinaire. And Kieran and Mike. HEROES. And thank you Heather who patiently let us take over The Brain, inside and out.



Oh, and that amazing knit recreation of The Brain logo? Yeah, that was Courtney. She's the mastermind behind this entire thing. Not only is she speediest knitter I've ever met, she's also a genius when it comes to making up patterns. Three cheers for Courtney!!!




And now it's done. Our first giant Beehive project! If you swing by in the next little while, you can still check out the yellow section with The Brain sign, which is still up.

On The Brain

We are busy busy busy busy bees (how many times can we make this joke?). Our knit installation for Supercrawl has been taking up all of our time for the past couple of weeks. Knit knit knit knit knit knit knit. We'll finally be installing the whole thing tomorrow, and it will be available to view tomorrow evening at the art crawl and all day Saturday at Supercrawl on the facade of The Brain at 199 James Street North.

Over 70 knit scarves, 2 knit window boxes, a knit sign for The Brain, half a dozen crocheted flowers, 18 constructed wood frames later and we're ready. It's going to be incredible. We do hope that you'll be able to check it out. It couldn't have been possible without the local crafting community stepping up and pitching in. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Okay. Back to knitting for us. See you this weekend.

Worker Bees

Well, today is the day that we Bees have been waiting for. Seven months of planning come to fruition starting tonight, and continue along on Saturday. We're thrilled, nervous and a little overwhelmed. Mostly thrilled. Very, very thrilled.

We've done our best the past couple of weeks to showcase some of the amazing talent that make up the fair. Never in our wildest dreams did we expect to be working alongside such creative and accomplished artists. Initially, we had our fingers crossed that we would get enough applications that The Old Friendship Shop wouldn't look empty. And suddenly, there we were, with more applications than we had room to accommodate. This fair is just bursting with extraordinary talent.

We wanted to contribute something material as well. Although the actual logistics alone of this whole event took up most of our time, we felt we had to create some kind of souvenir of our achievement. So we added a couple of more projects to our plate.

Jenna and Thea spent the beginning of this week screen printing tote bags. It's been mentioned on the blog before, but we all really love our wreath logo. Jenna did such a beautiful job designing it. Really, it'd be a shame NOT to print the design onto totes. Jenna and Thea printed up a limited number for the fair - more once we all realized that all 11 of us would like one ourselves - in a beautiful mustard colour onto sturdy canvas bags. In my head, I've already designated mine for transporting my Knit Night supplies on Wednesday nights.

During our last social meeting, most of the Bees got together and had a good old fashioned button making party. We spent a couple of hours in Roisin's new studio cutting out designs in different colours and sizes, pressing them into buttons and eating scones. I'm so thankful that most of our meetings revolve around good food, as well as learning new skills and good conversation. And gosh, our buttons turned out so cute.



Without getting too sappy here, we wouldn't have been able to pull this off without all the support of so many other worker bees. We have countless friends and family members and partners who have donated their time, their houses, their skills and their love to make all of our projects possible. Big, huge, bottom of our heart thanks to Kieran, Jeff, Peter, Dane, Kevin, Mike, Erick, Jesse, Doug, Sean, Ted, Gary, Copydog Tom, Tim, Heather, Rachael, Amanda, Ella, Dave, The Brain, Mulberry Street Coffeehouse, all of our families, all of our vendors, everyone who applied and especially to you. Thanks for being interested in what we do.

We really hope that you'll join us this weekend. We've worked so hard. For you.

Thank you Lion Brand Yarn!

Over the past month, the Beehive and many of our friends and family have been working away on our Knit Night on the Brain installation for Super Crawl. In case you've forgotten, the piece will be a replica of the façade of a bar in Hamilton called The Brain, home to Knit Night, and it will be suspended over the front of the building. We will be recreating the brick work and structural elements of the building while also adding a few touches of our own.



When we came up with the idea for this project, we contacted Lion Brand Yarn to see if they would be interested in donating yarn for the project. Many of us use Lion Brand for our own personal projects all the time. Especially being fans of the Vanna's Choice line.

Founded in 1878, Lion Brand is America's oldest manufacturer of craft yarn. We approached them for help because we knew of their commitment to the knitting and crocheting community and to outreach and charitable works. First we measured the outside of The Brain, then Courtney came up with a pattern, and from that we calculated how many square feet of yarn we would need to cover everything that we wanted to with the installation. We then went through their catalogue in both their Wool-Ease Thick & Quick and Vanna's Choice lines, and picked colours that matched the existing brick and mortar of the building. It was easy to do so with such a beautiful and diverse selection of shades.

We drafted up a proposal, sent it to Lion Brand and crossed our fingers that they would be as enthusiastic about our project as we were. And they were! Five boxes full of their gorgeous yarn were promptly sent to White Elephant where we all squealed and jumped for joy upon arrival.







All of us have been taking our knitting wherever we go. Beehive meetings, the cottage, coffee shops, picnics. There's nowhere we won't knit. And look! A boy knitting! A relatively rare sight.



Even Hollie's cat Tanooki has been trying to help, in his own way...

Once all 69 scarves are complete, we will be assembling them all together to resemble brickwork. We also have to knit the actual sign that hangs on the front of The Brain, which is the silhouette of a human head with the brain exposed. There's a contest among some of the Bees of who will finish the most, with Courtney and Anna currently in the lead, with 9 and 8 scarves completed respectively. We've got lots of helping hands pitching in, from mothers to grandmothers to co-workers to complete strangers who want to contribute. It's amazing to see the knitting community of Hamilton come together for a project like this.

Once disassembled, all the scarves will be cleaned and then donated to Mission Services on James Street North. Art with a purpose! It's so satisfying to know that the scarves that we are working on will be used by someone really in need of them. There's still time for you to pitch in too. You can download the PDF of the pattern on the sidebar to your right, and can pick up some yarn from us every Wednesday night at Knit Night at The Brain,  at 199 James Street North.

We can't thank Lion Brand enough for their generosity. Without them, this installation would not be possible. They are a really amazing company dedicated to progressive thinking within the textile community. We love you Lion Brand.

Hip to be Square: Granny Square Blanket!

Way back in the winter our fellow bee Courtney was kind (and patient!) enough to teach a few of us how to crochet simple granny squares at The Brain's regular Knit Night. In general I tend to gravitate towards simple projects that I can pick up and put down easily or do while watching a movie; it makes me feel like I'm being productive! Granny squares were the perfect project to fill my idle hands and use up that ever growing yarn stash. Slowly but surely, one square at a time, you're bound to build up enough little squares to make an afghan without having to tote around a large and daunting project.

Jenna Rose used some gorgeous light airy colors for her granny squares (above).

I love natural colors of wool and using Canadian or hand spun yarns, so for my project I used up some hand spun Manos del Uruguay left over from an old project and purchased some Briggs and Little yarn while on christmas vacation in Nova Scotia. I love Briggs and Little because it's a Canadian company and is very inexpensive for pure Canadian wool, which they buy direct from the producer. It makes an ideal yarn for natural dyeing as well as for large projects like blankets.

I started by dyeing some of the wool with onion skins, one of the easiest and most rewarding natural dyes to work with. After saving up my onion skins until i had enough to fill a pot, I dyed two balls of natural white "Heritage" (2 ply) yarn from the Briggs and Little line. I boiled the onion skins 'til the water was full of their dark rust color, then I filtered them out and placed the water back on to boil. I dyed one skein first which soaked up the strong darker yellow right away - the ball in the back of the picture below. Then I dyed the second skein in the remaining water - this is called an exhaust bath. The water is not as potent with dye but this second round will produce a softer, often more beautiful, shade of yellow.

To go with the natural yellows, I picked up some Heritage yarns in shades of grey and started making the granny squares that Courtney had taught me. The stitch was surprisingly simple. Starting with a small circle made with a few chain stitches and then working outwards with little "shells" of three double-crochet stitches followed by a few chain stitches you eventually get a square. There are many great books and videos on making granny squares and tons of variations of patterns but I thought I'd stick to the simple square, mixing up my colors to make every square just a little bit different from the last. Soon enough (and thanks to a couple seasons of "Mad Men" that I definitely needed to catch up on...) I had a big pile of granny squares ready to be stitched together into a blanket.

As I made up the squares I added in some bright fun bits of left over wool in my stash to fill out the blanket and add some different colors!

Using the same basic pattern of three double crochet stitches I edged each square, and stitched them together by picking up the edge of the previous square as I went. When I was all done I edged the whole blanket with a gradation of grey to black yarns to frame the whole thing making the lighter grays and yellows pop in the middle of the blanket.

And just in time for summer weather, voila! the perfect picnic blanket for Bay Front Park!

I think I'll spend my whole summer right here.


photos by Jenna Rose and Anna Taylor

Knit Night on the Brain

The Beehive has been working on something big and by big we mean huge. So big, in fact, that we need your help.


We are creating a large installation piece for SUPERCRAWL! The piece will be a replica of the façade of the Brain, home to Knit Night, that will be suspended over the front of the building. We will be recreating the brick work and structural elements of the building while also adding a few touches of our own.


The majority of the piece, all the brick work, will be made up of knit scarves. Once SUPERCRAWL is over the piece will be dismantled and the scarves donated to Mission Services Opportunity Centre where they will be distributed to those in need of something warm to guard them against the cold.

This is where your help comes in. Although many of us in the Beehive are avid knitters we will simply not have enough time to get all the scarves completed while working on the rest of the piece. Also, we think it would be awesome for the entire craft community in Hamilton to get together on this one!

We have created a pattern of the scarf we will be using to recreate the brick work. The pattern is available for you to download here. The yarn you will need to make the scarf is Lion Brand Wool Ease - Thick and Quick. We have also created a list of yarn colours to use to keep the whole piece uniform. The brick colours: Hazelnut #640-125, Pumpkin #640-133, Spice #640-135, Apricot #640-136, Butterscotch #640-189 and Wood: #640-404.

And the mortar colours: Linen: #640-098, Wheat #640-402, Oatmeal: #640-123 and Barley #640-124

Lion Brand Yarn has graciously supplied us with yarn for creation of this piece. If you would like to contribute a scarf to the project you can pick up yarn at Knit Night at the Brain every Wednesday from 7 to 10pm. If would like to support the project but are unable to come to Knit Night you can head over to your local yarn shop to purchase any of the Lion Brand colours listed above.

Completed scarves must be submitted by 5pm on August 13 at The Beehive Summer Craft Fair. They can also be dropped off up until that deadline at Knit Night

If you have any questions about the project or the pattern either stop by Knit Night or send us an email. We are happy to help you with any of your questions, and could even teach you how to make one.

Photos courtesy of Hollie and Courtney

Pysanky!

Last Monday evening Hollie was kind enough to welcome us around the harvest table in her lovely home to try our hand at traditional egg decorating. Since I was a kid, Easter has been my favorite holiday. There's very little pressure, it comes with spring AND there's chocolate...what's not to love! With spring - and a late Easter, for those inclined - around the corner, eggs were on our brains and had us thinking of the very impressive craft of pysanky (pih-SAHN-kee). Traditionally, Ukrainian woman would create effortless-looking decorative eggs by drawing resists in beeswax on the surface of eggs and successively dipping them into various dyes, layering intricate pattern over intricate pattern. While some of us remembered childhood attempts at this or similar egg dyeing crafts, none of us really knew what we were doing at all. And let us tell you...it's hard! We were not as instantly expert at this as we thought we would be, but it was a lot of fun!

The endeavor began with a trip to The Ukrainian Store in Dundas. When you go in it's hard not to get distracted by all the fresh locally made specialty foods, after all, they boast the "best perogies in town"...a statement that has since been tested by Beehive members and met with much satisfaction. The owners were extremely friendly, fully stocked in every thing we needed and willing to patiently translate the directions on the bright packages of dye.

The supplies needed were candles, dyes, beeswax and kistkas (KIST-kuh - a simple stylus made from a cone of metal fastened to a small wooden dowel with wire). The Ukrainian store has a variety of sizes of kistkas that produce different thickness of line with the beeswax. They even supply electric ones for the expert hand! Dyes can also be made naturally using plants and vegetables like beets. We gathered onion skins to make a yellow dye using just the same method as for fabric dye.

The Hamilton Public Library was full of beautiful books on the subject, and proved invaluable for inspiration.

We mixed the dyes according to instructions and laid out everything we needed to get started. each of us had a little candle in front of us and our egg to decorate. Some times you can blow out the yoke in your egg ahead of time or - as per tradition - leave it to slowly dry out over a few years.

You start by heating the metal part of your kistka until you can easily scoop out a little beeswax, filling the larger open end. With further heating, the wax should run down into the cone, getting ready flow out onto the egg's surface. I found I had to heat my tool often to keep the wax flowing and TOO often we would heat it too much and a large flow of wax would blob out the end of our tool, muddying our attempts at perfect designs! We had to ditch our pride and realize that straight lines and symmetry come with years of practice.

Where the wax is drawn on a resist was made on the egg so that those areas were left white when we dipped them into our first dyes. After you take it out and pat it dry you can add more wax before dipping the egg in a second color, and so on. Wherever the wax has been put on, the last color dyed will stay resisted until the end. We worked from light colors to dark ones. When we finished, we gently scraped or melted off the wax resists revealing all the bright colors we had captured in our squiggly patterns!

I think we were SUPPOSED to be having a meeting too...but I'm not sure we ever got round to discussing anything.

Some of us have since become addicted to the beautiful end results of this craft, and this week for Knit Night we left our needles and hooks at home and filled a whole table with dyes and candles and set to work on some more eggs. I love our folksy (albeit a bit wonky) attempts!

Photos courtesy of Hollie

Our Roots, Part II: Knit Nights at The Brain

I'm quite certain that Wednesday evenings have become my most favourite night of the week. Why, you ask? Because Wednesdays are Knit Nights at The Brain, of course! And it just so happens that I end up meeting only the best kind of folk during Knit Night -- like the majority of the ever-so-crafty Beehive Collective.







Knit Nights began last June, when my friend Melissa and I thought it would be great to facilitate a craft circle in one of the cozy spaces along James St North -- the growing arts district in our fair hometown. We approached one of my favourite hangouts, The Brain, to see if they'd be interested in playing host. Happily, they obliged! We then agreed to meet each Wednesday from 7pm to 9pm, and to put forth an open invitation to all those crafty and willing to join in the fun. Knit Nights have been going fantastically strong ever since.

While attendance varies each week, there are usually a couple of us bees present to keep the circle warm, as well as other talented regulars.

Also, despite it's name, Knit Nights at The Brain welcomes all forms of handicraft, including crocheting, hand quilting, embroidery, tatting, whatever floats your boat. Even our pretty golden poufs were assembled during a Knit Night session!



At last weeks session, both Jenna and Kate learned how to crochet.



With the mother of all craft how-to books at hand, Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Needlework.



and Courtney's expertise...



They proved successful! Voila, granny square!



Meet Tim! Yes, he's knitting a Sackboy. Don't bother asking for the pattern though -- this talented fellow designed it himself, on the spot! Tim is a knitter extraordinaire, and in the months that he's been frequenting Knit Nights, he's made a variety of vegetables, a raccoon, an elephant, miniature hats and scarves for wine bottles... the list goes on and on! The kicker: Tim knits simply because he enjoys the challenge. I haven't once witnessed him working on a project he intended to keep for himself. Amazing!



Our dear friend and co-owner of The Brain, Ms. Heather South (who we happen to love, a lot!), is a total gem and always makes sure to keep us waist deep in delicious treats. This week, tiramisu! Past treats include poppy squares, a plate of assorted cookies and brownies, apple strudel, and custard tarts from Ola's Bakery! Between Heather and the always charming barkeeper, Ken, we're well looked after at The Brain.



As the evening comes to an end, we can always count on a visit from our dear friend, Kieran. A regular since the very beginning, he never disappoints with his highly enthusiastic praise for Knit Night. Now if we can only get him knitting!

If you're interested in a session of friendly crafting, please feel free to drop in and join us! After all, we do keep a stash of spare needles with us at all times for that very reason.

Photos courtesy of Elizabeth