It has been nearly a year since our collaborative charity ebook, Heart On My Sleeve was launched! Last year on Valentines day, we brought you this lovely ebook with designs by Shannon Cook, Romi Hill, Bristol Ivy, Tanis Lavallee, Joji Locatelli, Jane Richmond, and Ysolda Teague and Tin Can Knits too! Since then, we’ve donated every penny of ebook income to the Against Malaria Foundation, raising a whopping grand total of $63,127 USD as of January 10 2018! This buys 27,000 nets, which will protect 48,600 people people from malaria. To put this in perspective, this is the entire population of 90-100 villages. Learn more about the donation specifics here.
Why malaria? Malaria is cheap to prevent, yet half a million people die of it every year, and 70% are little ones; babies and kids under 5 years old. Malaria is also the world’s single largest killer of pregnant women. Learning these statistics, while I was pregnant with my second child, nearly broke my heart. But learning how a significant difference could be made in people’s lives with so little money inspired us both. It has been so rewarding to coordinate this project, which gave us a chance to work with designers we respect and admire, and we are so thankful to the yarn companies who contributed to this project. The support of knitters everywhere has been overwhelming and so positive!
The Heart On My Sleeve fundraiser ends February 28 2018! After then the Heart On My Sleeve ebook, which is a great value at $18 for 8 beautiful sweater patterns, will no longer be available!
So if you love this cause and the designs, get a copy for you or a friend right now!
The Story of a Collaboration
Heart On My Sleeve was designed in a special way. Alexa and I, here at Tin Can Knits, developed the ‘base pattern’ – instructions for basic a bottom-up sweater, with sleeves and body defined up to the yoke. Each designer took this basic sweater and created a unique design for the yoke! Some of them also ‘hacked’ our sleeves, adding lovely details at hem and cuffs. Tanis also added a subtle striping pattern throughout the body. So while these 8 designs share the same basic DNA, they’re all unique!
KAL details:
To celebrate these beautiful designs, and the project that we have personally found so inspiring, we’re hosting a KAL! The KAL will be run primarily in the Ravelry group, but there’ll also be chat on the Facebook group if you prefer!
Start date: TODAY!
End date: February 28, 2018
To enter to win a prize: knit a sweater (any size) from Heart On My Sleeve, and post your finished project in the FO thread on Ravelry, by midnight PST on Feb 28, 2018
Prizes YAY!
We’ll draw winners randomly from among the folk who list their finished knits in the FO thread here, and announce winners on March 1st! We’ve got a bundle of LUSCIOUS yarn prizes from very generous yarnies:
5 skeins of Magpie Fibers Swank DK in your a single colourway of your choice of her lovely array of colourways… And you can follow the Magpie’s colour collecting here.
6 skeins of Biches & Buches Le Gros Lambswool – winner’s choice of one of these lovely undyed shades! This French company is curating a vision of moody natural beauty, I’m diggin’ it!
6 skeins of Rainbow Heirloom Sweater in the vivid ’princess rockstar’. Such hot hot heat!
A sweater’s amount of Sunshine Yarns Luxury Sport in the ombre blues and grey colourway of this beautiful Crazyheart Sweater! For a little more sunshine in your life…
The Tin Can Knits ebook library (yup, that’s all of our ebooks!)
And some more honourable mention TCK pattern prizes too…!
Even if you don’t think you can finish a sweater in the next 6 weeks, join us for the chat! We’ll be visiting the Ravelry group every day or two, to help with questions, yarn choices, modifications etc. We’d love to knit along with you!
Em’s KAL plans:
I’m going to make a sweater for me. But I’m not 100% sure yet which design I’ll use! Last year I made a Crazyheart sweater for Max… maybe I should have one to match?
Or perhaps a lacy Ironheart?
I was thinking it would be pretty lovely to throw a few more colours into the lovely lacy Brightheart by Romi Hill, so that’s a possibility!
Then again, I’m very intrigued by Bristol Ivy’s unique yoke construction featured in Wholehearted, Alexa raved about how the genius construction of the yoke while knitting one for Hunter, so I’m quite tempted to make one of those for me… I guess you’ll have to join in to see what I choose!
So will you join in with this KAL and make something beautiful for you or a loved one? What will you knit?
A simple classic like Joji’s Heartstring pullover? A casual hoodie for every day like Jane & Shannon’s Lionheart?
Browse all of the designs!
Heartstring by Joji Locatelli
Sweater possibilities from Heart on my Sleeve
April 10, 2018 @ 9:45 am
This appears to say that the KAL ends Feb 28th, is that right? I thought it was April 18th for some reason…
April 11, 2018 @ 9:08 am
Hi Lisa – this one is done, but I’m sure we will have another KAL soon!
February 22, 2018 @ 2:11 pm
Thanks for all your enthusiasm and encouragement for knitting! I’ve been knitting for decades, but remain kinda sloppy and painfully slow. Thus, l stick to very simple projects. A big stretch for me right now is the Flax Sweater – for my husband. Let’s see if l can finish this by NEXT winter! If you have helpful hints for increasing speed, l’d love to hear them. PS: l knit continental style, prefer bamboo needles, love tight twist merino yarn.
February 4, 2018 @ 2:46 am
I’ve got many of your patterns, but really struggling with getting them done in fingering yarn. Thats is what is available easily to me here. Any advice would be appreciated. Thks
January 25, 2018 @ 2:18 am
Thanks for letting us know that the donations are ending soon. Am off to purchase the book…and the ‘to knit’ list grows ever-longer.
Also, since the Ravellenic Games start in early Feb, some of us could knit a Heart On My Sleeve sweater as our Games project. Would that work?
January 25, 2018 @ 9:27 am
Hi Bindy – it would!!!
January 19, 2018 @ 3:27 pm
This could be really awesome I want to make a sweater for my kid and I’ve also been adrift for my next project I like a challenge and this sounds fun!