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Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Squares, squares and more squares...

Squares can be defined as 'regular quadrilaterals'; you can also be described as being square. There are town squares, market squares and square metres and yards. If you spend a lot of time in front of a TV screen or computer screen you can be described as having 'square eyes'. When you settle a debt or obligation you are 'square' and you can have a square number.And what about a set square for checking and/or drawing angles? And that is only a few uses of the word square.
In 'my world' the knitted or crocheted square figures prominently. I've sewn donated squares into blankets a number of times and while people keep donating such squares/rectangles, I'll keep sewing them up!

One I sewed up earlier this year...
Now ABC radio has been encouraging the public to knit scarf-like shapes which will be joined together to create a huge blanket. This will then be 'dismantled' into smaller units to distribute to the needy. Who should contribute to this project, but our very own Prime Minister, Julia Gilliard. She is interviewed here where Julia explains who taught her to knit and talks a little bit about what and when she knits.

It just so happens that I'm currently surrounded by squares...and loving it! :-) The bags in the photo below are full of knitted squares. They have been given to K4BN by a teacher from a northside school. I brought them home yesterday to begin sewing them into blanket sized rugs.





I tipped some of the squares out of the pink bag to show how bright and colourful the squares are

More squares at my house...
 The crocheted squares above are a project that I'm working on at the moment; 12 inch crocheted squares to be made into blankets.

Squares in indigenous colours
Then, as well, I'm still making the 15 inch squares in the indigenous colours for another ongoing project of K4BN. But that's not all...



I also had some much smaller knitted squares which were donated. So I've been picking up stitches and knitting a black border on them so that 'they go further'. I put this project aside when the indigenous project was more urgent and only work on it occasionally.
Last week I got an email from the organiser of K4BN describing the need for warm items. I thought about putting some excerpts from her email in a blog post. However, I think 'Jan Mac' (also a member of K4BN, but who lives in Vic and does an incredible amount of knitting, crocheting and sewing/quilting for needy people) wrote a very eloquent blog post  which included excerpts from the same email. Here is Jan's post.

So just at the moment our home has become 'square land'...hopefully it will be 'blanket/rug land' soon. :-)

3 comments:

Dorothy said...

Thanks for the link to the ABC podcast - I found it amusing and certainly shows the PM in a different light.

Becky said...

It's HIP to be a Square" as they sang on Sesame Street a number of years ago. You are a wonderful person for putting those together. HUGS!

kaiteM said...

You're doing a great job Maria, especially as most knitters really dislike that part of the process. Well done you. I had a look at the JG link, and i'm trying to work out what stitch pattern she did, i couldn't quite hear it even tho i replayed it 3x. Seemed like a stockinette/garter combo? Good that she joined in.