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. :-)

On my mind...the October K4BN challenge

Today, being Friday, means I'm joining in the feature on Rhonda's Down to earth blog.
On my mind today is the Challenge which the Knitting for Brisbane's Needy group have the first weekend of the month. This month is making squares. When the challenge was first posted it wasn't clear whether squares knitted on the diagonal would be acceptable, so I practised working out how many stitches would be needed to make the size which had been decided. The challenge was to use 8 ply yarn and to make crocheted or knitted squares no smaller than 6 inches and no larger than 6 1/2 inches. After a couple of goes I got it right...and then it was posted that they could be knitted on the diagonal as well :-).

Now we don't have to sew them up...after the weekend we post them to another member in Waterford West who has volunteered to sew them into blankets. The goal for the challenge is enough squares to make 10 rugs...I guess we'll just have to see how we go. I've made 5 squares already while I was testing out number of stitches etc...and I think many other members have done the same lol!

In the meantime I'm still sewing squares that have been previously donated to the charity, into blankets. Number 2 blanket is getting close to completion. (It's not part of the challenge though)