MKG Cable Gram - Volume 20, Number 3

MINNESOTA KNIT-OUT WEEK 2004 will begin on October 3rd at the Ridgedale Mall in Minnetonka, MN and end on October 9th at the Miller Hill Mall in Duluth, MN. The distance between these two malls is 170 miles (according to Map Quest). In terms that a knitter would understand, this is equal to 299,200 yards (1 mile= 1,760 yards) or 1,670 skeins of Lamb's Pride worsted weight yarn (190 yards/skein) from the Brown Sheep Company.

In preparation for the speed knitting contests that will be held on October 9th in Duluth, I decided to determine how long it would take me to knit 300 yards of Red Heart worsted weight acrylic yarn (40 sts/row working in garter stitch on US size 10 needles). I do not consider myself a particularly fast knitter; in fact it took me 42 minutes. Gee, it would take me 42,000 minutes, or 700 hours, or 3-1/2 weeks knitting 24/7... or 16-1/2 forty-hour work weeks to knit 299,200 yards!

Well, even I am not going to do that so I instead thought to calculate how many MKG members it would take to knit 299,200 yards while being bused from the Ridgedale Mall to Duluth. Map Quest estimates the driving time between the two malls to be 2 hours and 40 minutes. If each knitter knit at my rate of 300 yards in 42 minutes, one knitter could knit 1,143 yards. This would mean that it would take 262 MKG members to knit 299,200 yards. But on the bright side, this would require only six, 44 passenger, buses and think what a great road trip we would have!

The swatch that I knit from 300 yards of yarn measured 11 x 4 inches or 44 square inches of garter stitch. If the six bus loads of MKG members knit 299,200 yards, they would have made nearly 44,000 square inches of fabric. The MN State Fair Rule Book defines an afghan to be between 2,700 and 3,800 square inches. Thus 262 knitters could knit 12 to 16 afghans to help a worthy charity in a 2 hour and 40 minute bus trip. The 350+ members of MKG could accomplish the same if they donated just 2 hours of their time to charitable knitting during MN Knit-Out Week 2004. What is the take home message of all this trivia? COLLECTIVELY, we are one POWERFUL GROUP.

Alice Adams is a visionary knitter, designer, and retired professor of microbiology at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. A long-time MKG member, Alice has spearheaded our new Affiliate Guild program, and is the organizing force of the Northern Lights Affiliate, our first Affiliate Guild.