Once again, thanks to everyone who attended our virtual June meeting. It was so fun to see and hear from so many of you. Here is a wrap-up with details and links...

Board Member Update

At this meeting we said thank you to a few board members whose terms are up as of July.

• Kathryn Beckwith - Volunteer Director
• Jessica Long - Programming (She also served the Guild as secretary.)
• Shelley Hermanson - Yarnover (Shelley will still be leading the Yarnover committee, this will just not be a director position anymore.)
• Rebecca A - Librarian
• Amy Hawley - President

Proposed changes within the current board

• Jessica Dahlberg will be moving from the Secretary position to Programming.

New board candidates

• Kelsey Sorenson - Secretary
• Melissa Mintern - Marketing and Outreach (This will replace the current volunteer position and take a more active role in how the Guild markets and presents itself online and in person.)

New Librarian - The librarian is a not director and is appointed by the board

• Anne Rojas

President's Position

At this time, we have no candidate for the role of Guild President. While our bylaws do not require us to have a President, we would like to have someone in that leadership role. If you are interested please contact our Treasurer Rose. The description of the presidents role is available here.

Board of Directors Ballot

The link to the ballot for the board of directors was emailed to all members at midnight 6/17/20. Members vote on the full slate as per our bylaws. A list of members who were sent the link to the ballot is available from our Secretary. 

Service Update

Please keep knitting for our current service projects! You can find a list of them here. We will also be collecting baby blankets for charities in the areas recently hit in the unrest in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

We are currently working on a plan to allow for contactless drop-off of finished items. Our hope is to have a day members can just drive up to a location such as the Textile Center parking lot and drop them off outside. We will also look into mailing options. Stay tuned!

New Initiatives

The board presented a list of new initiatives for the Guild. The purposes of these initiatives is to help make the Guild a place where everyone feels they belong. We also unveiled a series of ideas to help amplify underrepresented voices within the knitting community. You can find a details on all the initiatives here. 

Designer Spotlight

One of our new initiatives is to spotlight a designer each month. This month's designer is Tif Neilan.

Tif is a knitwear designer and mom of two based in Connecticut. She is an interior designer by trade and says that is where she gets her love of color, texture, and fiber. She especially likes to emphasis texture in her knitwear designs with a special love of the herringbone stitch. I personally love how she uses it on the cuffs, necks, and hems of patterns like her Zoetic sweater and Soulful Blanket Cowl.

Her patterns span the gauntlet from sweaters to socks, hats to wraps, so there is something for everyone. She also offered many of her sweater patterns in up to nine sizes, making them very size inclusive. Her use of color is very playful and when you look at her patterns many are done in handpainted and variegated yarns.

Explore this month's designer: Website     Ravelry     Instagram 

We gave away three of Tif's patterns as door prizes at the meeting.

Library Update

The Textile Center Library is open for curbside pick up, reserve books here. Please do not return books at this time. 

The Guild has the following new books and magazines to be added to the library. They will be available as soon as the library processes them into their system.

• Doomsday Knits – Tinsley (Ed)
• 52 Weeks of Socks – Laine Publishing
• Nordic Knits – Wallin
• Portuguese Knitting – Pomar
• To the Point: The Knitted Triangle – Raven
• Making Marls: A Sourcebook for Multistrand Handknitting - Campochiaro
• Fair Isle Designs from Shetland Knitters Volume 2 - Shetland Guild of Spinners, Knitters, Weavers and Dyers
• Magazines:
• Rowan No. 67
• Making Stories – Spring 2020
• PomPom Quarterly No. 32
• Nomadic Knits Issue 6

Want to request a book be added to the library? Leave Anne a message on Ravelry.

Great Guild Getaway Design Contest

We are happy to announce that Halee Graham is the winner of our design contest with her Broadway Avenue Socks. We'll do a feature on her next week.

Show and Tell

We had a really fun virtual show and tell. Next week we'll share all the project photos and details. 

We want the Minnesota Knitters’ Guild to be a place where everyone feels like they belong. To that end, the Board is excited to unveil a series of new ideas and initiatives for the coming year to amplify underrepresented voices within our knitting community.

Part of our focus will be the amplification of BIPOC (“Black, Indigenous, People of Color”) members of the knitting community, including designers, dyers, and other yarn-related businesses. We feel it is important to share and amplify these voices within our community and also to provide financial support when possible. But BIPOC members will not be the only focus of these initiatives.

This is a fluid process; we remain open and ready to have discussions around all initiatives with our Members. 

We welcome feedback on ways we can make our community a safe and welcoming space for all. There is no one size fits all solution, but we as a Board remain committed to listening, learning, and accommodating as many requests as we can. Please visit our survey to share your ideas.

New Initiatives Details

Featured Designer:

• Feature the designer in our Newsletter each month and at that month’s Meeting
• Purchase 3 to 5 patterns to give away to Members from that designer during that month.
• Patterns will be purchased through Ravelry’s gift purchase feature, which will allow you to choose which pattern you’d like.
• We commit to featuring 6 BIPOC designers in the coming 12 months.

Small Business Spotlight:

• Purchase quantities of yarn, project bags, stitch markers, and other items with Guild funds to give away as prizes at Member Meetings.
• We have not established the number of small business spotlights we will do at this time
• We commit to featuring BIPOC-owned businesses for at least 50% of these small business features

Commission a pattern from a BIPOC designer:

• Support a BIPOC designer by commissioning a pattern with Guild funds.
• Would like to partner with a Minnesota-based dyer for the yarn for the project.
• This pattern would be available in the Members’ Only section of our website and would be free for Members

Virtual Meetings in the Winter:

• We know coming in person can be hard in the winter!
• We would like to consider adding a virtual meeting (or two) during the winter
• This allows us to invite a speaker who ordinarily may not be able to do an in-person Meeting.
• We commit to featuring at least one BIPOC speaker for a Virtual Meeting in the coming 12 months

More Vendors and Trunk Shows at In-Person Meetings:

• We love having vendors or trunk shows at Member Meetings and would like to increase the number of vendors and trunk shows at in-person meetings
• We’d like to explore options to partner in this initiative with our wonderful Local Yarn Stores

Minnesota Knitters’ Guild Grant Fund:

• Establish collections for a MKG Grant Fund
• Could be used to purchase memberships and/or Yarnover classes for members of the knitting community who have been unable to join the Guild or take a Yarnover class due to financial hardship
• Applications for this fund would be on an honor system basis.

New Initiatives FAQ

Q. Does this mean the Guild will only give door prizes from BIPOC members of the fiber community and feature BIPOC designers from now on

A. No, we commit to featuring BIPOC-owned businesses for at least 50% of the initiatives. We will reevaluate the program based on input from the community.

Q. Isn't this unfair to non-BIPOC designers, dyers, etc...?

A. As we've heard more and more over the last year or so, BIPOC members of the knitting community have found it hard to be heard and seen. White designers, dyers, etc...have been featured throughout the life of the Guild. We feel this is the time to use our platform to amplify underrepresented voices within the knitting community, including BIPOC members. We feel that raising awareness of underrepresented members of our community benefits us all by building a stronger community where all can feel welcome. 

Q. Shouldn't the Guild stick to knitting and stay out of politics?

A. We do not feel that making the Guild a safe and welcoming space for all is political. We are part of the larger knitting and Minnesota community and are committing to amplifying voices within the knitting and fiber realm.

Q. How will individuals be selected for these initiatives?

A. We welcome all suggestions for our initiatives. One resource we have been using is the BIPOC in Fiber website, set up by Jeanette Sloan. The Board will discuss and approve candidates for all features going forward. We will not exclude an individual from our list solely on the basis of religion or politics, but the Board reserves the right not to feature someone who we feel is overtly political in their designs or work – on either side of the aisle.

Look for a further wrap-up of the rest of the June meeting to follow.

Though the Textile Center is still closed, you can check books out from the library! See all the books available here. Make sure to note the book's title, author, and call number. You may pick out up to five books. Then fill out this form on the Textile Center website. You will be contacted when your books are ready for curbside pickup.

If you have books that you have previously checked out, the library asks that you continue to hold on them at this time. We will get more information about when the Textile Center will be open by appointment soon. 

If you have any questions please contact Nancy at the library, nmambi@textilecentermn.org

Thanks to all of you who attended our first virtual guild meeting this month. It was so nice to get together even though a computer screen. It was especially great to have all our members from all over the US join us at a meeting.

Thanks to Cori Eichelberger for leading her Skeins to Skeins game for us. I certainly learned a lot of new-to-me knitting facts. Cori's podcast is Irocknits and she is Irocknits on Ravelry. Find out more about being a test knitter for Cori's designs on her Ravelry group.

Finally, congratulations to our four door prize winners who all won $25 gift certificates to some of our 2020 Yarnover vendors, Jennifer Collins - 3 Kittens Needle Arts, Linda Oberg - Northfield Yarn, Kathryn Brenny - Alainn Yarn, and Linda Bruemmer - StevenBe.