Hello dear friend,
it’s stashvent season!
Maybe you have already read or seen me talk about our annual swap hosted in the yarnchix podcast community, creating count-down calendars from stash for a swappee and the December occasion they would like to count down to.
I hope this compressed sentence makes sense?!
If not I will try and explain a little more in the following newsletter to you. And if this time the topic is not to your reading taste, no worries a new newsletter will follow soon and I am happy to have you back soon and share more topical writing with you.
How stashvent swap works
Basically we answer a few questions in the sign up questionnaire,
which you can find here:
after the sign up period, which ends on 1st Nov I create an excellent list of all swappers, then I use a hat with numbers in it to draw the swap-exchange within our postal regions (due to the pandemic and postal situation both cost and reliability we swap as local as possible).
The swap is a round swap, so you create something for someone who in turn sends something to someone else…
the answers from our questionnaires are forwarded to a creative friend who was drawn as your swap creator, who will be personalising the count down calendar for you.
With our personal reply to the questionnaire they are able to work out what we like, what we might be planning to craft with the count down calendar yarns as well as,
mhm, our inner detectives re-joice: they can look over our instagram or other online crafting pages to find out a little about what we might like, what we prefer as colour or quality from our yarns.
With all this research and information they then go on and craft a count-down calendar:
every day we can open a mini parcel, yarns are portioned into mini balls or mini-skeins of around 10g. This means the swap in total is a little more then 200g of yarns, please consider this when crafting eg for Hanukkah where it is less days, so in that case you wind 25g minis or add sweet treats like stitch markers etc to the daily present.
The best part: all this happens from stash, we use leftovers, we combine both yarns we might not have yet used, and also remember the projects we might have finished with a little extra yarn left to give.
Why not even pick out a special special extra-special skein from our stash to share a little yarn from?
For example I could easily wind 10g to share with a friend (e g cool indie dyed sock yarns as I never need 100g myself for a pair of socks for me) and so we both have this treat to knit up. in my recent podcast I showed you a skein of big little yarn co which I am considering to craft a mini skein from.
I even have a few mini skeins as a collection to fall back on to, both from ordering mini-skein sets, or maybe because it was a gift I was sent alongside another purchase I made.
In any case it is important to portion theses nicely, to check for crumbs or _ yarn-goddesses forbid- any signs of moths_… Urghhhhhh-
Generally I recommend freezing the mini skeins for 24h just to make sure; here in Berlin for example we never know as it is a very very densely populated city even moths get around quickly. And the worst thing one can do is send them further out into the world. Let’s try and reduce the risk of contamination by checking first and then as a precaution 24h-freezing the yarn.
The mini skeins are packed up into nice little presents ( re-cycle gift-wrapping paper or use sandwich paper bags e g ). Now label each present with a day (use stickers, draw, or stamp the numbers onto the paper wrapping)- so the recipient knows when to open which parcel.
I usually consider very closely in what order I gift the colours of stashvent, almost curating the project rom afar;)
I just like the thought of someone potentially knitting their count down mini skein project every day and having a pre-set-colour plan they might follow or change up as they please; this just feels like fun to me.
Around the 10th November we send out the parcel per mail, and I am absolutely certain it is cool how in this swap the cost of mailing is all we need to cover.
I might shop for a few stitch markers or a little extra treat for the final day of our count down (completely optional!), but otherwise I know I will only have to pay for sending my swapee their personalised count-down calendar. As well as sharing some of my stash I absolutely love how anti-capitalist this is, especially as December is so prone to consumer push push push, we pull ourselves away from this energy and generously share some stash love. yay!
Remember it is important to read the questionnaire closely. We respect and celebrate all religions and believes in our community and beyond, people have different celebrations and rituals they observe in December, everybody deserves our full attention and proper care being given with their present.
Also, if ever there are any questions, concerns, any feed-back considering the swap: do not hesitate and reach out to me:
mynameismimi@hotmail.com
Lastly I wanted to quickly chat about the local knitting gathering called Liebes Wedding strickt I initiated and that has been running since 2018 and how we organise a Berlin-local swap-table every year.. During that special meet-up, everybody who can make it that day visits my garden, together we set up a big swap-table and gather around it:
Our Swap works completely free and there is no judgement, only stash swap love. You take what you like and you bring what you cannot use, or do not see yourself using in the future. Items you want to let go of and pass on:
Yarns, tools, books, even finished objects make an appearance and generally it brings us together that little bit closer as we learn and see each other, as we share generously and the left-overs no-one picks to become theirs that day are then donated to local charity and crafting groups.
Stash-lovingly,
sending you an embrace,
Mimi