THANK YOU ALL!

Just a quick post as I almost forgot to upload these onto the blog...

This is to say a massive thank you to everyone that has supported me throughout the past year! For tomorrow only (Saturday 2nd April, 2011) Prick Your Finger, Fabrications and All the Fun of the Fair are offering special discounts of 15%, 10% and 20% respectively to Wednesday Knit members and blog readers!

The boring but essential info - the vouchers are valid for one use per shop, and in store only. Please show the voucher when you go in as without it, you can't get your discount!

These shops were the venues for the Wednesday Knit Crawl and I used up my discounts buying a few balls of wool from each!

Enjoy your weekend and I'll be back later with a few more images from the knit crawl and a round up of what is coming next for Wednesday Knit!!

xx Knitter Love, Jackie xx

Wednesday Knit Will Be One!

Yes, it's true! Wednesday Knit will be turning the grand ol' age of one this month - 30th March to be exact!

You don't know how excited I am by this fact! I can't believe my little knitting club will be ONE!! To celebrate this momentus occassion in my knitting career/club life, I'm going to have a little party! But this won't just be any party. Oh, no.

We're going to have a knit crawl. A WEDNESDAY KNIT CRAWL to be precise! It's a bit like a pub crawl without the getting drunk park! Instead of going to a pub, I'm inviting you all to come visit some of the best wool shops in London with me. Already confirmed are Prick Your Finger in Bethnal Green, Fabrications on Broadway Market and All The Fun of the Fair in Kingly Court/Carnaby Street! And all these lovely, lovely ladies (and shops) are offering Wednesday Knit readers 10-20% discount!

The day will be spent blogging and tweeting from these fab locations and a couple more will be added on hopefully soon. The Wednesday Knit Crawl will end up at The Travel Bookshop in Notting Hill for our monthly Last Wednesday Knitting Club meeting at 6pm and from there we will just have to see how much birthday cake we can consume before 8:30pm!

The itinerary still needs to be confirmed andthere will be a discount voucher available to print off here closer to the time, but EVERYONE is welcome!

I hope you are as excited about this as I am! As soon as the itinerary is up, you can choose to come along for the whole day or just one or two locations or just the meeting in the evening! It's entirely up to you!

I'll be posting more often around here too this month, to celebrate the 1st birthday of Wednesday Knit and hopefully will have a few little surprises for you all along the way! I'll see you all soon!

xx Knitter Love, Jackie xx

A Little Backstory

So, I guess I should let you know how Wednesday Knit came about...

In late February or early March of 2010 (I can't remember which is was now) I had an idea that I wanted to set up a knitting club in a small bookshop I was working in (and still do occasionally). My manager, Saara, was very supportive of this and gave me the go-ahead and use of the bookshop whenever I decided to set the meetings for. I got the idea for the name from a book I'd read, called The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs and I wanted a name that sounded as catchy as it did. I knew that I only wanted to run the knitting club once a month to start off with and had decided on the last Wednesday of the month as the day it would be held on. So, The Last Wednesday Knitting Club was born.

A little bit of advertising on my blog, other people doing some for me (both online and at other knitting clubs) and a few posters around the Notting Hill area later, the first meeting of The Last Wednesday Knitting Club took place on 31st March at The Travel Bookshop. I think 5 people came to the first meeting and I was gobsmacked that anybody turned up at all! Each month since then The Last Wednesday Knitting Club has developed regulars and people that just want to drop in whenever they are able to. Our biggest turn out so far has been around 10/12 people and to be honest I'm not disappointed by that number at all!

When I started the knitting group, it wasn't about attracting large numbers of people who wanted to knit or crochet or sew socially or learn how to do any of these nor was it to make money (I do not charge for entry or membership and I haven't made any money either by selling things like merchandise, etc). It was about wanting to make new friends and to do something I wanted to do with other like-minded people. If you were a beginner, great! We would have someone to teach you. If you already had the skills, great! You could pass your skills onto another or just enjoy your evening with your knitting. I wanted a relaxed environment where you could just do as you please.

9 months down the line and my metaphorical baby has grown into something bigger. I decided at the end of October that I wanted to start another knitting club in East London, closer to where I currently live. Wednesday Knit² was the outcome of that brainwave and will officially launch on 12th January 2011 at The Victoria Pub on Grove Road. The response to Wednesday Knit² so far has been great too and I can't wait for the first meeting and seeing new faces and old!

I'll be adding more to this blog and telling you more as the week goes on about me and my lovely new contributor, Kim from Art Equals Happy! I'm so glad Kim's on board as she's one of the most creative and cool people I know!

But for now...

xx Knitter Love xx