MLC’s Craft Club had its third meeting on June 16th, 2023. We used the video "How to Knit" by Carla Scott on Creativebug to learn some basic stitches and, in some cases, make the beginnings of very small scarves!
We had 15 attendees for our meeting, and a few people brought their own knitting needles and yarn. Our knitting kit for public libraries will have 10 sets of needles; if your library expects a large crowd, I suggest advertising that people can bring their own supplies. (Sometimes people do some well-intentioned crafts shopping but never quite make it to the learning-how-to-knit part!) We also received an extremely generous donation from Benton County Library of many, many skeins of yarn, which our participants eagerly took home to keep practicing!
Set-up for this craft club only took a few minutes, as did tear-down. I brought a box with the knitting needles and yarn, and had participants pick up supplies on their way in. If you're looking for a program that doesn’t require lots of supplies and clean-up, this is it. Plus, if you've gone the route of asking people to bring their own supplies, you get another added bonus: you'll have less to clean up, and they'll be able to continue their work at home. (Our participants had to return their needles and thread, so I would probably do a smaller craft next time so that they can take their projects home once the class was done.) Once the club ended, attendees undid their work and returned their knitting needles.
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We went through each step as a group and tried to get everyone on the same page before we moved on: good for those who needed a bit more help and less useful for those who picked up the steps more quickly. I’m not sure what the fix would be for this: watching the video all the way through at the beginning, having each participant at a computer/tablet so they can follow along at their own pace, or some hybrid of the two. One of our attendees looked up a diagram of the steps, which she found more helpful than the video or instruction from a classmate.
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I practiced the skills in the video before the class, so I was able to walk around and assist. It's more difficult to explain a skill when you aren’t super familiar with it, so having more experienced knitters in the class was incredibly helpful. It went very quickly from one large group to several smaller groups with an experienced person in each.
Our program was great for getting the basics down and would be a good beginning for a series of knitting classes where participants learned new skills each time. The class could work their way up to making bigger projects like scarves, blankets, or any number of things! Creativebug also has a knitting pattern library; your library could host a knitting circle where patrons work on their own projects or start new ones, alone or in groups.
MLC’s knitting kit will be available soon, with knitting needles, yarn, and a darning needle set your patrons can use to create their own beautiful projects!
Video: https://www.creativebug.com/classseries/single/how-to-knit-part-1/1/0
Supplies:
Needles: https://www.michaels.com/product/10-anodized-aluminum-knitting-needles-by-loops-threads-10154295
Yarn: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B085FS14Z7/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
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