Dear Kay,

I am trying to cook up as many things to look forward to as I possibly can these days.

Making plans for a load of darks next Wednesday. I’ve got a bag of elephant ear bulbs that are going to be a highlight of Saturday, April 25. And a Thawing Of The Meat is going to perk up tomorrow.

This newfound love of planning fun things while safer at home leads me to announce a fun thing that will launch on Friday, May 1:

The Refreshalong.

Oh, it’s coming, all right. Go ahead: crack open that 2020 planner with all the blank pages and ink this in.

We are on the cusp of a whole new group activity, one that can be enjoyed in the splendor of our own homes.

It’s a knitalong to get us through the weeks ahead.

We are going to knit the heck out of Carol Feller’s four designs featured in the crispy new MDK Field Guide No. 14: Refresh, and we encourage you to join us.

Your Options

There are four ways to go. I list them here in rough order of relative sportiness. The links to Ravelry give you all the juicy details.

The Arcade Cap requires low commitment. Just a skein and dream will get you topped off. Make a dozen or two and your holiday knitting is done.

Challenge level: Attainable fun for a new knitter, a breeze for a seasoned hat maker.

The Trellis Top is not a tabard, despite the whispering we’re hearing. A tabard is what a Knight of the Round Table would wear, or anybody on a lookout for a holy grail. This sleeve-free layer is utterly modern, loaded with Carol Feller’s signature clever bits.

Challenge level: if you can knit and purl, you’ve got this. There’s a very cool i-cord edging to the Trellis Top. With buttons yet no buttonholes!

The Twining Wrap is a triangle of textures, a great first project for cables if you’re the curious type and want to end up with a swath of comforting beauty that will be a lasting souvenir of That Time in 2020.

Challenge level: You’ll spend time with the charts as you begin. But after a repeat or two, we predict you’ll have a groove going. Exhilarating!

The Transom Cardigan is Carol Feller at her absolute best. The saddle shoulder has us super curious. And the chevrons and diagonal patterns make this design an unexpected classic.

Challenge level: You might want to have made a cardigan before this one. But who are we to say? We knitted an intarsia squirrel on our first cardigan—nobody told us that intarsia squirrels were tricky.

How to Join the Refreshalong

It’s easy.

Pick a pattern. We’re not going to throw all that lifelong-learner stuff at you, how you need to use this rare and peculiar time to learn something new. We’re not planting spinach, in case you’re wondering. But if you are in fact looking for interesting, achievable skills in knitting, these four patterns are brilliant for the knitter in search of new fun.

Figure out your yarn. That’s Nua Sport in the photos above, which we carry in the MDK Shop right here. But as ever it’s totally great to use your own yarn.

Schedule. We officially drop the rope on Friday, May 1. But some of us have already embarked on our Refreshalong journey. (Me.) (I couldn’t help it.) We have how-to videos from Carol Feller herself in the pipeline to talk us through the interesting bits of these designs.

And a conversation in the Lounge is of course central to the whole thing. Beyond that, we’re open to any ideas you all have for ways to knit together, apart. A Zoom call? Let us know if that’s of interest, and we’ll figure out something.

Show your work. One of the best things about a knitalong is seeing everybody else’s projects. Let us see how it’s going, either in the Lounge or on Instagram. Hashtags will be #refreshalongMDK and #MDKFieldGuideNo14.

Conclusion. We’ll wind up the Refreshalong at the end of August. A long one! The longest knitalong we’ve run! But we really love all four of the designs in Field Guide No. 14, and it’s looking like it’s going to be a long, hot summer, unlike any we have ever experienced. So let’s plan for a lot of sharing and caring and sitting and knitting—we’re going to get through this, right?

Love,

Ann