It’s that time of year again: my favorite event has started! No, it’s not Black Friday. Ugh. I don’t like crowds – or even shopping in general. Unless it’s for fiber-related items 🙂
I happy to be one of over 349 (!!) lucky knit and crochet designers that are participating in this event.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Gift-a-long – or GAL for short, it’s run on Ravelry.com in the group found here: Indie Design Gift-a-Long. The idea is to give people some extra enthusiasm as we start to really push into the holiday season – the time when many of us (ahem) start to panic that we won’t get all our holiday crafting done in time.
To participate you just need to make a pattern by one of the participating designers and post in the group between now and Dec 31. All non-free patterns are eligible for prizes. There is a LOT of chatting going on but to help keep things under control, there are posting threads for different types of projects: sweaters, foot/leg, hand/arm, shawls & stoles, etc. There will be numerous prizes given not just for making items, but chatting and playing games count too.
There’s also a sale! The sale started November 23rd at 8pm (US-EST) and will run through November 29th at 11:59 pm (US-EST). Each designer has 10-20 patterns on sale. If you do the math, (349 times 10-20), there are literally thousands of patterns that are 25% off! The great thing is that the coupon code, giftalong2018 is the same for all the designers! So you can load up your shopping cart and not try have to play match-the-code-to-the-designer. Look for the bundle at the top of each designer’s page (here is mine!) that will list the patterns that are for sale. But remember, all non-free / paid patterns are eligible for GAL prizes!
I love this event because it’s an opportunity for designers to support each other. I often find new favorite designers and end up adding several patterns to my need-to-make list! Whether or not I get them done before next year’s GAL… well, that’s another story!
If you’re on Instagram, there’s also a challenge going on to post pictures as you participate. Use the hashtag #giftalong2018 and follow along with the prompts below:
I don’t know about you, but I think I received over 1000 emails this weekend. So I hope you are able to follow me on instagram, because I plan to post updates and share with many of my favorite GAL designer finds, but I won’t be adding them here on the websites because I don’t want to flood people’s mail and feeds with anymore than needed.
I’d love to hear what you think: have you participated in the GAL before or do you plan to participate for the first time. If you make one of my designs, be sure to tag me (asimplehomestd on most social media)! I would love to see your finished projects – or even works in progress (WIPs) to give you encouragement!