Larissa Brown and Martin Brown, authors of the lovely book Knitalong: Celebrating the Tradition of Knitting Together are hosting a Barn Raising Quilt charity knitalong. During Sock Summit 2009 the finished works of art will be auctioned or raffled as a fund raiser for Doctors Without Borders.

The Barn Raising Quilt pattern is being offered free during the KAL. They are looking for volunteers to knit squares and then sew them together. This is a really fun, quick to knit pattern, and what better thing to do with all those bits of leftover sock yarn? Squares must be mailed in by June 9th, or local Portland knitters may drop them off at Abundant Yarn & Dyeworks.

You can find out more information on the Knitalong site, or on Ravelry in this discussion thread. (If you’re not on Ravelry yet… why not?)

Of course, the pattern is also available in Knitalong. If you have not had the chance to look at this book, I really encourage you to do so. Not only does it have 20 fun-to-knit projects, but it’s a warm, loving celebration of knitting together; how our knitting brings us closer; and how it connects us with other knitters near and far, past and present. It’s one of my very favorite knitting books.

So… #1 Son had this little mishap with his car (everyone is OK, car is not). Work sort of blew up into this massive amount of… well… work (go figure). There’s this little book thing that’s sort of taking over every spare minute of my waking life (and much of my sleep, as it turns out). And I’m frantically trying to get ready to teach two classes I’ve never taught before (or are at least in a new format) before the lovely Sock Summit organizers (bless them for taking that on!) email me and ask for stuff that I’m not ready yet to give them.

So… I guess it will come as no surprise that I’m sort of on hiatus here at PI. I mean, it’s kinda obvious that I’m not posting much. So I’m making the hiatus official. For the next three months, I will be posting on a very infrequent basis, and only when something special comes along that I really want to talk with you about. I am managing to tweet a bit, so feel free to follow me on Twitter, where I can be found as JudyBecker (I’m so clever with names, aren’t I?). I do try to check Ravelry every day. And the old e-mail in box is always open. I will return. I just need one part of my life to calm down just a little bit.

But today, I also have something special to tell you about!

And I’m doing that in the next post, so it doesn’t get mixed up with this one.