It’s here! It’s finally here! The 2020 Geek-A-Long Sweater MKAL is officially kicking off with the release of clue one to Eight Bit.

Now, I know what you’re thinking:

“Gosh, Jac. That’s a strange way to phrase that. It’s almost as if you’re implying that we might get a GAL Sweater MKAL next year too.”

– You, probably

I can neither confirm nor deny such allegations at this time.

If this is your first time to our little corner of the internet and you have no idea what the Geek-A-Long is, why we do this for free, and how you could have possibly missed it somehow over the past seven years, welcome!

First imagined in the Winter of 2013, the Geek-A-Long was born from unrestrained idealism and way too much coffee. The idea was ridiculous: Release a new pattern every week all year, based on pop-culture nerdiness. At the end of the year, we would join 48 double-sided squares together to make a massive blanket. Our Fandom Opus would be sent to the Child’s Play Charity Dinner Auction in Seattle, and the proceeds of the sale would go towards providing video games and other entertainment to children in hospitals and domestic violence shelters.

When I cast on that first square, I had no idea what the GAL would turn into. Seven years, seven blankets, and nearly 300 squares later, the Geek-A-Long has grown far beyond Jac and I. The community has grown each year and based on our square download statistics there are GAL knitters in every corner of the world. Your generosity is astounding. The GAL community has raised over $10,000 for Child’s play with individual donations and proceeds raised from the sale of the auctioned blankets.

We wanted to do something to make 2020 memorable. Admittedly, that decision was made in 2019, and 2020 doesn’t need help standing out. Still, we want to shake things up. When I finished that first blanket in 2014, I never imagined we’d still be making them in 2020. I’m blown away by how much love and support the project has gotten and couldn’t have predicted it. I want you to see this sweater for what it is: a love letter from Jac and I to the entire GAL community. This free, premium pattern is without a doubt my best work. This labor of love took almost six months to design, and I couldn’t be happier with the results. As with all of our GAL projects, please consider making a donation to Child’s Play Charity. We’ve set up a brand new event page at the Child’s Play donation platform to track donations during the MKAL, and you can find that page and make a donation directly to Child’s Play Charity HERE. Every dollar donated puts games in the hands of children that most need them.

– Megan-Anne on the Geek-A-Long and Eight Bit

Basically, all of that is to say that you’ve found us at just the right time. You get to be part of the first ever (and allegedly maybe not the last) Geek-A-Long sweater!

Eight Bit: Clue One

This free sweater MKAL will release in 12 clues starting today. When you add this pattern to your Ravelry library, you will have immediate access to 1) the project sheet, which includes the usual yarn/gauge/needle information for the sweater, as well as the instructions for a gauge swatch and 2) clue number one. The remaining eleven clues will be released via pattern updates. Once the project is added to your library, the clues will automatically be added to your library when they release.

Add the MKAL to your Ravelry library by following this link.

Isn’t it gloriously nerdy?! I can’t wait for you guys to see the rest.

Regarding Ravelry

I wanted to go over something real quick. As most of you may know, we have hosted all of the Geek-A-Long square patterns on our website. Last year, when Megan-Anne and I sat down and started planning this project, my number one requirement was that it be hosted via Ravelry. Being real, I am notoriously and laughably bad about keeping the Geek-A-Long squares page up to date throughout the year, so I didn’t want to be responsible for having to go back and update all of the Clue posts with links to the other clues. I’d like to say that this would be the time I’d do it in a reasonable time frame, but I’ve come to terms with who I am as a person. Plus, I’m still bogged down with my project to update roughly 200 GAL square patterns and posts, so… yeah. Also, in the rare case of errata, everyone can be notified immediately through Ravelry. Not so much if people are downloading straight off our website.

Which is all a lead-up to telling you that this decision happened before Ravelry updated their look and started a controversy about its accessibility.

And we still are not changing our plans. Some background: Megan-Anne wore a helmet as a child due to epilepsy, so we truly understand those who legitimately have trouble with the new style. As an adult, being a person with a disability (Psoriatic Arthritis and Hypothyroidism) has impacted my sister on a daily basis. It isn’t something she talks about often since it just doesn’t come up much here, but Megan-Anne will absolutely be the first person to throw down over the importance of accessibility. I don’t say this to be all: “Oh, because she is a person with a disability, we speak for all of them.” I want you to understand that we do legitimately understand how difficult and unfair it is to be in a situation where you are prevented from accessing something due to a disability. To accommodate you, we have directions below on how to have a trusted loved one or friend log on to Ravelry for you and switch your account back to the old style. It only takes a minute.

There is a lot of chatter on the internet about whether or not people are actually having issues with Ravelry. And that’s dumb. If someone tells you their house was robbed, do you ask for proof? Nope, you sure don’t. So for us, the issue isn’t whether or not we (and other members of the industry) should be offering accommodations. It is merely an issue of how to best provide them. The best accommodations provide full, undiluted access. That means that an accommodation here is to get people back to being able to use the full Ravelry site. Ravelry has an option to turn off the new theme. Clearly, if you cannot get on the site at all due to health concerns, please ask a trusted friend to help.

The other half of the reason why we will not change our plans to host the MKAL through Ravelry is that there are people who quit the platform for racist reasons, and we refuse to accommodate them. Last year after the ban on supremacy, we decided to make our patterns only available on Ravelry. (The exception being when we sell a physical kit with yarn and a pattern.) Our reasoning is that this is a way for us to put our potential sales where our mouths are and not sell to people that aren’t willing to make the purchase on Ravelry. I’m not going to make it easy for supremacists to come here and download Eight Bit. If it wouldn’t be such a nightmare for me, I’d change the precedent we set seven years ago and move all of the GAL square patterns onto Ravelry too.

How to Switch Back to Ravelry’s Old Style

1. Have a trusted friend or loved one log on to Ravelry for you.
2. Hover your mouse over your profile picture in the upper left-hand corner and a drop down menu will appear.
3. Select “Classic Raverly: Switch back to the classic Raverly look”.
4. For further customization, in this same drop down menu, select “Settings.” Here you can do things like increase the font size on Ravelry, prevent animated GIFs from playing, and remove the drop shadows from buttons or other elements.
5. Bing, bang, boom! You’re all set to enjoy that site you love again.

Also, for those of you waiting for your fav Geek-A-Long Yarn colorways to come back in stock, we dyed all of the remaining GAL yarn we had over the past week and listed in the store. I thought, today on the anniversary of my sister’s birth, that I would have to post an apology about how we wouldn’t be able to restock it again until our shipment arrived in mid-September, but the yarn gods have smiled upon us. It’s a birthday miracle! We just got a notification that it shipped early and should be in our dye studio by the end of the week. So, we’ll be doing rolling shop updates over the next two to three weeks, but I’ll be sure to tell you each Sunday which colorways we’ve put back in stock.

~Jac

Warm up your needles and blow on the cartridge because it is time to KNIT!!!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider making a donation to Child’s Play Charity. Here is a direct link to our official donation page benefiting the charity. Please help us raise $1,000 this year. No contribution is too small! Wanna make your donation go even further? Lattes & Llamas will donate $1 for every skein of Geek-A-Long Yarn purchased. Ask your local yarn store to carry GAL Yarn or get it through our website.