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Last week, I powered through all three seasons of Downton Abbey and knit up this inspirational letter banner. Why, you ask, is that how I thought my time was best put to use? Well, in all honesty, I love a good excuse to curl up on the couch and knit myself into a zen stupor, and bonus if some decent viewing material can serve as a backdrop to the activity.

This particular knitting frenzy was inspired by Project Postal, the brain child of Joy from Frock Files and Theresa of inspirationCOOPERATIVE. I’ve written about my love affair with stationary and snail mail before, so it should come as no surprise that any excuse to send and receive some tangible words was right up my alley.

I received this brilliantly appropriate letter from Joy. Inspiring words, particularly for a longtime sailor.

For my own package, I wanted to mix things up and experiment with words and texture and process. For Christmas this year, I knit a poster for our Tine that read “SOME THINGS TAKE TIME.” I loved that the process of knitting those words, the very act of creating them, referenced the essence of the saying itself. And I loved the textured, tactile nature of the final product. (I realized that I never shared pictures of this project, and will have to remedy that soon).

Since then I’ve been cataloguing phrases and words and ideas that I want to knit whether as a poster, or in this case, a banner. Clearly the arrival of this piece of art in our home had an impact. Thanks, Jimmy Marble, for inspiring!

I figured I’d start with a simple, short phrase, as I didn’t want the banner to be too long or overwhelming and didn’t know how the individual knit letters were going to look once hung.

I used Frankie Brown’s free Alphabet patterns on Ravelry to create each letter. In order for the letters to hang properly without warping, I secured each letter with fabric stiffener once they were complete. I laid out some old plastic bags, saturated each letter in fabric stiffener and smoothed each letter flat to dry. Once dry, I used miniature clothespins to hang the letters on some simple cord to give the effect of a clothesline.

I packaged everything up carefully and shipped a few extra clothespins in case any of them broke in transit. Overall, I was pleased with the result, and given that Mere, the recipient of this project, is both a knitter and lover of the color green, I thought she’d appreciate the attempt regardless.

Head on over and check out Mere’s blog, Not Merely Living, to catch a glimpse of her pretty slice of The Interwebs.