The ninth annual Indie Design Giftalong has just begun! If you haven't joined in before, here's a quick introduction: the Giftalong (or GAL) is a multi-designer craft-along held in a Ravelry group with dedicated threads for different project types, chat threads, games, and more. You can also join in on Instagram by taking part in our photo-prompt challenge and/or using the event hashtags - @indiegiftalong on Instagram has all the details.

Each designer has a selection of their patterns on sale during the first few days of the GAL, but projects made using any and all of their patterns can be entered in the project threads and FO thread. Just be sure to use a paid-for pattern if you have your eye on the grand prizes.

The GAL runs from now until midnight on the 31st of December. It's a big, busy event but you can participate as much or as little as you like - enter a project (or several!), discover fabulous new patterns and designers in the searchable bundles, dip in and out of the chat threads, play the games, join the Instagram challenge, etc etc. I’ll be co-hosting the Hats thread in the Ravelry group as well as making a project or two - this year I'm going to try to stick to smaller things instead of adding to my collection of large WIPs, but temptation may strike! We have a number of new-to-the-GAL designers this year with really spectacular patterns, and I’m having such a hard time deciding what to make first.