Author Archives: Dr. Terri

Travel Gear Review: Tom Bihn gear

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As I mentioned in my post about my cane, I use a Synik 22 Guide’s Edition for travel because of the cane mount point. But it’s far from the only thing from Tom Bihn that I use, so here’s a ridiculously long and photo-filled exploration of what I carry in my various pouches and bags.

I’ve been a Tom Bihn devotee since I bought their Parental Unit as a diaper bag when my kid was a baby, and we loved having a sturdy bag that didn’t scream “only moms change diapers” (this was an ongoing issue in kid gear — ask my husband about the High Chair of the Patriarchy). I’ve bought a lot of gear from them over the years since and like the way many of the parts are interchangeable or work well together, so unsurprisingly they’ve become my go-to for both everyday and travel bags.

This is just a run down of my travel collection, but it’s still a lot of stuff!

Synik 22

My beloved backpack!

A collapsible hiking cane with cork handle attached to a green backpack with a strap intended for an ice axe.
A collapsible hiking cane with cork handle attached to a green backpack with a strap intended for an ice axe.

Things I love about this: the cane mount point of the guide’s edition was really the big seller for me, as I described in the post about the cane. The bottom mount points get less use but are still handy for jackets. I do wish I had a quick-release for the cane: it wouldn’t be hard to make one but I haven’t gotten around to it because I got hung up on seeing if I could find matching clips and nylon webbing.

The luggage pass-through is another accessibility feature for me: being able to put this bag over a luggage handle helps me reduce the amount of extra weight I put on my injured leg, and it makes a huge difference to how I feel during and after each leg of the journey. Before I bought this bag I used to use a bungie harness thing but the pass-through is easier to do in a hurry and there’s no risk of sudden slippage. It’s been a huge upgrade for me, and I look for it every time I consider a bag now.

I also find the full clamshell-style zip incredibly useful during packing, as well as the straps inside the bag to hold things in. We often have to pull out kid entertainments in airports and those straps really help keep things organized so I can pull out just the right thing. It also makes this bag a lot more suitcase-like which I find really nice for travel. (Turns out it wasn’t particularly useful for my work commute, though, so my original Synapse is still my work laptop bag, not that it gets much use since I work from home most of the time now.)

I also appreciate the size: 22L is about the maximum I should be carrying, but it’s better if I make sure not to stuff this. I had a synapse 25 as my travel bag some years ago and it was just subtly too big for me. (Thankfully, it turned out to be a good size for a friend who needed a new bag and it’s working great for her!)

A light green suitcase (Luka mini luggage) sits next to a red backpack (Tom Bihn Synic)
A light green suitcase (Luka mini luggage) sits next to a red backpack (Tom Bihn Synik)

Very observant people may have noticed that I also have a second red Synik non-guide’s edition which I had my kid use on the last trip, again so that his backpack would slip over luggage handles. Honestly, I probably shouldn’t have bought this bag but I didn’t know that a guide’s edition would be coming and I was very excited about the luggage pass-through. (Which, again, is a big deal for me as a cane user.) So I used this red bag for a few trips but then promptly bought the Guide’s Edition when it came out and replaced this one. But its found its niche now even if it’s no longer my primary travel backpack and instead has become my kid’s primary travel bag. When we’re not getting on a plane, it’s also good as a day trip bag and my husband will grab it when he needs a smaller backpack than his own monster travel bag.

Packing cube shoulder bag

I have used the packing cube shoulder bag since back in the days when they used to hold all my breast pump gear. We used them as smaller diaper bags when we didn’t need to carry around as much stuff, and they still get used as emergency kid entertainment packs for short trips or for leaving in the car. We have 4 of them collected over the years: grey, blue, green and yellow.

For travel purposes, I use one as my purse/knitting bag. It’s big enough to carry larger amounts of knitting as well as being a kid support unit (nosebleed cloths, snacks, toys). It’s light and flexible enough to easily get packed into my backpack as needed. We typically use them as packing cubes for amusements rather than clothes, since they’re a bit small for even my kid’s clothes at this point.

When I’m out and about at my destination I do sometimes miss having something with a bit more structure, as well as the slightly larger size of my Paradigm purse-backpack. I love the Paradigm at home because a backpack is easier with the cane, but it’s not quite big enough for the stuff I want to carry on the plane.

I do own a Side Kick that I used to use as a travel purse, but I wasn’t in love with it and the death knell rang when my kid got a tablet and it didn’t fit. I did use it for a number of trips before he turned 3. Thankfully it hasn’t been useless since then: I use it as a bag for my bullet journal and it’s great fit for that with organization for my pens and stickers and space for my fairly large A5 book. So I’m back to the packing cube shoulder bag for travel, which is more volume for less weight.

I feel like I’m still searching for the perfect bag here, but the packing cube is currently the best I have for this niche.

Ghost Whale Pouches

I use these constantly even when not traveling! The ghost whale pouches current come in 4 sizes and I think I have all of them in my travel kit, though the super mini is a little dubiously useful.

Here’s the ones I had on my last trip.

My basic first aid kit: wipes, bandaids, meds. Someone on the Tom Bihn forum recommended these locking carabiners for pick-pocketing deterrence, and I added one as baby proofing when my kid was small enough that getting into the medicine was a concern, though I rarely need to lock it now. I carry this in my purse-backpack unless I’m traveling especially light. (I wish I could claim it’s for my kid but I’m the one more likely to trip and bleed all over everything.)

A small first aid kit in a Ghost Whale Pouch. There are bandages, wipes, antibiotic cream, lactaid, painkillers, allergy meds, tums and sudafed sitting beside the bag, and all of these things fit inside. There is also a tiny locking carabiner used to baby proof the bag.
Description: A small first aid kit in a Ghost Whale Pouch. There are bandages, wipes, antibiotic cream, lactaid, painkillers, allergy meds, tums and sudafed sitting beside the bag, and all of these things fit inside. There is also a tiny locking carabiner used to baby proof the bag.

Knitting notions bag: scissors, measuring tape, yarn needles, crochet hooks, stitch markers and scrap yarn. I have one of these in my purse and a nearly identical set in my knitting bag when I’m at home. If you’re not a knitter you may not realize that dental floss can be used as a knitting tool for lifelines and makes a good emergency thread cutter.

A Tom Bihn ghost whale pouch being used as a knitting notions bag. Beside it are scissors, measuring tape, a small black container (for yarn needles, stitch markers and scrap yarn), a lip balm, three short crochet hooks on a keychain, a lolipop, and dental floss.
Description: A Tom Bihn ghost whale pouch being used as a knitting notions bag. Beside it are scissors, measuring tape, a small black container (for yarn needles, stitch markers and scrap yarn), a lip balm, three short crochet hooks on a keychain, a lolipop, and dental floss.

My personal travel stationary set is new this year. I talked about the ruler/stencil/bookmark and the notebook in previous posts. Previously I used to carry a tiny notebook and a space pen, but I found myself just not using that setup any more since I’ve developed a preference for bigger notebooks thanks to 2 years with an A5-sized bullet journal. I also carried a fountain pen not pictured here. I don’t know how I feel about flying with fountain pens yet, but I *do* know that I didn’t love that particular big-nibbed pen with this notebook so I’ll be switching it up for next trip if I bring a fountain pen at all.

A pair of Tom Bihn Ghost whale pouches and their contents laid out beside or on top of them. The larger A5 size has a notebook, pikachu mechanical pencil, animal eraser in a case, Field Notes notebook and a metal ruler/stencil/bookmark from Midori. The smaller case has a couple of gel pens (also pokemon themed), a tiny set of coloured pencils, a lip balm and a lollipop.
Image Description: A pair of Tom Bihn Ghost whale pouches and their contents laid out beside or on top of them. The larger A5 size has a notebook, pikachu mechanical pencil, animal eraser in a case, Field Notes notebook and a metal ruler/stencil/bookmark from Midori. The smaller case has a couple of gel pens (also pokemon themed), a tiny set of coloured pencils, a lip balm and a lollipop.

Kid stationary set: this is used for amusing my kid when we’re stuck waiting somewhere. We play a game where one of us draws something and then the other person has to guess and draw what the first thing/creature is thinking. It gets very silly. The pen roll is also made by Tom Bihn. It’s got an interesting design where there’s a plastic piece inside to help the pens stay in; it’s actually a little overly sticky and my kid complains that they’re hard to get out, but I’d kind of rather that than having them constantly falling out in my bag. The other advantage of the roll is that it’s easy to tell if a pen is missing. This usually lives in my purse-backpack when we’re not traveling, though I do take it out for weight sometimes.

A notebook with a lenticular Google summer of Code logo thing, a set of stickers, a rainbow set of washable markers in a bright yellow pen roll and an A5-sized ghost whale pouch.
Image description: A notebook with a lenticular Google summer of Code logo thing, a set of stickers, a rainbow set of washable markers in a bright yellow pen roll and an A5-sized ghost whale pouch.

Battery case: This is just a small USB backup battery for my phone that I keep around for emergencies or for playing Pokemon Go. Having a tiny bag for this is likely overkill but I already owned the bag and it’s handy for keeping backpack lint from getting into my charge ports.

A very small purple pouch with a very small off-white USB backup battery meant for use with a cell phone.
Image description: A very small purple pouch with a very small off-white USB backup battery meant for use with a cell phone.

Key Straps

The Tom Bihn “system” has little o-rings sewn into the bag. The ghost whale pouches can clip to the o rings directly, but I also use a number of key straps so you can pull things out without unlatching them. I like that they come in different colours so I can see what I’m going to fish up, which is especially nice for the keys and wallet (also from Tom Bihn) in my purse but also for the various things in my knitting bag (pictured below but not used for travel).

A pair of purple and bright orange key straps leading to mysterious items buried in the bottom of my knitting bag. There's also a narwhal themed knitting project bag.
Image description: A pair of purple and bright orange key straps leading to mysterious items buried in the bottom of my knitting bag. There’s also a narwhal themed knitting project bag.
A blue nylon wallet clipped to a matching blue key strap. Some American money is visible in the outer pocket of the wallet.
Image Description: A blue nylon wallet clipped to a matching blue key strap. Some American money is visible in the outer pocket of the wallet.

I use my older RFID-blocking wallet when travelling to Canada and miss the clip part frequently! Maybe one day I’ll upgrade my Canadian wallet to something that I can clip a strap too but for a few trips per year it doesn’t seem worthwhile.

Some Other stuff

I bought the clear 3d organizer bag to be the liquids bag for baby shampoo, but nowadays it’s mostly used for toothbrushes and typically gets packed in the checked luggage so I don’t have to deal with security theatre in cases where our legalized bribes (I mean “trusted traveler numbers”) don’t let us avoid that part of things. Kind of overkill but it lasts better than a plastic bag. I did regret checking it when we got stranded in Chicago so maybe I’ll put it back in the carry-on eventually.

A Tom Bihn rounded pouch and two pairs of sunglasses in adult and child sizes. The pouch is purple and sewn from nylon with a zipper opening and a plastic clip on one side.
Description: A Tom Bihn rounded pouch and two pairs of sunglasses in adult and child sizes. The pouch is purple and sewn from nylon with a zipper opening and a plastic clip on one side.

The pouch pictured above was called the Q-kit (I could have sworn it was the Q-zip though) and is currently on the discontinued list. I think it predates my beloved ghost whale pouches. This is especially nice as a sunglasses case that fits both my sunglasses and my kid’s. This way when I get mine out I can offer his at the same time, which is handy.

Honestly, I didn’t like the Handy Little Thing much when I first got it because I’d envisioned using it in a way that didn’t work out. But I kept experimenting and eventually it replaced my previous charging setup for travel. It fits in the otherwise slightly awkward bottom pocket of the Synik, which is handy if I think I might want to charge on the plane/train while the suitcase is overhead, but mostly I leave it in the suitcase to reduce weight and use a backup battery for charging en route.

Overall

Yup, I’m a Tom Bihn fangirl, and I have a very expensive collection of stuff thanks to being a well-paid security professional with a love of travel gear and bags. But that slowly-grown collection of interchangeable pouches and straps has really helped me have a travel bag setup that grew and changed as my kid’s and my own needs have changed over the past many years since I bought that first diaper bag. I imagine 5 years from now I’ll look back at this and I’ll have a very different setup again, but some of these same components will be part of it.

Travel Gear Review: Flo Mask

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It feels late in the pandemic to be buying a really fancy mask, but with the prospect of sitting for hours on planes while the US had increasingly significant waves of infection, I decided it was worth trying out a different style of mask to see if I liked it. And I did!

What is it?

Terri, a half-Japanese woman, is wearing a Flo mask with a cherry blossom decorative cover on it. She is also wearing sunglasses, a hat, and a Google Summer of Code t-shirt and is standing in front of some bushes.
Image description: Terri, a half-Japanese woman, is wearing a Flo mask with a cherry blossom decorative cover on it. She is also wearing sunglasses, a hat, and a Google Summer of Code t-shirt and is standing in front of some bushes.

A respirator/mask with a rigid frame and a replaceable filter. I particularly liked that it had a version intended for smaller nose bridges (common for those of us with Asian genetics), as I know fitting glasses can be a problem for me due to nose shape. I also paid extra for the “halo strap.”

Product link: https://www.flomask.com/

What problem did I need it to solve?

I have good disposable N95 masks that I liked, but I was willing to take a chance and see if I liked something else better, especially given that I was intending to spend hours on a plane and in airports to travel so my kid could see his grandparents.

Pain points for me with my existing options:

  • Straps either slid down my hair or hurt my ears.
  • Wearing a mask for more than about an hour tended to get kind of gross
  • Wearing a mask during humid weather (which is most of the year where I live in the Pacific Northwest) meant it could get hard to breathe
  • Not the most aesthetically appealing
  • Took a lot of adjustment to avoid fogging up my glasses. Since I don’t need mine most of the time, I often would just take them off

How did it work out for me?

In short: great!

The “halo strap” sits on my head better and doesn’t leave any sore spots, which meant I could wear this nearly indefinitely. It does take a bit of futzing if I want my hair to sit well — I usually pull it over the bottom strap and flatten it before putting the top strap on, although since I often wear a hat (see picture above) it doesn’t matter too much to me.

The short nose bridge option did indeed work for my face! This is exciting, as I have difficulty finding glasses that fit me due to my short/asian nose bridge, so I knew it could be an issue.

The humidity in these masks condenses around the edge (instead of in the filter) and they provide a sponge to help hold it. Wiping out excess condensation with a cloth/napkin helped it from getting too gross. The filter itself never seemed to get that wet, so it was easier to breathe through even in humid conditions.

This was significantly easier to wear with glasses/sunglasses. It’s not foolproof, but typically it only took a little jiggle to fix the seal (unlike before where I’d have to adjust the nose bridge nearly every time).

It still looks kind of dorky I guess, but I like it better than many of my other options.

But most importantly: despite several trips and increasing covid numbers, I did not get covid this summer! (I did, however, get a cold thanks to being around my in-laws unmasked.)

Things that could be better

I really would have liked more colour options. I know you can just put stickers on the harder plastic shell but I haven’t done that yet and I probably would have bought extra decorated front pieces if they had them in more colours. I did get a pretty one with cherry blossoms though!

The condensation was pretty gross at times and the sponge felt inadequate, but it was so easy to deal with by wiping it out and it was so much better than my old preferred mask that it feels silly to complain about it. Still, I feel like there might be room for improvement in the design of the sponge insert.

If you don’t clean and dry the sponge and frame after use they can smell kind of bad, so definitely plan for some cleaning time after any extended use. We’re talking a swipe with a cloth or a wet wipe before putting it away which isn’t especially onerous, but it was easy to forget during travel.

I’m not sure I can sing in it without breaking the seal on my face. This may be an issue for me as I sing with a choir and wore a mask this year since even if I felt fine there was a good chance I was infected with some kindergarten disease. I’ll try it out before rehearsals start in the fall, but if it doesn’t work for that I can always use my disposable masks instead, which have a slightly larger area covering my face.

Overall

I liked this enough that we ordered some in different sizes/shapes for both my husband and kid to see if they like it as much as I do. I’m eager to see how it performs during our very wet winter, but it’s already been an improvement in the few surprise humid days we’ve had in August.

I didn’t get covid this summer while using it for travel, a short conference, and miscellaneous indoors errands. That said, the rest of my family *also* didn’t get covid and they were wearing different masks, so probably most of that was the effect of wearing a mask at all rather than this specific one.

Travel Gear Review: Midori Clip Ruler

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I picked up this ruler to go with my travel notebook. I didn’t use it the way I thought I would, but it found a niche that made it fit perfectly into my travel stationery setup.

What is it?

A metal ruler that also acts as a clip bookmark and a stencil.

A Midori Clip ruler: a copper metal ruler with stencil holes in it. The end is folded to make a clip. It is sitting on a larger black Field Notes brand notebook.
Image Description: A Midori Clip ruler: a copper metal ruler with stencil holes in it. The end is folded to make a clip. It is sitting on a larger black Field Notes brand notebook.

Link: https://www.jetpens.com/Midori-Clip-Ruler-Copper-Daily-Life/pd/29899

What problem did I need it to solve?

I wanted a travel ruler for drawing lines. I was mostly expecting to use it for lines in the knitting charts I was writing out and modifying during the trip. I figured I’d use it for bullet journal type stuff too, such as drawing the monthly calendar I use for tracking.

How did it work out for me?

Turns out that this actually isn’t a great ruler. The stencil meant it felt a bit flimsy on one side as you move it around on the page, and the clip is just barely enough to make a slight bump if you try to draw a line longer than 10cm. This especially was an issue for me when I drew out the calendar I use for a bunch of monthly tracking stuff.

But it is an absolutely *fantastic* bookmark for holding open the Field Notes notebook that I was using. It’s just just enough weight to hold the pages open and it worked quite well when I needed a pattern place marker for the knitting I was doing.

My Midori Clip Ruler being used to hold open a notebook and mark a place in my pattern. The pattern is a variant on the Kelpie Etudes charts from Gannet Designs, and it has been written out in pencil.The ruler is made of copper and is holding the notebook open without much difficulty.
Image Description: My Midori Clip Ruler being used to hold open a notebook and mark a place in my pattern. The pattern is a variant on the Kelpie Etudes charts from Gannet Designs, and it has been written out in pencil. The ruler is made of copper and is holding the notebook open without much difficulty.

It turns out I didn’t need to draw as many lines as I thought I would, but I *did* need to hold the pages open while knitting my shawl for a month during and after the trip. It was also great for just marking my page so I could immediately open to the pattern page I was working on (a bit of an issue as I was working with 4 very similar charts).

It also worked ok as a stencil the few times I used it. It’s very small so it worked best with my mechanical pencil (then I coloured the results with gel pen sometimes). I could probably find ways to integrate these particular icons into my tracking, but many of them are ones I don’t use right now so it’s not super useful to me.

Things that could be better

I feel like there’s got to be a way to design this such that the clip nudges in just a milimetre or so so the full length can be used for drawing lines, but it’s clear that they intended you to use the internal slots for that so maybe that’s on me for using it outside of the design intention? If you look closely in the image below you can see the wobble at the end of the line where I hit the clip while drawing.

Close up of the Midori Clip Ruler in use as a bookmark, showing the shape of the clip while the ruler is on the other side of the paper.
Image Description: Close up of the Midori Clip Ruler in use as a bookmark, showing the shape of the clip while the ruler is on the other side of the paper.

The icon choices aren’t super useful to me, so I’m probably going to keep freehanding most of my personal icons. Still, I enjoyed having some of these and maybe I’ll find uses for them now that I have them!

Overall

I was completely surprised at how much I loved this ruler/bookmark!

I nearly talked myself out of buying it before the trip since I already have a few small “gauge swatch” rulers thanks to knitting. But this was significantly better: it’s super small and slender, stays put in the notebook even if I have to stuff it in a bag in a hurry, and as a bookmark and page holder it found a real niche in my life. Despite feeling flimsy as a ruler, it felt satisfying as a bookmark and absolutely stayed put. I’d be afraid to use it in a library book lest I forget it, but it would be great in books I own. I’m debating trying some other metal bookmarks to replace the post it notes I use in pattern books while I’m working out a design.

I’m tempted to get another one with one of the other stencil options because I love it so much and wouldn’t mind having a spare for my larger journal. I just noticed the cat version has a book icon that would be perfect for my book review tracking!

Auditioning my next bullet journal

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I’m loosely auditioning new notebooks to replace my bullet journal. So I pulled out my fountain pens and inked up a few contenders that I hadn’t tried yet and here they are with the ones I’d already sampled:

A set of 5 notebooks open to a pen testing page showing handwritten samples for 5 different pens in different coloured inks. The pens themselves are sitting on the bottom right notebook.
Description: A set of 5 notebooks open to a pen testing page showing handwritten samples for 5 different pens in different coloured inks. The pens themselves are sitting on the bottom right notebook.

My current bullet journal (the one in the upper right) is a lovely book from Kela Designs. It’s going to run out of pages in a couple of months (maybe sooner if I keep messing around with drawing doggies for doggust). I really love this journal but it’s pretty thick and heavy (160 pages, 160gsm bamboo paper), and I want something thinner that I’ll carry around more and also something that’s closer to 1 year sized for me rather than the 2 years it’s taken to use this one. My desire for a smaller page count has cut me off from a bunch of the more solidly built hardcovers so I’m pretty much just looking at softcover notebooks this round.

Currently the winner is the one with the ivory coloured paper which is from Rhodia (bottom right). Paper’s a bit thicker which makes it closer to my current notebook than the others shown here. While I wonder if the ivory colour is going to go terribly with my stickers, I think I’ll like it for writing and washi tape. It’s also got a slightly rubbery cover that reminds me a lot of the Pentallic notebooks that were my daily travellers for years when I worked at UNM and could pick them up from the campus store. The appeal of this one is a much smaller page count than most A5 dot grid notebooks. It clocks in at 32 sheets / 64 pages, so it’s way thin and I’m not committing myself to 2 years of the same notebook the way I did with my current journal.

The tiny bottom one is a passport-sized one from Goulet that’s meant to fit into the Traveler’s Passport system. I *love* the idea of the system with a leather cover and ever-changing inserts, but the Traveler’s comes in two sizes and I was pretty sure they were “too big” and “too small” but my brain wouldn’t let go of the idea of trying it out. Thankfully the refill notebooks are pretty cheap so I could try it out without actually buying a cover. The paper is nice, but the size is definitely no good for my bullet journal needs. I’d been thinking about it as a travel journal option but holding it in my hands (not even writing in it!) I took a different notebook on my last trip so… it’s probably not a winner for me right now. I’ll likely toss this tiny one into my purse to see if I use it, and I might try the larger size at a future date because I really like the idea of being able to get some pre-printed calendar notebooks, but I may have to accept that while the concept is good they just don’t have quite the right dimensions for me.

Middle left is my latest travel notebook from Field Notes that beat out the passport to get taken on my last trip. It’s big enough that I could work out knitting charts in it, but I didn’t love it with fountain pens and wound up using pencil and gel pen. Since both of those are less potentially risky for travel anyhow, I’ll likely keep it as my travel companion. But it’s not making the cut for bullet journal replacement outside of that.

Upper left is from Clairefontaine. I got this one to see if I liked the paper, and I do! I also was surprised by how much I liked the wider lines for writing, as they work really well with my thicker fountain pens. I also tried sticking it in an a5 ghost whale pouch (from Tom Bihn) and carrying it around in my knitting bag and found that it was a winner for weight and size. Unfortunately, I’ve gotten kind of hooked on the dot grid thing over the past year and some of my habits and tracking rely on it, so after trying it out for a while I decided to buy the Rhodia notebook that’s likely the winner. But I really like this notebook and I’ll find another use for it!

A set of 5 notebooks closed so you can see the covers. In the upper right there is a thick green A5 one from Kela Designs with a corgi on it. Lower right is a Rhodia A5 softcover in blue. Bottom middle is a smaller passport sized one from Goulet pens. On the lower left is a black Field Notes one, also mostly A5 slzed but smaller than the other 4. On the upper left is a Clairefontaine notebook with a cyanotype illustration on it, also a5 size. There is a test tube sitting on top of it to help you see how much thinner it is than the green notebook beside it.
Description: A set of 5 notebooks closed so you can see the covers. In the upper right there is a thick green A5 one from Kela Designs with a corgi on it. Lower right is a Rhodia A5 softcover in blue. Bottom middle is a smaller brown passport sized one from Goulet pens. On the lower left is a black Field Notes one, mostly A5 slzed but smaller than the other 4. On the upper left is a Clairefontaine notebook with a cyanotype illustration on it, also a5 size. There is a test tube sitting on top of it to help you see how much thinner it is than the green notebook beside it; it’s probably more than 1cm thinner.

I noticed at Powell’s that the Leuchtturm 1917 also comes in a smaller softcover with a smaller page count, so I may try that out in future. Honestly, I might have impulse bought it if they’d had it in a colour other than black. But by the time I got home and looked up what other colours were available, I convinced myself that I should start with the Rhodia that I already bought, so I’m trying to force myself to wait until I actually need a replacement (or they go on sale, I guess?).

Also, look at me with those fountain pens! I went from one pen that I found in a drawer to 5 (although one is a disposable one, and the other 3 are relatively cheap). Thankfully my current notebook has nice enough paper to accommodate me in this journey into fountain pens and pretty inks. I’m having a lot of fun!

Travel Gear Review: REI Collapsible Cane

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I’ve been using a cane consistently for about a decade now and I love this particular telescoping model. It takes some weight off my injury and greatly improves my travel and conference experiences, but also having a cane that I feel is a delight to use rather than a chore has really changed the way I think and feel about my disability. I recommend this model to everyone who asks about it!

What is it?

A collapsible, telescoping cane, intended for hiking.

This exact cane was discontinued some years ago, but REI sells an updated version of my cane here: https://www.rei.com/product/184729/rei-co-op-walker-power-lock-staff-single

A collapsible hiking cane with cork handle attached to a green backpack with a strap intended for an ice axe.
Caption: A collapsible hiking cane with cork handle attached to a green backpack with a strap intended for an ice axe.

What problem did I need it to solve?

I have a pinched nerve in my left hip. If I stand on a hard surface for long enough, it causes first numbness and then pain. The pain typically doesn’t start until hours after the standing, and it can take days before I go back to normal, or even months if I do something like chase my kid around the zoo without rest or stand around talking at a conference for a few days in a row.

How did it work out for me?

The cane basically does three things for me. First, it takes some pressure off my leg, greatly increasing the amount of time I can stand. Second, it serves as a reminder to me that I need to be careful, since I won’t get that feedback from my body until it’s too late. And third, it makes my “invisible” disability very visible to others. That helps a lot in places like airports where people can be impatient about how slowly I move, conferences where people are more willing to sit on the floor with me, and I’m still working on my kid remembering that I can’t chase him when I need the cane.

But those are all things *any* cane would do. What makes this one special?

It’s incredibly adjustable. Many canes use holes and locking mechanisms that allow you to adjust in fairly large increments — maybe an inch or 2cm between holes. But a 1cm difference makes a big difference to my arms, elbows and wrists. Obviously some people must get lucky and the notch is in the right place for them, and I believe the best practice involves cutting the bottom off the cane so that it’s customized for you. So it’s not an insurmountable obstacle but it’s a destructive kind of customization that requires actual tools.

When I was using a less adjustable cane, I felt often like having a mobility device was more hassle than it was worth because I was trading leg pain for back/shoulder/arm issues. But this cane allowed me to experiment and fine-tune until I found exactly what I needed, and it let me continually adapt as my needs changed rather than involving a one-off cut. This was particularly important to me when I was pregnant and my body was changing for quite some time both during and after. But some days you’re just wearing thicker-soled shoes, so it’s not like this is a pregnant-person-only kind of issue. Feeling like I could always in-the-moment make it work for me was huge: It felt like an awesome tool that I loved instead of a hassle that reminded me of my limitations.

It’s also light. Carrying any kind of extra weight can put extra pressure on my nerve, and I don’t know if you’ve ever used an el-cheapo cane from the drug store, but the ones I tried were designed to feel sturdy and solid. This may be comforting for many cane users (especially for seniors concerned about falls) but the weight was working at cross-purposes for my needs. Despite the lightness and the seemingly less-solid clips on this sporty cane model, I haven’t had it slip closed on me during and I’ve been using this particular cane for 10 years. That said, I’m not the heaviest human, so your mileage may vary if you need to put more weight on it.

As well as being light, it shrinks to be small — I have a beloved Synik Guide’s Edition from Tom Bihn that has the “ice axe” holder that fits it *perfectly* so I can strap it to my bag. (Note: The bag was only available in a limited run and I jumped on it immediately. They use to offer guide’s editions somewhat regularly but they warned us that some parts were getting hard to come by so it might be a while before they do them again.) As well as being easy to strap to a bag, this cane also fits in the seat pocket on airplanes or on my lap on a bus/car/train. These are important for me because it tends to get moved out of sight/reach in moving vehicles and it can be easy to forget it. I don’t use the cane 100% of the time so sometimes I forget that I have it with me if it’s not immediately obvious. You can see the picture of the cane strapped to the bag up above.

Beyond “not losing it” I like the ability strap to the bag when I don’t need it (e.g. I’m hiking on softer dirt trails that are unlikely to pinch my nerve) or when I need both hands free (those few minutes where we’re towing all our luggage in/out of an airport so I’ve got two rollerbags).

I also particularly like that this has a real cane head that’s been designed with comfort in mind: the cork gives a bit of impact cushioning that makes a significant difference over longer periods of time, the head is comfortable in my hand and feels more ergonomic than a stereotypical round hook or worse, a hiking pole.

Things that could be better

I use a rubber end on my cane to avoid slipping on polished floors and to reduce impacts against my hand. The cane itself has a sharp point on the end, though, intended for hiking in dirt/snow/ice. This sharp point absolutely destroys those rubber cane tips pretty quickly. My workaround is to fold up a piece of paper inside the rubber cane tip so the metal point doesn’t push directly into the rubber, and that helps a lot. Before that I used to go through multiple cane tips per year, sometimes per conference.

Also, not the cane’s fault, but I wish the American medical system was better. I had rounds of misdiagnosis, bad advice, and getting shuffled from doctor to doctor, all at great personal expense. This cane has had significantly better results than an entire care team and I’m a bit salty about the whole experience.

Overall

I love this cane so much that I bought a special “cane user” puppy sticker not just because it’s cute but also because being a cane user is part of my own identity now.

When I was first using the cane and feeling super self-conscious about looking “too young” to need it, a lot of other cane users took time to make eye contact, smile and give me “the nod” — instead of feeling uncomfortable I felt *seen* by others. If you think a cane might help you, I highly recommend just giving it a shot.

You know the genre of kids books about a child being upset about needing glasses and feeling uncool until they finally find a pair that suits them and then it’s like magic to have an accessibility aid? I hope everyone gets that kind of magic with a mobility device the way I’ve felt with this cane.

Estimating my knitting speed

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It’s occasionally useful to know how long a knitting project will take me: When do I need to start a gift for it to be ready in time? How much yarn should I bring on a trip? So I decided to make a personal estimate I could refer to when I wanted to make a guess.

The thing I knit with the most consistent size is socks. I’ve made enough that I know how long it takes in an “average” week while I’m working and doing stuff: it’s about 1 week per sock.

Two socks are usually around 60g of sock weight yarn. Sock weight yarn can vary in yardage by weight, but it’s usually around 400 yards per 100g.

So a bit of math gives me 30g or 120 yards of yarn knit per week.

Estimating a month as 4 weeks, that means I can use a bit more than one skein of sock yarn per month. I use the same weight of yarn for shawls, and sure enough, a one skein shawl will also take me around 1 month.

A rainbow knit shawl in progress and a bowl of dried strawberries.
Caption: A rainbow knit shawl in progress and a bowl of dried strawberries.

It’s mildly surprising that those estimates match since I usually knit shawls with around a US5 needle and socks on a US1, but I often do more complicated patterns on the shawls and make more mistakes, so maybe that’s why it’s not much faster? If I were trying to be highly accurate, there’s a lot of variables that could factor in to how fast I can knit a thing:

  • What size of needle am I using?
  • What weight of yarn am I knitting?
  • How complicated is the pattern?
  • How much time do I have to knit?
  • How distracting am I during that knitting time?
  • How often do I need breaks? (Due to being bored or avoid muscle strain.)
  • Am I working on any other projects in the same time frame?

But I’m not looking for high accuracy so this is good enough! I often knit a bit more on vacation (especially if I’ll be on a plane or a train) so I usually pack more than 120 yards/week, but it’s nice to have a rule of thumb.

The annoying part of knowing this, though, is that I have to be honest with myself about how much yarn I can reasonably buy and use in a year: many yarn subscriptions are 1 skein/month, and since I don’t have space for more stash, that means it’s probably too much yarn for me! This has been really helpful for keeping me away from yarn subscriptions and sales (especially the big ones from knitpicks), and has gotten me thinking more carefully about using my stash.

Travel Gear Review: Micro Maxi Foldable LED Scooter

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My kid is in that awkward age where he’s too big for a stroller but walking across some of the larger airports can be a lot. I’d originally wanted to get scooter luggage, but after some research I decided we’d get a lot more use out of a folding scooter that would be useful for jaunts to the park and dog walks too.

What is it?

A folding 3-wheeled scooter for kids (max weight 110 pounds). It’s even got light up wheels!

Product link: https://microkickboard.com/collections/children-ages-5-12-maxi-scooters/products/maxi-foldable-led-scooter

What problem did I need it to solve?

My kid’s too big for a stroller but still short enough that walking all over larger airports is a chore. He can walk for 3 hours at the zoo without problem, so I think it’s more of a mental exhaustion than a physical limitation.

I’d seen some kids with scooter luggage in Chicago on a previous trip and totally coveted it. After a bunch of research, though, it seemed like the quality of scooter luggage was mixed, and for around the same price we’d likely get a lot more long-term use out of a regular scooter. My kid was on the edge of outgrowing his toddler scooter and doesn’t yet love his bike, so this was something he wanted anyhow and would use multiple times a week and not just on trips.

How did it work out for me?

It was great!

Kiddo loved the scooter from the moment it arrived and it got a lot of use on dog walks even before our trips. Hatch was a little less excited about this as he’s afraid of people on wheels, but he’s mostly used to it now and it helped him with exposure.

I was a little worried that we’d have trouble with checking in at the airports or on the train (which has new luggage restrictions), but most gate agents didn’t even question us about it and neither did anyone on the train. Note that we were traveling first class on all flights and the train trip, so they might have been less inclined to give us trouble as a result, and there was typically ample overhead space when we boarded.

We did have to gate check it like a stroller on one of the smaller turboprop planes, and we did have to demonstrate that it folded once. No one gave us a hard time about him using it in the airport (I guess it’s just another accessibility device), we had some fun conversations with other parents, and one of the Canadian customs agents jokingly offered to set up an obstacle course so he could scoot through the line lanes since we were the only family going through at the time.

With the scooter, kiddo moves significantly faster than I do with the cane (probably close to my husband’s walking speed) so we did have to make him slow down or give him a point where he should wait for us. When there was traffic or lots of people, it could be a bit nerve-wracking and we had to get him to hop off and walk, but it was pretty good in safer streets and the emptier parts of airports.

When he got tired, he stood on the scooter and had one of us push him as if he were another piece of wheeled luggage. This worked even better than I expected and it’s pretty stable with the 3 wheels. He also just didn’t get tired as much. Scooting was more fun, I think, and took less energy for him to go at fast adult speeds.

As well as in the airports and train station, the scooter got a lot of use for jaunts to the local community swimming pool, parks, open houses, and “look at the fireflies” walks around my mom’s house. We didn’t use it in Iowa because my inlaws live in a significantly less walkable area.

Things that could be better

The method for locking/unlocking the folding is a big plastic sleeve that you pull up and down to release a clip inside. It tended to get a bit stuck and needed jiggling and two hands to operate most of the time. Not a deal breaker, but I do wish it was less finicky. We’re pretty fast at getting off the plane through experience and it felt bad to get hung up on a piece of recalcitrant plastic when you’ve got a grumpy travel kid and passengers streaming by you.

This scooter is technically a bit over our airline carry on limits in the longest dimension, but so much smaller in the other two that I don’t think anyone even noticed. If we’d been forced to put it in a luggage sizer that might have been an issue, but we flew first class so they weren’t really examining our luggage closely. We treated this as kid’s larger carry on and we only had one other small carry-on suitcase between the three of us, which may have contributed to it feeling like we weren’t carrying “too much” in the eyes of the gate staff. It would have been nice if the manufacturer had made the scooter just a little shorter, but I don’t think they designed it with carry-on in mind. (Their ad copy mentions putting it in the trunk or school locker. Plus they actually sell scooter-luggage for carry-on.)

My kid is very safety conscious but it was still nerve wracking to let him use it in Toronto street traffic or some of the busier parts of the airport so we had him hop off and walk in some places even though he really didn’t want to. This could have been more dangerous with a younger or less careful kid.

Overall

Kid loves it, I love it, and it made out travel easier!

I was surprised by how infrequently anyone challenged it. Some of that may be privilege, but it drew so little attention that privilege may not have played a big role. We did see some other kids with scooter luggage and similar so it’s obviously something airlines have seen before.

Even if it hadn’t been a travel win, it’s been a win at home in similar situations: it’s great for going to the park where kiddo might otherwise get tired on the walk home after playing, especially since he can stand on it and get a push from an adult.

Fiber goals 2024: mid year check-in

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I’m a bit overdue for a look at this year’s fiber goals. They were as follows:

  • gift yarn
  • lesser used crafts
  • pants
  • colour play

Gift yarn

I thought gift yarn would be an easy one, but I’ve hardly used any! When I started this goal I wrote down 5 skeins/sets in hopes of inspiring myself to make plans, but so far I’ve only used half of 1 of those, and the other skein I’ve got on the go wasn’t even on the list.

First up, my weaving in progress uses 1 skein gifted to me from my friend M in a canadian national park inspired colourway (it’s the lighter weft; the other two balls of blue are from a shopping trip with M but don’t count as gift yarn):

A woven shawl in progress on a rigid heddle loom. It's being woven in two colours of yarn, one variegated blue and one variegated grey, and I'm experimenting with clasped wft which allows stripes to go parway across the weave.
Caption: A woven shawl in progress on a rigid heddle loom. It’s being woven in two colours of yarn, one variegated blue and one variegated grey, and I’m experimenting with clasped wft which allows stripes to go parway across the weave.

And here’s what I’m working on now. The shawl is from gifted yarn, a pretty “lighthouse” sock gradient from Blue Brick:

A shawl in progress in a blue-teal-yellow gradient, a pair of recently finished knit socks in a dark variegated with a blue/yellow varigated toe, and a black pottery coffee mug with a skull on it.
Caption: A shawl in progress in a blue-teal-yellow gradient, a pair of recently finished knit socks in a dark variegated with a blue/yellow varigated toe, and a black pottery coffee mug with a skull on it.

Not a *yarn* gift, but I found a fountain pen that was a gift in a drawer and finally got around to buying ink for it, and I’m hooked. More on that later.

Lesser used crafts

Lesser used crafts has been a pretty big success. I’ve rotated through the following things:

  • January: Spinning (largely spindle spinning)
  • February: Tatting
  • March: Mending
  • April: Weaving
  • May: Origami
  • June: Pants (related to my next goal)

July was supposed to be embroidery month, but we’ve been traveling and I haven’t had much time, but I did have a huge blitz on long draw spinning so I might retroactively declare this long draw month and give embroidery a second shot.

Overall I feel like this goal is working for me: in pulling out different crafts and enjoying them again, and I’ve managed to keep my excess supply buying to a minimum. The time limit helps me keep moving on some projects that might otherwise get shelved. But it also feels like a month is too small for some things. I think I’ll stick to the monthly thing for the rest of the year but I will likely change it up if I want to keep this going past the end of 2024. The months are nice because they fit into when I look at my planner and stuff, but I’ll probably sometimes do two months of the same craft, or have a periodic “make up month” to go back and finish unfinished objects.

Pants

I made them! They are not great, mostly because it feels like I made a size too big but also because the pattern was designed to be looser than I think I want. But I learned a *lot* and I’m happy I did it! I think my next attempt will be some pj shorts since that’ll take less material. While I *could* iterate on this pattern until it’s perfect I think I’m going to try at least one other one to see if I can find a better starting point.

But I’m probably going to make another linen skirt or two before going back to pants, since that’s what I wear all the time now. I should probably make some in neutral colours for travel when I go with more of a “capsule wardrobe” than I do at home.

Colour Play

I took a dye class at Craft Emporium PDX!

A set of 4 hand-dyed skeins from my workshop. The first is blue/green, the second orange, the third pink/grey/blue and the final one rainbow.
Caption: A set of 4 hand-dyed skeins from my workshop. The first is blue/green, the second orange, the third pink/grey/blue and the final one rainbow.

And I’ve even knit one of the skeins into socks so I feel like I got a better sense of how the colour really worked.

I also had a lot of fun playing with Woolly Wormhead’s new short row stitch dictionary and my own rainbow handspun from last year’s Tour de Fleece.

A triangular shawl with a rainbow of short-row leaves on it.
Caption: A triangular shawl with a rainbow of short-row leaves on it.

I did a bit of colour play in this year’s tour de fleece, splitting up a braid to make a loosely gradient skein. Haven’t knit it up yet but it looks promising in the skein.

Handspun yarn on a niddy noddy showing a messy gradient from teal to maroon.
Caption: Handspun yarn on a niddy noddy showing a messy gradient from teal to maroon.

Less fibery, but I have been diving in to the world of cool fountain pen inks. I used to use a fountain pen back in high school to limit strain on body when I had tendonitis and couldn’t write very easily, but there’s a world of very pretty inks now and it’s pretty exciting! I guess paper has fiber, right?

A page of my (intentionally) messy handwriting using a fountain pen. The text is a list of travel gear that I may review in future blog posts.
Caption: A page of my (intentionally) messy handwriting using a fountain pen. The text is a list of travel gear that I may review in future blog posts.

I feel like I’ve made a good dent in this goal, but there’s still some dyeing experiments I wanted to try and maybe some fading and other knit colour combos I could fit in, so I don’t feel like I’m done yet, per se.

Overall

I’m about where I should be for halfway through the year, but I still have a lot of things I want to do, and I’m going to have to make a stronger effort to use gift yarn in the second half of the year.

Travel Gear Review: CALPAK Luka Soft-Sided Mini Carry-On Luggage

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How I travel has changed a lot in the past few years especially since I started using a cane and my growing kid means it’s different every time now. So I’m trying to note a few things that worked (or could be better) from my last couple of trips.

I have resisted the urge to call this “lame luggage reviews” on account of my literal lameness, but if you’re also a cane user you might find my experience useful!

What is it?

This is a spinner-style “underseat” carry-on suitcase. I’m not sure if it’ll actually fit underseat in too many planes, as the 9 inch depth is a bit large and the frame doesn’t have any give to it, but I really just wanted something smaller and intended to leave it in the overhead so that wasn’t a concern for me.

Product link: https://www.calpaktravel.com/products/luka-mini-carry-on-luggage/sage,16

What problem did I need it to solve?

I prefer to have a suitcase over just doing a backpack because I have a pinched nerve in my left hip and extra weight tends to leave me in a lot of pain for weeks or months. This helps some by letting me put heavier stuff in the suitcase, but mostly it helps by letting me slip my favourite backpack over the handle so it’s not putting weight on my nerve at all. I also use a cane to help manage the same problem (this also makes my “invisible” disability visible when needed).

My previous small suitcase was a two-wheeled affair and it was hard to maneuver while using my cane, especially if I had a backpack slipped overtop of the luggage handle. The weight of the backpack then went on my arm, which was less painful but still tiring. It got even worse in our trip to visit the American grandparents because I was often moving not only my own backpack but also my kid’s backpack while my husband handled the more awkward luggage.

How did it work out for me?

This was *considerably* easier for me to move with the cane, and the 4 wheels supported the full weight of whatever backpack was on it. Absolute win in terms of improved accessibility for me! This was the most important goal and it solved the problem perfectly.

It fit a *lot* of spare toys, games and chargers and stuff that we used in long layovers and on the train, as well as spare clothes for me and kiddo (which we didn’t use this trip but we’ve needed in several past occasions), and spare crafts for me (embroidery, spinning, knitting) where I was too nervous to leave them in checked bags. It was probably a bit bigger than we needed for this trip, but it was awfully convenient to stuff things like my kid’s neck pillow in there so he could get other stuff in and out of his bag more easily, so maybe it was just the right size? I imagine it’ll be big enough for weekend jaunts in future.

I liked the layout and the large straps for holding stuff in when it’s opened, as well as the design where you can velcro/snap the front panel so it opens only partway when unzipped. This was great in the airport so you can pull out a laptop in security without making a mess. I briefly wished the side pocket was big enough to hold my noise cancelling headphones, but in practice I had those in their case in my backpack anyhow, so I mostly used it to hold a heavier spare battery. It would have been big enough to tuck my phone in there with the battery to charge.

I didn’t try it under the seat but it fit ok in the overhead bins on all 4 planes (including the shortest flight) and the VIA rail train. No questions from airport staff so I didn’t go around shoving it into the luggage sizer things. That said, we were flying first class and boarding first so it wasn’t like I was competing much for overhead space when I got on, and the airlines were no doubt inclined to give me a lot more leeway than they might with other passengers.

My kid also had a good time moving it when he wasn’t using his scooter, though he was most excited about pulling it on 2 wheels for some reason.

Things that could be better

I didn’t love the available colours, and my kid still insists that it “could be more green.” It’s definitely light coloured enough to pick up some dirt from being in the overhead bins, but I don’t like black so this is the colour I chose.

It was honestly a bit deeper than I’d like: it would be nice if the depth was maybe half an inch less so I didn’t have to worry about overhead bins. I realized it had paper stuffed in the padded outer pocket to make it stick out, so it fit better on our return flights than the ones on the way there. Still, the rigid frame is pushing the limits of airplane spaces and won’t compress, so I expect occasional problems with it in the future (particularly if we wind up flying on smaller jets).

My travel laptop (a lenovo A275) only *barely* fit in the laptop sleeve built in to the side panel. It’s a 12.5″ but fairly thick: maybe this could handle a 13″ ultrabook but I wouldn’t want to carry a 14″ this way. This is ok for me since I love tiny laptops and can’t carry heavier ones any more with my leg injury, but it might be an issue for other people.

Overall

This absolutely made it easier for me to get around the airport with my cane, and even made it easier to manage with multiple suitcases when struggling in and out of the airport. It carried a bit more than I needed, and it fit in all the places I needed it to fit. I’m thrilled with how it worked out and excited to use it on my next trip.

Is it the best possible luggage for me? Who knows. I’m not a review company so I’m not spending $$$ to try more suitcases. But if you want me to start up “lame luggage reviews” for real and want to send me a free suitcase to try on a future trip, let me know!

Finchley Graft written instructions

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I learned the Finchley Graft recently. It makes the same fabric as the more common Kitchener graft, but without the extra setup/end steps that make it stick out at the edges when used on, say, a sock toe.

Unfortunately, I haven’t done it enough times to actualy have it memorized, and when I look it up I find pages of videos without wrtten instructions, and even the pattern I learned it from links a video. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I loathe watching a video to remind me of a technique when I just need a few easy to scan words as a reminder. So I’m making the thing I want to have in the world!

Full written instructions

This is for grafting two pieces of stockinette together, with purls on the back side.

  1. Divide stitches into two equal parts and hold the front/knit sides of the piece together, with the back/purl side facing out.
  2. Cut a length of yarn 3 times as wide as the graft and thread the end onto a yarn needle.
  3. Insert the needle knitwise through the first stitch on both needles and pull the yarn through.
  4. Pull the back stitch off the needle.
  5. Insert the needle purlwise through the first stitch on each needle and pull the yarn through. (One is new, one is the one you did last time)
  6. Pull the front stitch off the needle
  7. repeat 3-6 until two stitches remain then go though and pull them both off

Short reminder for future Terri:

  1. From front go through both knitwise, pull off last (back)
  2. From back go purlwise, pull off last (front)

Other tips

  • The real winner in this graft is not needing extra setup steps that make little “ears” on sock toes.
  • Flipping a sock inside out is much easier if the stitches are on a cable. If using a circular needle pull the tips through. If on dpns maybe try stitch saver or something.
  • Like Kitchener, getting the tension right takes practice. I find it harder to see because you’re working on the wrong side. (So if you’re doing a long graft you might still prefer Kitchener. I find for a sock toe that I can just wiggle)
  • In theory the shorter instructions will be easier to remember, but since I already had the other graft memorized it doesn’t much matter to me.

Meat Hat (free pattern)

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My kid decided he wanted to have a “meat hat” and after some consultation to figure out what he meant by that, it was determined that he wanted a green hat with some sort of meat pixel art on the hat, possibly inspired by Minecraft. He picked out the yarn in the spring, but it was already too warm for a hat so I didn’t get around to actually knitting it until fall. I got him to make some additional design guidance and handed him a pixel art editor for final designs, and this is what he drew:

Notes from my meat hat design meeting with my kindergartener. On the left is hand drawn picture of three types of meat with arrows between them, on the right are the same meats as pixel art. They are supposedly steak, chicken and meatballs.

He then clarified:

  • The types of meat are steak, chicken and meatballs
  • Each one could go on its own line but had to be repeated around the hat

Seems clear enough, although I’m still not sure what inspired the need for a meat hat. But he has outgrown his previous winter hat, so away we go! I can’t really imagine other people wanting to knit a meat hat so it feels a bit odd to document this as a pattern, but who knows maybe your kindergartener is also into meat?

Spoilers: here’s what the actual hat looked like after we made it!

The Meat Hat (and matching mitts) designed by my kindgergartener. The meats represented are meatballs, chicken, and steak.
The Meat Hat (and matching mitts) designed by my kindgergartener. The meats represented are meatballs, chicken, and steak.

My kid’s head is 21″ which is basically an adult small. Yes, he has a huge head (and I had the stitches to show for it, thanks. And not the knitting kind of stitches!).

  • I used the free Barley hat pattern from Tin Can Knits as a base to figure out sizing because it was free and I wanted to try out the new sizing in their app (which is pretty neat). If you need a different size, you could maybe use that to help you figure it out. The matching mitts are the kid’s size from the simple collection, also available in the app or their website.
  • Sorry, I haven’t made a written or accessible version of this because I honestly can’t imagine anyone but me knitting it. There is alt text describing what’s in the charts for curious passers by, but no written instructions or higher contrast charts available, and my kid’s dark green and dark brown colour choices aren’t the easiest to read. If you do want an accessible version and you promise to actually try knitting it, ping me at terri(at)toybox.ca and I’ll see what I can do.

Yarn: Worsted weight. I used Dream in Colour Smooshy for the main green colour, Amano Yarns Warmi for the brown meat colour (the heathering really rocks for this) and Knitpicks Swish Worsted for the black and white bits. The contrast here isn’t as good as it could be, but that’s what happens when your kid picks the colours based on what feels nice in the yarn store. I’m not sad: these were lovely to knit with.

Needles: US6 for brim / US 8 for body. If your colourwork tends to be tight you probably want to go up at least one needle size for the colourwork. (I did not do this, but then had to stretch the hat a bit during blocking as a result.) There are some long floats here: this might be a good piece for practicing the ladder back jacquard technique if you want an excuse.

Brim

Cast on 84 stitches with smaller needs (US6 for me) in main colour (or a contrast colour, you do you!)

Ribbing Row: (Knit 2, purl 2) repeat around

Work ribbing row for around 1.5 inches or however long you want your brim to be.

Switch to larger needles (US8 for me)

Stockinette Row: knit around

Work stockinette row for 1.5 inches if you wish to have a folded up brim and don’t want the pattern to get hidden. If you don’t like a folded brim, you can just work 2 rows instead, but you’ll have to start decreases earlier in the hat colourwork (or enjoy a slouchier hat!)

Colourwork

Increase row: m1, knit around

My pixel art program produces 16×16 sized images, but 84 doesn’t divide evenly into 16. However 17 is a multiple of 85, so I just added an increase in the first motif and repeated each steak motif 5 times. Technically my kid drew stuff with a lot of white space so if you’re really committed to 84 stitches for some reason you *could* trim his charts down to 12 stitches and make them fit. I just didn’t do this for the steak and chicken charts.

If you tend to have tight colourwork, you should go up another needle size here.

Follow steak chart for the motif, but I removed most of the green lines and kept only 2 between the steak and chicken.

A pixel art rendition of a steak. It is rectangular with some black "grill marks" on one side.

Follow chicken chart for the motif, skipping some green lines as you prefer. I moved my stitch markers so that the chicken lined up with the gaps in the previous chart. I kept 1 green row before starting the meatball chart and removed all the others. I personally did the top of the chicken and black bits as duplicate stitch because I was tired of carrying long floats, but you do whatever works for you. (if you took out more green columns the floats might not be so bad.)

Pixel art as a knitting pattern featuring my kid's rendition of "chicken" which appears to be a slightly rectangular roast chicken shape but it's white with black dots on the end of the "legs"

At this point, I decided I wanted more meatballs, so I tucked a k2tog in the start of the meatball chart to go back down to 84 stitches and adjusted to a 14 stitch motif repeated 6 times instead.

Pixel art as a knitting pattern featuring 4 meatballs on a green background.

Note that I needed to start crown decreases while I was in the midst of the meatball motif on the top meatball, so I just stuck them in between the meatballs (see below for decrease instructions)

If you went up a needle size for the colourwork, you can decrease again here.

Crown decreases

Once the motifs have reached around 6 inches you’ll need to start decreases:

Decrease row: (k12, k2tog) repeat around (6 times)

(Or if you’re still in the middle of a motif, work motif for 12 stitches then the decrease. )

Work decrease row then stockinette row for first 4 decreases, then work decrease row only until you have 6 stitches. Cut yarn leaving a 6 inch tail and weave through the final stitches then pull tight and tie closed. Weave in ends. Block.

The Dread Pirate Kid wearing his Meat Hat in the snow.
The Dread Pirate Kid wearing his Meat Hat in the snow.

And that’s the meat hat! Kiddo did indeed wear it this week when we had actual snow and cold, though I expect the hat won’t get much use since he’s pretty anti-hat unless it’s actually cold. It’s seldom below freezing here for more than a week per year . But it was fun to work on his design so I’m not sad even if it only gets worn a few times. He says he wants a rainbow sweater next!

Fiber Goals 2024

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Since 2016 I’ve set “fiber goals” as a fun way to direct my crafting for the year. I’ve come to feel like setting goals around chasing joy and focusing on accomplishing things I want to do is important, and these resonate differently than many traditional new years resolutions that are kind of guilt-based. For example: “Don’t buy more yarn” would be less fun and more guilt-oriented than “use some of the pretty gradients in my stash” — it’s all about focusing on joy and creativity. I usually focus on some skill building, some “use the supplies you already have” type planning, and some things that I wouldn’t naturally do without a goal that I revisit every few months. Links to previous years are at the bottom of the post, but let’s start with this year’s goals.

Gift yarn — I’ve been lucky to receive some yarn as gifts, but sometimes it takes quite a while before I get to use it. So I’m making it a goal to do that! I’m intending to focus on yarn chosen for me by other people, but I also have a small cache of yarn I bought with birthday money that may make an appearance.

Lesser used crafts — I pretty much always have knitting on to go, and I regularly rotate in other crafts: embroidery, crochet, sewing/quilting and mending all come up throughout the year, and spinning makes a more seasonal appearance for Tour de Fleece. There are also some that rarely make it into the rotation: tatting, needle felting and Tunisian crochet come to mind. So this year’s goal is to give some some of my non-knitting crafts a little time in the spotlight. For some, that’ll mean adding them into the rotation at all, for others it might mean time learning a new technique or letting that project be a focus instead of a thing that happens when I need a break from knitting.

Pants — I bought fabric to try making pants, but it’s been sitting in my stash for a while. I had pants in my backup goals for multiple years and didn’t make ’em, so I’m promoting it to my 4 core goals to get it done this year. I’ve got some other garment-making stuff planned but pants are the only one that doesn’t seem to be happening without a bit of a shove.

Colour Play — In 2023 I had a goal for cables which put some of my focus on texture. This year, I’d like to have some fun with colours: make some more fade projects, different types of colourwork, stuff like planned/assigned pooling, maybe do some dyeing or more experiments with blending on the spinning wheel. Maybe another gradient quilt if I start collecting squares again? I’m hoping to chase some joy in colour form!

Some other ideas that didn’t make top 4 but might be fun:

Here’s some other goals that came up in brainstorming. They didn’t make the top 4 so I’m not committing to finishing them, but I like having them recorded here so I can revisit them when I’m checking in on my goals or looking for inspiration of what to work on next. Maybe some of them will get done, maybe not!

Digital knitting — in my house this often means circuit board layout, but I’m thinking more about working on pyKnit, my open source/free python library for doing knit math and charts. Though I actually would like to do some other digital stuff related to knitting: designing some stitch markers and tools with the laser cutter, spending some time to make pattern templates, updating a few existing patterns, maybe building other tools beyond pyKnit. I’ve also got grand designs for setting up a pixelfed server to replace/backup my Instagram account. And yes, I’m not ruling out some circuit board layout too.

Load balancing the stash — my stash is in one of those big cube shelves, and some cubes are over-full. So the goal here is mostly to use things from the fuller bins, but I’ll also accept giving some of it away, rearranging the bins to fit, or focusing my purchases on places I have gaps in the stash. At the time of writing the overstuffed bin is self striping yarn, and I have space for some more solid/semi-solids and some space in the bin of Knitted Wit skeins for Socks on Vacay in the summer.

Revisiting old goals — I haven’t always achieved my goals, and some are fun to revisit, but I think I’ll save this for next year which will mark my 10th year of doing these goals.

Quilting triangles — I haven’t done any patterns with triangles in years; maybe it’s time to improve my quilting skills? I’ve got an old kit from Albuquerque that would force me to learn some skills.

Make a bag for my rigid heddle loom — it’s a bit big for any of our current bags and it would be really nice to be able to put the whole thing into a safe padded bag for when I want to weave elsewhere in the house (or maybe some day at a fiber event or meetup?). Quilting might not be a bad idea here.

Embroidered knits & mending — I do a little bit of visible mending already but rarely make it super decorative. Maybe play around with this more?

More dyeing — I’ve still been watching the ChemKnits dye videos and want to try some more techniques now that I’ve actually used some of the yarns we made. I also wouldn’t mind trying more “real” acid dyes (rather than food colouring) but that’s a bit more of a hassle with my kid and having to get some more equipment.

Courses — I haven’t really picked out any classes to take this year, but I wouldn’t mind throwing some in there if I can find time. I really enjoyed spending the day at Craft Emporium for weaving class, but (understandably) it seems like a lot of local classes are beginner-oriented and I’m solidly past beginner on a lot of my crafts and I don’t really have an urge to pick up something new right this second. I’m thinking about getting the Sew Sew Fitopia pdf/videos, but I should think about fiber festivals and other stuff. I do think I’ll probably avoid anything with a monthly subscription, though: I learned from last time that it’s not a great fit for my current schedule.

Circular Sock Knitting Machine — My kid and husband are printing me one using the new 3d printer. It’s not ready at the time that I’m writing this, but I’m hoping I’ll be learning to use it and making cool things with it sometime this year!

Blogging — I’ve (once again) been letting this blog slide in favour of just posting stuff on mastodon. In some ways that’s ok: we own the mastodon server and can back it up and do whatever with it, so it’s not deeply different than the blog that I own. In other ways, I miss writing a bit more long form in general, and writing is a skill that works better when I use it regularly. I can’t decide on a good goal here: do I want to write more, do I want to write about things that aren’t crafts, do I want to write fiction, do I want to integrate mastodon to make threads about each project into blog posts? So I’m leaving this in the brainstorming section and I’ll try to think about what I want out of the blog.

Ditching Instagram/Meta — remember how a bunch of folk stopped using Ravelry because a site redesign made it unusable or dangerous for folk with migraines? Instagram is there for me with all the auto-playing reels. Plus, you know, various human rights violations, terrible moderation, etc. I’m going to reduce my usage in 2024 and I wanted to record that here (even though it doesn’t fit with my typical goals and it’s more of a resolution) while I figure out what that will look like. I expect I’ll keep accounts for contests and the odd local thing that uses it, but if you want to follow me social media style you’ll have to go to https://social.afront.org/@terri or add my rss feed to your feed reader.

Previous years

Fiber Goals 2023: How did I do?

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It’s December so it’s time to revisit my 2023 fiber goals and see how I did! You can see part 1 in my mid-year checkin post.

Toys

My kid has become really interested in Among Us so I made him a thing!

Amigurumi crewmate from the game "Among Us"
Amigurumi crewmate from the game “Among Us”

Games have really helped him practice a lot of emotional maturity things like, “you’re going to be bad at things for a while before you’re good at them” and “it’s not the end of the world if things don’t go your way” and “you shouldn’t break things just because you’re mad.” But he’s still in kindergarten and isn’t really emotionally ready for a game of lying to your friends with real humans involved, so he isn’t allowed to play the game himself yet. He *is* allowed to watch some videos of other people playing and imagine his own mods and stories. The toy inspired some pretty funny scenarios at play time.

I’m also working on the winter mystery gnome, which is going well so far:

A snow-gnome from the pattern Snow Matters What. He's got a red hat, carrot nose, big green scarf, red stick arms, and embroidered snowflakes on his bottom snow ball.
A snow-gnome from the pattern Snow Matters What. He’s got a red hat, carrot nose, big green scarf, red stick arms, and embroidered snowflakes on his bottom snow ball.

I also sewed a creature that he named “foxy dog” from a great “Teacup puppy” pattern I got on etsy:

A sewn stuffed animal shaped like a puppy with big pointy ears and fox-like colouration.
A sewn stuffed animal shaped like a puppy with big pointy ears and fox-like colouration.

And I’ve got another puppy in colours he chose (they’re very strange) that hasn’t been fully sewn yet.

I think this was a highly successful goal! There’s always more to make but I think a little focus on this went well.

Hand-dyed, hand-spun yarn

I made my big cabled shawl with one of the skeins my kid dyed last year. He provided the lighter green variegated colour and I paired it with a blue/green gradient set from Sweet Georgia:

Finished and blocked Ishneich shawl. It features a large celtic-style cable, lace border, and striped body.
Finished and blocked Ishneich shawl. It features a large celtic-style cable, lace border, and striped body.

I also did some sampling/swatching for my handspun, but nothing big yet.

A swatch of rainbow handspun yarn sits next to a tablet playing My Singing Monsters.
A swatch of rainbow handspun yarn sits next to a tablet playing My Singing Monsters.

I’d say that this goal was met, because I definitely used yarn, but I do think I could do a lot more! The good news is that I’m taking part in a 100 day spinning challenge that counts *using* your handspun as well as spinnning it, so I’ve got plans for the next few months.

Complicated Cables

I did the aforementioned big cabled shawl! This is the Ishneich pattern by Lucy Hague that I wanted to do most:

Terri wearing the cabled Ishneich shawl.
Terri wearing the cabled Isneich shawl.

It turns out that I didn’t love cabling on the reverse side. I got sick multiple times while I was making it, so I wasn’t really at my cognitive best, and I screwed up the direction and had to fix it more than once. I won’t say I’d never do it again because I loved the resulting cable, but I didn’t want to try another two-sided pattern this year while we’re slowly experiencing every kindergarten disease in the area. So my last cabling experiment was socks — no wrong side to cause confusion! This is the Thriambus socks pattern (free in Knitty) that I made for my mom and I love them:

Thriaumbus socks on feet, shown in greyscale as it was posted when I was keeping the colour a surprise for my mom.
Thriaumbus socks on feet, shown in greyscale as it was posted when I was keeping the colour a surprise for my mom.
Thriambus socks. These have been freshly blocked and are handknit out of self-striping yarn in blue/green/white and a variegated purple. The pattern features and asymmetric set of cables on each foot.
Thriambus socks. These have been freshly blocked and are handknit out of self-striping yarn in blue/green/white and a variegated purple. The pattern features and asymmetric set of cables on each foot.

This goal was absolutely met *and* I’m happy to have learned that I love cabled socks, so I’ll definitely be doing more of those in the future. Especially since I apparently have a lot of self-striping yarn in my stash and some of it will also play nicely with cables!

Patterns I Own

Honestly, I didn’t keep track of this one as much in the second half of the year. But I finished the golden poppy sweater:

Terri wearing her Golden Poppy Sweater and holding a to-go cup of coffee. The sweater features a large mosaic panel meant to look like California poppies.
Terri wearing her Golden Poppy Sweater and holding a to-go cup of coffee. The sweater features a large mosaic panel meant to look like California poppies.

And the Bubbles of Joy shawl:

Bubbles of joy shawl: a shawl with many bubble-like motifs in lace and colourwork. It features a large stripe of different coloured "bubbles" in a set of yellow/pink/red colours.
Bubbles of joy shawl: a shawl with many bubble-like motifs in lace and colourwork. It features a large stripe of different coloured “bubbles” in a set of yellow/pink/red colours.

And the summer embroidery sampler from kiriki press (shown before I found smaller frames):

A small "summer" themed embroidery sampler with strawberry vines and a 3d sunflower.
A small “summer” themed embroidery sampler with strawberry vines and a 3d sunflower.

I also did two more socks from patterns I own (both Shannon Squire patterns), and two from patterns that were free. The Thriambus one above and Comfy Soled Socks to try knitting non-wool socks:

A pair of handknit socks from the pattern "comfy soled socks" are in progress on my lap as I sit by a water play area at a park.
A pair of handknit socks from the pattern “comfy soled socks” are in progress on my lap as I sit by a water play area at a park.

Plus technically I bought Ishneich before the end of 2022.

Hatch doggy using the Ishneich shawl as a blanket.
Hatch doggy using the Ishneich shawl as a blanket.

So this one continues to be met, and I feel like I had a nice balance with some new MKALs thrown in to the mix too.

The “other” goals

Every year, I also list some ideas that didn’t make it to my chosen top 4. Usually the way I do this is that I open up a draft post for ideas shortly after I do my mid-year checkin post, and I note things down there for the next few months before settling on 4 that I’d like to focus on. But that doesn’t mean the others are bad ideas, and sometimes I manage to do those as well. So here’s a few that actually happened:

  • Sweater stash: I did indeed knit the Golden Poppy Sweater, and my kid has adopted one of the collections of minis for his own rainbow sweater (which is swatched and probably will start getting knit in January.)
  • Embroidery: I didn’t do a year-long event but I made it through a number of kits!
  • Quilting: I did indeed finish my adventureland quilt just as 2022 ended *and* a pretty rainbow one from several charm packs that turned out just as I’d hoped. I’ve started on another one for my kid that glows in the dark but it’s a few months out from finishing still:
Glow quilt in-progress shot. This quilt features halloween inspired fabrics assembled in zig zag stripes with a white glow-in-the-dark fabric featured as every other stripe.
Glow quilt in-progress shot. This quilt features halloween inspired fabrics assembled in zig zag stripes with a white glow-in-the-dark fabric featured as every other stripe.
Adventureland quilt on a couch.
Adventureland quilt on a couch.
A quilt made up of a rainbow of various patterned squares laid out in a diagonal gradient. The corner of the quilt is turned to show the moon/star pattern on the back (which glows in the dark).
A quilt made up of a rainbow of various patterned squares laid out in a diagonal gradient. The corner of the quilt is turned to show the moon/star pattern on the back (which glows in the dark).
  • Knitty patterns: I did one as mentioned above, and queued a few more. I also experimented with knitty+ a bit and figured out how best to get my knitty patterns into Knit Companion using a print-to-pdf option.
  • Weaving: I took that weaving class and have been having fun with my loom! I like it enough that I’m debating getting the “quartet” attachment one day, but I’m telling myself I need to spend time experimenting with what I’ve got before I start spending $$$ on upgrades. I’ve managed to read a weaving pattern now but I’d still got techniques to learn and practicing to do.
A weaving in progress on the loom, featuring stripes of "passionate fruit" from knitted wit and some textured white inherited from a friend's mom's stash.
A weaving in progress on the loom, featuring stripes of “passionate fruit” from knitted wit and some textured white inherited from a friend’s mom’s stash.
A pair of handwoven towels featuring a set of stripes along two sides of the rectangular piece.
A pair of handwoven towels featuring a set of stripes along two sides of the rectangular piece.
A handknit striped sock sits on a handwoven rainbow scarf.
A handknit striped sock sits on a handwoven rainbow scarf.
  • Spinning: I did manage to spin more overall this year, including keeping on after Tour de Fleece until I got sick. That’s important because it means I didn’t accidentally hurt my hands, need a break, and lose momentum!
  • e-spinning: I did indeed push myself to use the Electric Eel Wheel nano 2 more, including using it for most of Tour de Fleece. And it’s been great! I was surprised at how nice it was to focus on my drafting skills and to be able to pick it up and spin in different places around the house.
A wound hank of handspun yarn in blue/green/grey. It is surrounded by cute stickers and other small items from my kid's countdown calendar.
A wound hank of handspun yarn in blue/green/grey. It is surrounded by cute stickers and other small items from my kid’s countdown calendar.

Summary

I hit all 4 goals, and also did a whole lot of other almost-goals from the brainstorming slush pile. That’s a pretty good fiber year! Stay tuned on January 1 for 2024’s fiber goals.

Double Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe

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These are what my kid considers “normal cookies” because we make them the most! They’re also almost always what people are asking for when I get a message that goes like “remember those cookies you brought months ago… could I get the recipe?” Since I’m sending them to school for his teachers and typed up the recipe to put on the bag (in case of allergies), I figured I might as well share it on my blog at the same time.

A pile of double chocolate chip cookies.
A pile of double chocolate chip cookies.

¾ C (1 ½ sticks) butter

1 C sugar

1 ½ tsp vanilla

1 egg

1/3 C cocoa

1 1/3 C flour

¼ tsp soda

1 C chocolate chips

The type of chocolate chips you use makes a big difference in these: my go-to is the President’s Choice Decadent Chocolate Chips, but these are also fun with peanut butter chips or whatever decent semi-sweet I can find in the store.

  • Cream butter, sugar, vanilla
  • add egg, mix
  • add dry ingredients, mix
  • add chocolate chips, mix
  • Drop by the tablespoon full onto a cookie sheet and bake at 375 F for 8-10 minutes

Gingerbread Cookies

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I typed up this recipe to accompany some cookies I’m sending to my kid’s school, so I figured it was a good time to share it here! This can make a slightly chewy gingerbread if you roll the cookies thick enough. I got this recipe from some old copy of Chateleine my mom had, probably from the 80s.

1 ½ C shortening

2 C white sugar

2 eggs, beaten

1 C molasses

4 ½ C flour

2 tsp soda

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cloves

2 tsp ginger

2 tsp cinnamon

  • Cream shortening & sugar
  • Add eggs & molasses, mix
  • add rest, mix

If using cookie cutters, chill for an hour before rolling out dough and cutting

Bake at 350F for 10 minutes

Glaze: 1C icing sugar, 3-4 tbsp water. Boil and apply while warm. Add sprinkles if desired. Or decorate with butter icing if you don’t need to make them easier to transport! I used to regularly make these for cookie parties and let people add their own decorations.

Maker Objectives and Key Results

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Work made me do a training on “Objectives and Key Results” which is just a business-y version of the goal setting techniques I learned in grade school: choose something big you want to do, even if you’re not sure all the steps to get you there or it’s not a thing that ever finishes, then choose some concrete things you can do that you think might move yourself in the right direction. Then learn from what you do and adjust and iterate.

I’m starting to brainstorm about Fiber Goals for the year, and it’s got me thinking that they often fall into a few “objective” style categories:

1. Use what I have.

Like many crafters, I aquire supplies faster than I use them. I don’t necessarily consider this a bad thing: I like having the materials on hand when I get an idea or have to pivot late at night when something doesn’t work out. I also find I need a certain amount of materials on hand or I get too anxious about using things up. But there’s only so much space in my house so I don’t want to collect indefinitely! Plus I have good taste and I like using my stuff.

Example previous fiber goals that fit with this objective: using my self striping and gradient yarns, using kits.

2. Try something new.

I like learning new things, and sometimes making one into a goal for the year helps me set aside time to do it! A lot of these have been things I could take classes in like learning to spin.

3. Do something hard / push my limits

“Hard” here doesn’t always mean that the action has to be hard. Often it means doing projects that are bigger or require more concentration, or can’t be done with my kid in the room. Sometimes it means just doing something I wouldn’t normally do.

The hardest example was finishing my sabbatical quilt, which was a slog for many reasons. A fun one was revisiting brioche.

4. Have fun.

Sometimes the goals are just something I think would be fun to do! Like making more toys for my kid this year.

And also…

There’s nothing wrong with fiber goals that fit into multiple categories: Knitting rainbows, for example, used stash and was fun and was pushed my habits to do something I hadn’t been doing naturally.

I don’t know that every fiber goal I set or brainstorm quite fits into these “objectives” but I do find them useful for brainstorming next year’s goals so I can get a mix of types of fiber goals in my draft doc before I choose four.

This will be my ninth year of doing fiber goals rather than new years resolutions and I love this tradition for myself.

Pikmin hat

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I know the yarniverse is all abuzz with a very pink movie coming out this weekend, but my kid and I are more excited about Pikmin 4, so he asked for this last night and I made it today:

Terri is wearing a hat based on the video game pikmin. It is blue with a round base tapering to a point with a green leaf sticking out of it.
Terri is wearing a hat based on the video game pikmin. It is blue with a round base tapering to a point with a green leaf sticking out of it.

It’s a Pikmin hat!

Yarn: some bulky blue I had in stash with no label, plus some green variegated Red Heart Super Saver held doubled.

Hook size: I (5.5mm)

I used this “pixie hat” pattern for the base since I’d made one ages ago and remembered it: https://crochetcrochet.livejournal.com/428082.html

Before rows 3, 4, 5 I added a row of double crochet to make the “stem” a bit longer than it was in the original design. It would be a bit more game accurate to make it thinner/taller but then it might need some reinforcement to stand up. As my 5 year old immediately put on the hat and started headbang-smacking his dad with the leaf, I think I made the right choice to avoid any stiffeners or wire in this project.

For the leaf I used this pattern: https://www.cookiesnobcrochet.com/home/fall-leaf-garland (I have made my own leaf patterns in the past, but I liked the finishing on this one in particular.)

Then I sewed the leaf to the top with some extra work and some longer stitches into the stem to make sure it was on securely and wouldn’t flop over too much.

My kid has an adult-sized noggin so it fits both of us.

It took most of the day to make between playing board games with my kid and giving the dog a bath. (That is to say, it took all day but very little of that day was spent crocheting.)

Pikmin hat sitting in a basket of purple and pink flowers. The hat itself is blue and tapers to a point with a leaf on the tip.

Of course now I kind of wish I had more random bulky yarn to make a yellow and red one so the whole family can match.

Incarceration history for kids

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This essay made me cry: https://lithub.com/japanese-american-incarceration-for-children-brandon-shimoda-on-reading-with-his-daughter/

I own a lot of those books. They’re mostly too long and serious for my kid still. He prefers books about dogs and animals and science and silliness. And that’s ok. The books will wait. So many of the books about people we get from in the library “mystery bags” are also about pain, about history, about overcoming. It’s no wonder he only wants to read things with dogs in them.

“I did not grow up with children’s books about Japanese American incarceration. There were not many.”

Brandon Shimoda

But this pull quote got me. I was… Maybe 7 the first time I remember being told about the Japanese interment in Canada? I asked my mom why dad didn’t want to come to a remembrance day ceremony at my school and she gave me some age appropriate answer about how dad didn’t really want to remember being locked up by the Canadian government.

I remember reading Obasan as an older kid on a road trip to Fundy National Park. I think maybe that was the youngest book available at the time, other than the history books. I read Sadako and the Thousand Paper cranes and folded a thousand with a friend in high school.

I’m glad that there’s a lot more stories available now, and gutted that so many of them are being “challenged” in the US because so many people don’t know about the internment camps or really a lot of the less savory parts of history. And it matters to what we do now to understand at least some of it.

Since I’ve got a PhD in computer security, I spend a lot of time talking with colleagues about privacy, and there’s a pervasive “I don’t have anything to hide so privacy isn’t a big deal” attitude in many places. People are appalled when I explain that privacy concerns sound a lot more reasonable when you consider the history the US government has of, for example, using census data to destroy minority communities or incarcerate them. This isn’t just a thought exercise for ethical technical folk to consider when setting up privacy, this is a lived experience for many people — just not always the people in the room. And not teaching that experience is having real word consequences right now.

Anyhow, I don’t really know what I’m saying except that books matter, which you all know. And I don’t know how I’m going to explain internment more deeply to my kid either. But I will have to, one day soon. And I’m glad I have more books, more stories to help us get there.

Two tiny two at a time nested socks knitted one inside the other

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[Note: I wrote this up last year/summer of 2022, never quite finished it, and never published it as a result. I don’t know if I remember enough here to finish writing this up properly without knitting the socks again. I don’t want it languishing in my drafts and I’m not sure when I’ll feel inclined to write it up as a real pattern. So I’m just gonna publish it anyhow and I hope it helps someone else who wants to play with a fun technique!]

The folk at Knitted Wit had a fun summer bingo this year, and one of the squares was “I tried a new-to-me sock technique” so I decided to try knitting two at a time socks with the socks nested inside each other. One of the people in my old Saturday knitting group used to do this somewhat regularly and I was intrigued. I wasn’t up to knitting full sized socks just to try a technique, so I worked from the knitted mirror socks pattern and scaled it down to 24 stitch mini socks and took out all the colour changes.

Since I couldn’t find anyone else who’d done a tiny version of this, I’m writing up my notes in case you too want to try a new technique but don’t want to commit weeks of your life to doing it!

Tips before you start

Choosing yarns: make sure they look very different. Ideally you want high contrast and not a single speckle that matches. I used one speckle and one solid to help me differentiate and because I was using leftovers from previous projects. You might find it easier to just use two solids for the least stressful experience. It doesn’t matter in the finished project since the socks will be separated, but it’ll make the learning experience easier if you can tell your yarns apart even when you can only see a little stitch sticking out.

Two high-contrast yarns and my sock start.

Choosing needles: you want sharp needles with long tapers at the tips because p2tog through the back loop is a pain on blunter tipped needles. I used chiaogoo size 1 because it’s what I have on hand that suits the fingering weight yarn I used. I think this pattern would have been frustrating if I’d tried to use my Knit Picks or Addi needles, even though the addis are my usual go-to for socks. I used a long circular and had a “top” and “bottom” needle. Two dpns (with a third working needle) would work just as well.

You’re going to be knitting top-down with the two socks nested, with the outer one inside out. This arrangement keeps the yarns to the correct side of the socks slightly more easily. If you’ve done double knitting before, it’ll feel pretty similar, you just have to be very careful about not crossing your yarns inside the tube.

Casting on

CO 24 stitches in the round. Do 4 rounds of k1, p1 ribbing. (You could do this two at a time but it’s only 4 rows and this way you get to start on something easier.)

Get a second set of needles, do it again. (Cast on 24 stitches, do 4 rounds of k1 p1 ribbing)

Decide which is going to be sock A, the outside sock that you’re going to purl in reverse stockinette, and which will be sock B, the inside sock that you will knit in regular stockinette. If one of your yarns is a bit thicker than the other, you’ll want it to be sock A because the gauge is going to be slightly bigger and you might as well have the yarn help. This wouldn’t be as important on full sized socks, but it’s noticeable on such tiny ones. (Guess how I know…)

Close up of my socks showing the alternating stitches.

Arrange the two socks on one set of needles so that the stitches alternate. Sock A, sock B, A, B, A, B and so on. I put 24 stitches on one needle (12 of A, 12 of B) to be the top of foot, and the remaining 24 on a second needle to be the bottom of foot.

Move yarn A to the front and B to the back. I hold both yarns in my left hand, so I found it easier to keep A in front with my thumb while working B.

Leg

Leg Row: Purl A, Knit B 24 times being careful not to cross your yarns.

Knit for about one thumb width of stockinette/reverse stockinette, checking periodically to make sure your yarns haven’t crossed. My thumb is around 2cm or 3/4 of an inch if you prefer to use a ruler, but since this sock doesn’t have to fit anyone I’m sure your thumb will be good enough too. Or you can just eyeball it.

Checking the socks to make sure they’re still separate.

Heel flap

Go to whichever needle you’ve designated as the bottom and start the heel flap. This will be knit flat over only the bottom needle’s stitches.

Row 1: slip A, slip B, then [Purl A, Knit B] 11 times, turn work.

Row 2: slip B, slip A, then [Purl B, knit A] 11 times, turn work.

Repeat these rows 6 times, so you should have 6 slipped stitches up the side.

Turn heel

You’re going to be doing decreases now, which means you’ll have to rearrange the stitches so two A and two B yarns are next to each other.

Row 1: [purl A, knit B] 7 times, rearrange stitches for decreases, dec A (p2tog), dec B (ssk) turn.

Row 2: [purl B, knit A] 3 times, rearrange stitches dec B dec A turn.

Row 3: [purl A, knit B] …

Continue like this until dec is at end of each row 8? stitches per sock

Pick up 6 stitches along edge of flap, continue as before across sock, pick up 6 on other edge.

PK dec,

You likely will have a little hole at the heel, particularly on the outside socks that are stretched out a bit more. Rather than fussing over it, just plan to sew it closed at the end.

A pair of socks showcasing the gap at the heel turn.

Foot

Foot Row (same as leg): Purl A, Knit B 24 times being careful not to cross your yarns.

Knit in stockinette/reverse stockinette until the foot looks long enough to you. I once again used my thumb to measure and made it about the same length as the leg section.

Toe

Now here’s the part with the awkward p2togtbl so that you can match the k2tog. If you find it hard, sharper needles will tend to help. Also, since no one’s going to wear these and likely no one will care if the decreases don’t match, you could also just do a p2tog and call it a day if you want. You can graft the last few stitches if you want but these are so tiny that running the end through the last few stitches and pulling tight works fine.

Fiber Goals 2023: Mid-year check-in

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It’s the middle of the year, so it’s time for a mid-year look at how my 2023 fiber goals are going!

This year’s goals were:

  1. Toys
  2. Hand-dyed, Hand-spun
  3. Complicated Cables
  4. Patterns I own

Most of these are going pretty well.

Toys

I’ve done a lot of these! I already talked about a few in April, and last week I finished this summer’s mystery gnome from Imagined Landscapes:

“Gnifty” the gnome from “The More You Gnome” (now renamed to “Big Gnose” by my kid)

I still have some stuff queued for him and a bunny kit I haven’t started, but I feel like I’ve met the goal regardless. There will always be more fun things to make!

Hand Dyed, Hand Spun

The lighter lavender and peach colours in the gnome above were dyed by my kid, and I also used one of his minis for the egg. I still haven’t gotten around to using my own handspun so that’s still on my list. Maybe doing Tour de Fleece (starting today!) will help get me in the mood for that?

Complicated Cables

I haven’t even made a dent in this goal, other than finding some yarn for the Lucy Hauge pattern that I bought. I’m going to have to prioritize that shawl for the fall, I think. And I’ve got a half-formed idea to go with a rainbow yarn I got in the spring Gauge Dyeworks club, but I haven’t even swatched that yet so I’m not sure if it’ll fit into the rest of the year.

Right now I’m back to finishing a sweater plus two things I cast on for travel (some Socks on Vacay/Pride socks and a big shawl), plus I’d like to start some socks for my mom’s birthday which should take me to mid August. It’s funny to think that I only have enough time for maybe 3 more shawl-sized projects before the end of the year, but I’m not a fast knitter and I’m planning to do baubles in November then advent/countdown something in December, so that really leaves me Aug/Sept/Oct to do something and each shawl takes me around a month so… not much time left for cables! Maybe I better make sure some of my baubles have cables? Or socks with cables?

Patterns I own

I’m currently working my way through the Golden Poppy Sweater that has been in my queue since it released:

Golden poppy sweater in progress. It features a large “poppy” panel in mosaic knitting (looks a bit more snowflake-y in the white/blue colours), and decreasing stripes at the end of the sleeves.

And I started the “Bubbles of Joy” shawl which I bought as a kit intending it for travel in 2019 and then by 2020 I wasn’t doing travel so it’s been sitting in my stash for a while.

The “bubbles of joy” shawl in progress with my kid jumping on the mattress in the background.

The story with the pattern is that it’s supposed to help you capture memories of joy, so I started it and took it on my first trip to Ottawa since 2019. I particularly enjoyed how well it matched an afghan made by my grandmother that my mom’s using in her house now. I’ll try to get the picture up later — wordpress is complaining it’s too big and I don’t feel like dealing with manual resizing right this second.

I’m also currently revisiting the Stumptown Socks pattern which I already owned:

Stumptown Sock in progress at the Nepean Concert Band concert.

Plus I finished some Glitz Mitts from a book I owned back in January and I finished an advent from 2022 in the beginning of 2023 too so it counts. So the current breakdown of knit/crochet/weaving I have listed on Ravelry looks like this:

4 patterns I owned before 2023

2 plain weavings (no pattern to buy exactly although I did take the course)

2 free patterns (amigurumi heart, a sock pattern I haven’t shown yet)

2 patterns I made up (rainbow + socks, feather shawl)

5 new patterns I bought (the gnome, romi mystery shawl, easter egg, good bear, rcyc mcal)

On the embroidery front, it’s all been stuff from stash including the Constellation Sampler and Floral Necklaces, plus I’ve got a summer sampler and a bee sampler on the go now. (I did buy a couple of extra samplers this year but on average I’m using more than I purchase. Which is definitely not something I can say about my yarn habit.)

So even though it’s only a few patterns, the ratio of “cast on new exciting thing” to “actually use what you have” is feeling pretty good. Plus most of the new things I bought were to go with knitalongs, which scratch a bit of a community itch that’s been a bit hard of late so I don’t regret finding a few opportunities for that!

Overall

I’d say 2 goals are pretty much done, the 3rd has some progress, and the 4th has a plan. Not bad!

Embroidered Floral Necklaces

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Still catching up on finished projects! These three necklaces were from a kit that had been in my stash for a while, and I wanted something tiny and colourful after finishing up last year’s year-long constellation embroidery project.

Three necklace-sized embroideries of flowers.

I probably won’t wear them as necklaces. They’re small enough but a bit heavy and long, and honestly I mostly just wear shawls around my neck now. But they make lovely Christmas ornaments so I’ll probably put some loops on them and enjoy them that way instead.

I had some trouble getting the focus right because Hatch really wanted to help, including lying down on the blanket I was using as a photo backdrop:

Constellation Embroidery

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Last year, I decided to do this constellation embroidery sampler from Kiriki press as a year-long project, doing each zodiac constellation as it came up in the year and occasionally doing the other non-zodiac ones. (It took me a bit more than a year because I didn’t see any point in rushing during December when I had a bunch of other projects on the go — I should really start year-long projects in Februrary or something!)

I used gold metallic thread in place of the gold coloured thread that came with the kit. It looks great in person but it’s finicky and doesn’t show up as anything fancy in photos. But it looks great in my office, promise!

I got to use my favourite lazy finishing technique: cut a circle out of cardboard using the inner hoop as a template. Flip the edges of the fabric into the hoop, then squish the cardboard in. Done! Perfect for things that are going to hang and not be touched much (unlike the necklace embroideries, that need both stitching and glue).

What ever happened with those book reviews?

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Last summer, I had a moment where I put my book reviews on here. The first book post explains why:

I’ve been taking pictures of my library returns pile and doing little reviews in the captions of my Instagram, which is fun for sharing what I’m reading right now with my mom and friends but it’s not searchable or easy to find later, and Instagram is notorious for mystifying and often racist moderation policies so I worry that I should keep stuff I might want later in places I own. I tried cutting/pasting the reviews on Mastadon but the size limit is too short and half my pictures won’t upload without manually editing them. And I tried using LibraryThing but it’s a lot of work to add each book and cut/paste so I haven’t been consistent there yet either.

But then I stopped, so I just wanted to make a note about what happened.

We decided to up the post limit on Mastodon and I’ve gotten used to resizing photos on my phone, so my book reviews are going there (and sometimes still Instagram and Librarything) for now. I didn’t love how copying the reviews here weekly meant most of my posts here seemed to be about book reviews. Most of my crafts take a least a month to complete , but I read around 4-6 new kid books and 1-3 adult/young adult books or graphic novels per week so it doesn’t take much to overwhelm this blog.

I really love it when other people have monthly round up blog posts of what they’re crafting and what they’ve read on their blogs, so maybe I’ll see if I can manage something like that eventually.

Right now, though, blogging is hard to fit into my schedule and honestly more people read my stuff on Mastodon than here anyhow. So if you want to see new book reviews from me, go to https://social.afront.org/@terri — you don’t have to sign up for anything, and you can even add it into your rss feed reader or whatever. My husband owns afront.org so it’s not going anywhere and if you know me and want an account invite, let me know.

Some projects for my kid: heart, good bear, egg

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A few kid presents I made so far in 2023:

Heart Amigurumi

Two small amigurumi hearts in pink and red.
A set of two amigurumi (crocheted) hearts.

Made these for my kid around Valentine’s day (although we don’t really celebrate that one).

Ravelry project link: https://www.ravelry.com/projects/terriko/heart-amigurumi

Good Bear

A small knitted bear wearing a green hat, green jacket, beige sweater (only barely visible) and blue pants.
A small knitted bear wearing a green hat, green jacket, beige sweater (only barely visible) and blue pants.

This is a Susan B Anderson pattern with a kit from her store (Barrett Wool Co.). I love these kits: they’re well designed and have carefully thought out techniques. I didn’t love this thinner version of the yarn as much as I liked the thick one I used for the giraffe I did — it’s very rustic in a good way, but a bit more finicky and less squishy in the smaller size — but it was still well suited for the task. Kiddo has named him “Green Bear” for now, a name with much honour since it is his favourite colour. He chose the buttons, which are a ladybug and a plane. I’m so glad I have a stash of kid buttons for this sort of thing since he loves digging through them to choose some for each of these animals. I went really lazy and used the plastic cotter pins used on the card to also attach them to the bear.

Easter Egg

A knitted easter egg featuring a colourwork motif with lines and diamonds.
A knitted easter egg featuring a colourwork motif with lines and diamonds.

This one is from a pattern by Stacey Lewis, the designer who makes all the baubles I highly enjoyed in November/December 2022. (They’re just so satisfying and quick!) She knits it with a plastic egg as insert, which looks less lumpy, but my kid *loves* playing catch with soft things so I turned it into a bean bag.

The Dread Pirate Kid dyed the white/yellow/blue contrast yarn. It looks so good! And it checks off a 2023 fiber goal: using our hand dyed yarn!

2023 Rose City Yarn Crawl MCAL – Hekataion

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The local yarn crawl always has two mystery-a-longs: one for crocheters and one for knitters. I decided to do the crochet one this year, largely because the designer seemed interesting and had some good designs in her portfolio.

A crochet shawl in progress featuring three moons (two crescents with a full moon in the centre). A copy of the audiobook "The Dragon with the Chocolate Heart" is in front of the piece, and a narwhal themed bag is behind it.
Mystery Crochet center panel in progress, featuring a three moon motif.

Although you can see from the photo above, I mostly crochet with audiobooks (and Dragon with the Chocolate Heart was lovely), this was simple enough that I was able to read a physical book as well. And boy did I need to: there was a *lot* of single crochet and counting. Boring! But it did make for some striking results.

Finished version of the Hekataion shawl done in red and white. it features three moons (crescent, full, other crescent) in the centre panel, with long triangular "wings" to either side with a few stripes and tassels on the tips.
Finished Hekataion shawl

My gauge loosened up considerably while crocheting this, which was good for my hands but made the shape a little weird. Thankfully, it was a very forgiving design since you sew the two side triangles onto the center panel at the end, and the seams sit over my shoulders in such a way that they’re not particularly noticeable when worn even though that’s where the gauge change would be most visible.

Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have chosen to crochet this if it weren’t a mystery since I’m not really into giant moon motifs *or* giant piles of single crochet. As a *mystery* it was decidedly non-mysterious. The first clue and last clue make the same wings, and the design was pretty apparent from clue 2 so 3-4 weren’t much of a mystery either. Despite my worries about the sheer amount of flat crochet, I managed to do it without making my wrists sore, but it took some intentional choices and resting to make that work.

Complaints aside: I enjoyed learning to do crochet intarsia colourwork to make the moons, and it was a striking piece to wear out to the one shop we visited this year. And technically I met a 2023 fiber goal because I bought the pattern before 2023 but since it only came out in December it only barely counts. I think I’ll go back to my policy of waiting until clue 2 spoilers are available before deciding if it’s worth doing the mystery-a-longs next year, but it was neat to do it as intended this year, and I got to use up most of three balls from my stash!

Vulnerability Scanning for Free (as in Puppies)

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I’m giving a talk at pyCascades this afternoon and I just wanted to share the slides for folk who like that kind of thing.

PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/125cCmmk8k5UtfV3QajNOXml1YW5nxM2i/view?usp=sharing

ODP (LibreOffice Impress) : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u3_5LQUYYPiv9hSCbcgG_gOGn96a-di2/view?usp=sharing (Contains notes but they’re an early talk draft)

Google Docs version (not the original, probably has minor formatting issues but may be easier to view on your phone) : https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/149coIJnNdIsW7NWkQjv5jaKAHboHBxVLgx2lOS2oZfk/edit?usp=sharing

CVE Binary Tool source repository: https://github.com/intel/cve-bin-tool

CVE Binary Tool documentation: https://cve-bin-tool.readthedocs.io/

The slides below are just images (no alt text or notes — if you want those see the ODP link above). I’m planning to update them with something closer to the talk content after the conference but it might take a while.

Rainbow Heart Mitts (Glitz Mitts)

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1

I live in a part of the Pacific Northwest that doesn’t get *that* cold, so I mostly get by with fingerless gloves. But then I got a dog and when I’m doing the last dog walk of the night it can be a bit nippy, so I switch to full mitts, the same ones I wear I go home to Canada in winter.

This should have worked perfectly except…

  • The warmer mitts don’t fit in my pocket, so I forgot them a lot on night walks.
  • Even when I remembered them, I wound up taking them off repeatedly so I could use my phone while Hatch checked his pee-mail.
a nearly complete mitt with a dog chomping a muppet-like toy on the background.

So I made new mitts! The pattern is the Glitz Mitts from Knit Happy with Self Striping Yarn. I liked the fact that they’re knit with two different weights of yarn, and I made one of them alpaca for extra warmth. But then instead of closing the thumbs up I put in a few rounds of ribbing and left them open.

Two colourwork hand knitted mitts featuring rainbow hearts and open thumbs.

Turns out you only really need your thumb to play Pikmin while walking the dog, so they’re perfect! ❤️

Happy hands, happy dog. Hatch is sitting on my chair with the finished mitts on his back.

Winter Skies Cowl

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My first finish for 2023 was the Winter Skies Cowl. This was an advent kit combining West Coast Yarn with a modular knitting pattern from PNW Knit Designs. It was pretty neat to get charts on little cards for easier mixing and matching!

Preparing to seam the cowl after the knitting was done

The colour palette was listed beforehand so I knew I’d be getting something much more muted than my usual choices, which was fun. I hadn’t thought about it beforehand but it fits pretty well with my silver/charcoal jacket.

Terri wearing her Winter Skies Cowl.

I don’t knit cowls much any more because they’ve been consistently my least worn knits, but with Hatch in my life now I do a lot more walking late at night when it’s cold enough to actually use one, so this one gets used nearly daily even though it’s too hot to wear during the day.

Hatch telling me it’s time to stop knitting and play fetch.

This was a joy to knit and even though it was my last advent kit finished, I never felt rushed or sick of it because I could change up the pattern as I went to fit my mood. The whole kit included stitch markers and beautiful scissors and stickers and it was really well thought out and fun. I’m so glad I got this one!

Terri wearing her Winter Skies cowl, new glasses, and a handknit sweater.

Pixel rainbow quilt layout

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Honestly, this is mostly a test of the Mastodon posting thing which apparently only works if I start a post from the web and not the app. (Unlike the Dreamwidth posting tool, which is clearly superior)

But here’s a picture of my new quilt in progress so that this is kind of a real post too.

A set of 5 inch quilt squares laid out in a rainbow-ish gradient.

This is squares from 5 (or maybe 6?) different “charm packs” of 5 inch squares from Craft Emporium PDX. The packs are relatively cheap so I kind of accumulated a few before I had a plan for them.

Kicking off the GSoC 2023 season

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Yesterday was my favourite of all US holidays, MLK Day. I won’t pretend to have a deep connection to it (I’m not American after all) but it’s a day off exactly when I need some volunteer time every year and that’s a wonderful gift of a day.

I’m once again spearheading the Google Summer of Code effort for the Python Software Foundation. The website is updated as of yesterday so you can read about it there and I’m not gonna write any more blurbs: https://python-gsoc.org/

I took over coordinating Python in 2013 (though I did Mailman and Systers before that) and now that I’ve noticed last year was my 10th year with Python I’m kind of sad I didn’t throw a party for myself. Oh well! But my fellow coordinators got community awards last year so that’s pretty celebratory!

PS – We’re always open to taking on new projects who want to mentor new contributors. If you’re interested, see the link above for details. We’ll be opening signups later in the week after the admin team meets and makes sure the signup system is ready to go.

Fiber goals 2023

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For the past many years I’ve done fiber goals in lieu of new year’s resolutions. They’re a kind of fun way to direct my crafting for the year. I usually focus on some skill building, some “use the supplies you already have” type planning, and some things that I wouldn’t naturally do without a goal that I revisit every few months. Links to previous years are at the bottom of the post, but let’s start with this year’s goals!

1. Toys. my kid loves the gnomes and I should binge on making him stuff while he’s still into that. Probably some cute veggies and stuff for pretend play since he’s been loving making fake foods, and also some uber-cute amigurumi stuff because he’s been leaning in to cuteness lately. Maybe another Susan B Anderson pattern since I really enjoyed the giraffe? Or more video game stuff? Plus if you’ve seen any cute dog patterns, let me know!

2. Hand-dyed, hand-spun. I’ve got a nice stash of yarns dyed by my kid and myself, as well as some handspun yarns I’ve made that are currently just sitting around. Let’s try to make something with at least one of each this year, but hopefully more?

3. Complicated cables. Using the motifs from the Japanese stitch dictionary my brother gave me has me itching to do more fancy stuff. I’ve long admired Lucy Hague’s Celtic Cables and more recently I’ve been interested in Paola Albergamo’s designs (have you seen Lightbeams?) and I just queued this cool Entwined Queen’s shawl, so I’m sure I can find at least a few patterns to try.

4. Patterns I own. I own a lot of patterns that I’ve never knit. Some I even bought yarn for, but a lot are because I wanted something else in the magazine/collection, they were free for a limited time/with purchase, or sometimes I buy patterns as a tipping mechanism for designers whose work I admire. I recently made mitts for my mom from a pattern I don’t even remember buying and they’re really great, so I want to poke around my collection a bit and see what else I’m missing. Let’s try to do at least 2 from patterns bought before 2023. (I’ll also count the last few years of knitty patterns in here, at least since I joined the Patreon.) Since I knit about 12-20 things per year, that definitely won’t stop me from buying new patterns but hopefully will encourage me to look through my list!

Other ideas/brainstorming:

I always start this list around when I do my mid-year checkin and generate a lot of ideas before I settle on 4. Here’s the ones that didn’t make the cut — they’re still good ideas, just maybe I’m not ready to commit to working on them right now.

Stash related goals: Actually calculating in/out to see how things are going. More knitting machine experiments to use yarn faster? More organization (there’s still a few boxes that haven’t been properly integrated into the new box sorting system). Someone was talking about using 2023g of yarn in 2023 and maybe I could try that?

Two-colour projects / Perfect pairings: I have a nice stash of pairs of yarn, but I need to use more of them because I’m acquiring pairs faster than I use them (and the box where I keep them is a bit on the over-full side). I do the big Romi mystery shawl once per year and sometimes also do the rose city yarn crawl one (though this year they upped it to 3 skeins so no help there), but I think i need to plan for some non-mystery uses. Also, I haven’t done double-knitting in a while and maybe I should? Or brioche?

Sweater stash: I currently have a few sweater quantities of yarn: a Golden Poppy kit from Black Squirrel Berkley, a fade set from Space Cadet that I’ve got a few pattern ideas for, and a Knit Picks Barnsdall Cardi kit with blue and white yarns that I honestly don’t even know if it’s worth doing now. Plus I’ve got a few big mini sets that could reasonably become sweaters but don’t have patterns selected yet: a set of summer solstice minis from Teal Torch Knits, and a Kitty Pride Fibers summertime minis set that could be something else but I kind of have my heart set on a stripey sweater, and I’ve got a smaller set from Alwan Sultan Fibers that I really want as the bottom to a sweater. 6 sweaters-in-waiting is a lot if I only knit one per year (though some could and maybe should be switched to non-sweater use), so maybe try for two (or more!) in 2023.

Embroidery. I had fun with the big year-long constellations project, maybe there’s something else I could set up for myself with quarterly kits or something? I have some kiriki press dolls, and a lot of kits left over from my Fireside Textiles patreon subscription that I really do want to do, plus a few tiny necklaces and stuff.

Sewing: make pants. Try that spiral-rainbow skirt mentioned on epbot (apparently the pattern is peppermint swirl). Do something fun with my fireside textiles stash (try contrast triangle panels & pockets in the act of sewing skirt?)

Quilting: Maybe a monthly block project? Plus I’ve got the Adventureland kit to finish and a half baked plan of putting my charm packs into something gradient-ish.

Kits: I still have kits to use. They’re not out of control or anything, but it’s always good to go through them and make sure I actually get to make them or consider gifting them to someone else if I don’t. As well as the knitting ones, I even have a felting kit that I haven’t finished.

Prune the queue: My ravelry queue has over 100 things in it, some of which are just not going to happen: some were added when my kid was little before I knew what he would and wouldn’t like, some of which were added when I actually wore worsted weight sweaters, etc. It’s time to move more things to favourites if I don’t actually have plans to knit them.

Smaller Shawls: Is it time to revisit this much-delayed goal from 2020? I still love wearing smaller shawls, but I’ve been focusing on bigger knits because I don’t need to carry them to work and because honestly I need sweaters more now that I’m walking the dog after dark. So maybe not this year.

Knitty patterns. I’ve sponsored the Knitty magazine for a while now through their Patreon, and not only do they have regular new patterns but they also have a pretty intriguing back catalogue. I’ve knit a few knitty patterns and they tend to be pretty great, but I don’t always think to look there for stuff.

Organize the books/magazines. I’ve got a few books and magazines full of patterns, and some of them don’t much use because it’s not ready to search them. I’d like to spend time getting those books up on a single shelf in our library downstairs so they’re easy to search, maybe list them in my ravelry library so they’ll show up in searches better, and of course actually knit some designs!

Weaving. I’ve really wanted to do a class at Craft Emporium PDX for weaving but it felt not viable as covid numbers surged. But I still want to do it and at this point they’re one of few places still requiring masks.

Tunisian crochet. I thought after my one shawl took a year that I probably was done with this, but now that I have the hook I kind of want to try a sampler scarf or something just to try some stitches. Could even do this as a year long 12 months of stitches to try?

Spinning. Do more spinning year-round, somehow, because blitzing for Tour de Fleece hurts my hands and I need to keep the muscles in shape. I thought the swatch-a-long might work for that but it hasn’t so far, so I may need a new spinning goal. Monthly minis or some sort of year-round rainbow thing? Trying more bulky yarns? Maybe having something like a shawl or blanket that I’m adding to year round? I was pretty happy with how the different weight yarns worked in my Steggie so maybe that would be an idea?

e-spinning: try to really get to know my new eew nano 2. I love the idea of an e-spinner but mostly I actually like treadling so given the choice I turn to the big wheel. But I need to spin more to build the muscles I need so maybe a portable setup is the way to go? (Also one my kid is less interested in sticking papers in…)

Previous Years