It’s March! Traditionally, February is the month where I used to feel the worst when I lived in Canada, likely because it’s when you’re sick of winter and the dark, but honestly it didn’t seem so bad this year, possibly because I wasn’t in winter in December so I haven’t really gotten sick of it. It’s amusing that the number of people with masks on the bus seems to go up when it gets cold — a nice n95 really keeps the face warm, I guess. Even I keep mine on on the walk from the bus stop some days just for the warmth!
A very fluffy (Eastern) Blue Jay with a peanut as large as his brain stuffed in his mouth. He’s sitting on a wooden railing overlooking my snowy backyard. He was actually even more fluffy a moment before I took the photo. The weird pattern is from the screen door on my patio.
Possibly I’m not sick of it because of the sheer relief of being here and not there, though. As exhausting as it is to live in a house where you can’t find anything because it’s “in a box” and hasn’t yet been unearthed or it’s been broken by the movers’s terrible packing, it’s hard not to watch people’s driver’s licenses get yoinked overnight in Kansas and think “I’m so glad I got out before they yoinked my work permit like that.” One of my new co-workers was aghast that I’d abandon a green card, but I’d definitely reached the point where no amount of getting paid more was worth the risks of being declared illegal at any moment. And then I wasn’t even getting paid more. Though I *did* just get my promised partial annual bonus from the old job so that was nice.
New job is working out, even if it doesn’t pay as well. I like my new co-workers and we have interesting discussions about technology and security. I’m less excited about the constant AI push in corporate land (it feels every single Microsoft product is yelling at me all the time), but I only have to use the parts that have a clear benefit to my work flow, so that’s something. I’m spending a lot of time on the bus to commute and although I miss having more time with my kid at home, I do like having dedicated time where I don’t get interrupted. I’ve been enjoying podcasts, audiobooks, mentally writing stories and just having time to think about whatever. I’m not thrilled to have been hired as hybrid and told I’ll be going back to work 5 days a week in the fall (I definitely wouldn’t have applied for this job if it had been listed as 100% in office) but I’m trying to wait and see how it works out in practice.
This month’s palette was pretty much built around matching those cute corgi stamp stickers.
Stickers
Corgi food stamp stickers – bought in Japantown San Jose but I don’t know the artist/company.
Pelikan Pura <B> – Endless Alchemy Golden Sunburst. I mostly bought this ink as a fidget because of the lovely bottle which is designed to be swirled, but I decided to see how I like it in a pen too.
TWSBI Eco <1.1 stub> – Diamine Apple Glory. I bought this ink specifically for this pen!
Pilot Metropolitan <CM> – Ikebana Cowslip. Accidentally got some green ink on the nib while wiping it off after filling, so this may not be the right colour in my notebook. Oh well!
Pilot E95S <M> – Diamine Marie Rose. From the latest inkvent.
Creative space: My office is set up enough to be usable for work and for writing, haven’t quite figured out the desk situation enough work on painting yet. There are still a lot of boxes but I’ve switched most of them to be clear ones so I can at least find things, and I suspect there’s at least a couple of boxes missing still. I’ve got an initial stationary shelf started (see photo below) but I’m thinking I’ll use drawers for most of my inks and samples and I haven’t decided where in the shelf those should go.
Crafting for the climate: Finished a scarf for my kid and a sweater for me. Still working on a very complicated scarf for my husband, but it’s definitely not getting finished before it warms up this year!
Painting with fountain pen ink: not set up for this yet but I did get some more watercolour painting books from the library so I’ve got some exercises to do once I figure out where the heck my watercolour paper got packed (or give up and buy more; I’ll use it eventually.)
Writing: wrote a bunch of fanfic for a valentines event and I’m really happy with how things turned out. Got a few things in progress and with all the ao3 downtime the past couple of days I fit some extra writing time in.
This year is the 10th year I’ll be doing fiber goals, and I wanted to revisit some previous year’s goals, so I’m starting by making myself a mega post with all of them to contemplate. Fiber goals are meant to be fun things that bring me joy, and organizing them like this helps me prioritize some fun things in my life. So many new years resolutions are kind of chores or guilt-based, and I’d like to avoid that!
It’s kind of interesting to see the progression of what I’ve learned and where I put my focus over the years. Most of these goals were successful. There’s a few that I don’t need to revisit: the pants and that quilt are done and I’m not doing them again! But a lot of these could be revisited with new projects — I definitely have more gift yarn and brioche patterns and a few more “famous” patterns in my queue, plus I’ve got lots of beautiful stash that I want to use.
I still spend more time knitting than using fountain pens but you wouldn’t know it from the blog posts I write! So let’s do a bit of an update.
In September / October a group of fediverse folk do “Finish or Frog Along” (formerly Fall Finish Along, but now with a better name for people in the southern hemisphere!) and honestly, I’ve looked forwards to it since last year. I started with 5 things on my list then added 2 more as I finished things:
Clasped Weft weaving
Sweater Ornament
Pigeon Embroidery
Purple spin
Crown Wools
Rainbow Shawl (bonus goal)
Frog knit RPG scarf (bonus goal)
FinishOrFrogAlong is run by ConsumableJoy and I really appreciated the prompts that went with it for helping me think regularly about finishing and get a community doing the same. Plus it’s just really fun seeing everyone finishing things and cheering each other on. Especially since it’s a multi-craft affair so the projects are all so different!
I kind of want to have something similar for stash usage on the other side of the year and I’ve been trying to think about how to organize that. But for today’s post, let’s just talk about what I finished or didn’t finish!
Clasped Weft Weaving
Not finished.
Image Description: A weaving in progress on a rigid heddle loom. it uses two colours of variegated yarn, one grey/brown and the other blue/green. It’s a sampler showing multiple types of pattern that can be made with a pick up stick.
I was really hoping to finish this piece which I started in April during “weaving month” as I rotated through my lesser-used crafts. But while I pulled it out and got it all set up, I only actually wove less than an inch during Finish and Frog along, so rather than being the thing I finished first like I thought when I set up the list, it became the biggest “fail” on my list.
Some of this was because I didn’t really know what to do next — I’d been iterating through exercises in a book and had to return it to the library, and when I bought my own copy I realized I should have taken pictures of all my sticky note flags so I’d be able to restart easily, and instead I had to puzzle it out.
But the other thing is that my current weaving setup doesn’t fit very well into my life, so I have to be more intentional about making time for it and I can’t do it while curled up with the dog in my recliner in the evenings, and as a result it feels like a hassle. There’s some things I can do about that: I can put the loom in a better spot where I can reach it when I’m in crafting mode not during dog cuddle time, I can grab audiobooks so I can multitask, and I really need to spend some time getting a bag so it’s easier to carry the loom and the yarn and shuttles and everything all together so it’s an option when I’m feeling overstimulated and just need to hang out upstairs or downstairs on my own for a bit.
But in the end it winds up feeling much the way I feel about quilting: I don’t hate it but it doesn’t quite fit into my life and it feels like a chore. A stranger commented “to everything there is a season” on one of my griping quilting posts with the explanation that it’s perfectly reasonable to save quilting for another part of my life when I don’t have a young child and a puppy and a full time job and a pandemic. And after two months of thinking I should make time for weaving and then just not doing it, I think it’s time to accept that this is not the season of weaving in my life. And that’s ok: I don’t have to be completely obsessed with every skill I learn or thing I do.
I will note that it’s a bit strange that I don’t feel this way about spinning, which similarly is hard to do curled up in a chair with a book. But the solution with spinning has been to enjoy it during a couple of sprints rather than do it year round: I enjoy Tour De Fleece, I get in a bit more during Finish or Frog Along, and last year I also did the 100 day stashdown from Jillian Moreno’s patreon. I think I may need to find some similar sprints for weaving if I want to do it, or (as I have with quilting) let it just be a sometimes craft in my life. I was really tempted by the Sweet Georgia winter weave-a-long that is happening now, but I’d need to finish what’s on the loom now before I could start it.
I’m still *intending* to finish up what’s on the loom now, and after I spent time writing about it I finally did pick it up in the last week of November. But it’s mostly taking a back seat while I finish my holiday knitting and stuff so I don’t know that I’ll finish it in time to really join the weave-a-long or if I should take the opportunity to pack up the loom in preparation for moving next year.
So, total fail on *finishing* this project, but it forced a lot of good introspection about whether this craft was suiting me and how to make it work better in my life.
Sweater Ornament
Finished!
Image Description: A small embroidery kit including a nice round yarn holder, a piece of felt pre-printed with an embroidery pattern (a sweater with a sheep and yarn on it) and a small bag with a camping motf.
This is from cute Christmas ornament kit that I bought last year. I finished one then, one this year, and maybe I’ll do the last next year. I remembered to put the year on this time!
Image Description: A small Christmas ornament style embroidered felt sweater with the year stitched on the back.
I have to say, I really loved these kits: Knitted Bliss really puts together a nice set with the nicer thread holders, a magnetic needle keeper, needle threader, and everything for the 3 ornaments. This may be the nicest embroidery kit I’ve ever had, with a lot of thought put into how it would be used so the whole experience is just really lovely. (No thin paper to hold thread! Everything well labelled, and big photos to go with the instructions.) I highly recommend this kit and will probably get more from her when I’ve got space for more embroidery stuff.
Image Description: My finished embroidered sweater ornament viewed from the front. It has a yarn bowl with a sheep on it filled with yarn on the front of a white (felt) sweater with pink ribbing at neck/sleeves/hem. There is a small clothes hanger stuck in between the two halves of the ornament that were sewn together, so the hanger can be hung on a Christmas tree or otherwise displayed.
Pigeon Embroidery
Not finished, but that’s the expected result.
Image Description: Pigeon embroidery in a hoop. The chest feathers have been mostly finished but the rest isn’t done yet. There is a bee & honeycomb magnetic needle minder attached to the hoop near the pigeon’s head.
I mostly wanted to put this one into the finishing rotation to avoid hand strain without feeling like I should be working on something on the list. Embroidery fills a weird niche in my crafting repertoire as a hand break because it uses my muscles differently yet keeps my hands busy so I don’t wind up with repetitive strain, so I usually have one on the go with no particular deadline for finishing. I usually finish one or two of these per year unless I’m feeling particularly excited about one or doing something very small.
Purple spin
Finished!
Image Description: Long draw spinning in progress: my wooden spinning wheel set up with some hanks of fiber sitting on top as a prepare to spin.
This was another long draw spin from Tour de France Femmes this summer. I’m really enamoured of long draw and am starting to feel actually proficient. I wanted to do a 3 ply since I have the EEW lazy kates and could do it more easily, and I intentionally chose to let the colours mix in plying. It looks nice, but I think I like more of a gradient than a blend so I’ll probably plan differently next 3-ply. Still, I’m looking forwards to knitting with this and maybe I’ll like it more once it’s knit up!
Image Description: Plying setup on an EEW Lazy Kate: three plies of purple singles waiting to be plied.Image Description: Purple 3-ply spin all done and twisted into a pretty yarn skein. There are multiple shades of purple all mixed.
Crown Wools
Finished!
Image Description: Crown Wools wrap: a rainbow wrap made with 12 different colours of yarn and 12 different textures. It’s a large bias-knit parallelogram but has been curled into something more like a circle for the photo.
This was my year-long project, slightly condensed so that it would finish in September for the event. I loved doing this and have it displayed in my office, but I do need to acknowledge that while I love the curated sets of rainbow minis that come with these sorts of things, they’re pretty much my least frequently worn items because they’re just a bit too big to be practical for the way I move and do stuff.
I’ve picked out a blanket and some rainbow stash yarn for next year’s ongoing project (it may take more than a year, I’m not sure yet). I may also consider some complicated colourwork sweater stuff for future ongoing project planning if I can figure out a nice way to divide that up over a few months. Inches per body or maybe something with colourwork that I can split up?
Rainbow Shawl (bonus goal)
Knitting still in progress, but charts are finished!
Image Description: My design for a rainbow wrap in progress, showing colours going from red to blue. I had made a mistake on one side (you can see a bulge marked by a lollipop stitch marker where the problem occurred) and had to rip back two sections so I wouldn’t run out of yarn.
After I finished 2 things on my initial list of 5 I added a few extras and this is one of them! This was a personal design project that I started before my local yarn shop went online-only, before the pandemic. I feel like I was an entirely different person. But I’d taken enough notes and had the physical object, so I fixed up the charts and knit a bunch more repeats. I’ve got a few colours left but i decided to do a Clapotis for Knitty’s Clapotisfest and I want to make winter socks for my mom before shipping gets overloaded in December, so I’ll finish this later. I’m really happy with it and would like to actually make a good free pattern out of it eventually but I have to at least finish the knitting to take pictures before I get to that point!
Frog knit RPG scarf (bonus goal)
Frogged!
Image Description: The scarf pre-frogging, showing that I only barely finished one motif and it didn’t look like much. Although the photo makes the contrast look ok, it was veyr hard to see in real life.
This was a neat knitting RPG concept where you rolled dice and got different charts to go with the story, but I chose yarns that weren’t working for me and I wasn’t having a good time so I bailed on the MKAL. I usually frog stuff right away but for a variety of reasons I didn’t do it right then.
Image Description: The yarn just after frogging (ripping out). It looks a lot like dried ramen noodles, all wavy.
So many years later, I had to frog and steam the yarn so it’s ready for re-use. Though I’m not sure what I’d use it in since I’d bought the yarns to be used together then didn’t like them for colourwork. Maybe some brioche instead? Problem for future me.
Image Description: The frogged yarn sitting on my ironing board with a clothes steamer, used to steam the yarn and straighten it out so it can be more easily re-used.
In conclusion…
One frogged, 3 finished, 3 still going (although one of those at least had charts finished, so that should probably count!). I had a great time finishing and frogging this year and I like that this is becoming enough part of fediverse crafting culture that I wasn’t the only one looking forwards to it.
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.
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 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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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):
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:
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!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Divide stitches into two equal parts and hold the front/knit sides of the piece together, with the back/purl side facing out.
Cut a length of yarn 3 times as wide as the graft and thread the end onto a yarn needle.
Insert the needle knitwise through the first stitch on both needles and pull the yarn through.
Pull the back stitch off the needle.
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)
Pull the front stitch off the needle
repeat 3-6 until two stitches remain then go though and pull them both off
Short reminder for future Terri:
From front go through both knitwise, pull off last (back)
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.
[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.
“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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
I bought these lovely yarns from the ChemKnits Spring Mini Series. My kid and I have been enjoying her tutorials for dyeing yarn with food colouring, and so I thought this would be a nice way to support the channel and give me and kiddo a week of videos to watch. Plus he loves rainbows. He didn’t watch all of them with me, but we did a bunch!
Kiddo enjoying the yarn.
I was looking at my 2022 Fiber Goals and decided to try doing two at once: rainbows and skipping the pattern. But in case I decide to make a pattern later, I’m putting some notes here. If you’re an experienced knitter this is probably enough to knit this shawl. If you’re not comfortable doing stuff like using a stitch dictionary to fill in a different pattern into a space, this may not be enough for you. (There’s lots of great other patterns out there though! If you like rainbows and don’t love garter stitch, I recommend Shannon Squire’s Spell Shawl which is great for fading)
Full view of the shawl after blocking
Shaping: My spring rainbow shawl is an asymmetric triangle (because it’s one of the shapes I wear most).
Starting: co 7. K3, place edge marker, k5.
Right side row: work edge pattern, slip marker, k2tog, work body pattern, then knit + yarn over + knit in one stitch then k1 for a double increase at the end. (1 dec + 2 inc = 1 inc for the whole row.)
Wrong side row: k4, do body pattern, do edge pattern (no stitch count changes)
Colour changes: I 2-row striped a few times between colours to get a bit of a fade. I sort of eyeballed it to start striping in the last 25% of the ball (so around 5g of the 20g skein) then striped until I ran out of the first colour. I actually ran right to the end of the first colour then cut the second colour and spliced it in rather than worry about whether I’d have enough for the full two rows.
Body: I don’t love garter stitch, but I like some of the properties of it: it lies pretty flat and it doesn’t take much brainpower to knit it. With that in mind, I dug through stitch dictionaries and settled on a pattern that was basically k2, p2 ribbing for 4 rows, 2 rows (1 ridge) of garter stitch, then swap it so the knit sections have purls above and vice versa, then another garter ridge and swap back.
Lazy chart: – is purl on right side, knit on wrong. ” ” Is knit on right side, purl on wrong.
Edge: #249 from the Japanese knitting stitch Bible.
Note that the body pattern is a 12 row repeat and the edge chart is not, which would make this annoying to put into a single chart. So just do them separately and it’s no big deal.
Bind off: I finished my striping to finish the blue and fully switch to purple, then swapped to chart #246 from the Japanese stitch dictionary. I did a bit of math to see how many repeats I could fit, and since it wasn’t exact, i continued doing the k-yo-k increases until I had one more complete repeat.
Terri is wearing a rainbow shawl and a rainbow sweater, because one can never have too many rainbows.
Steven the Bat socks with the bag from the Halloween countdown set
Years ago, a friend named the local bat who appears in the evenings at our house “Steven.” Since I can’t identify humans in the dark let alone bats, we have henceforth declared that all bats are named Steven. Which is why it’s especially appropriate to have two Stevens on your socks.
This isn’t a complete, perfectly tested pattern, but rather a recipe of components I used that you can adapt to suit you. I’m going with “the perfect is the enemy of the done” and posting what I can manage now rather than trying to be like a professional designer. As a result, this is not a beginner pattern. You’ll need a copy of the Japanese Knitting Stitch Bible until I get around to making my own charts for the cables. Have fun!
Yarn
I used a delightful sock set from Valkyrie Fibers that came with the Kitty With A Cupcake Halloween box. You can use any sock set or yarns with decent contrast between them (for the colourwork) and a tonal or solid main colour (for the cables).
Stitch count / Gauge
I did my socks on 64 stitches and a US 1 needle because that works for me. The cable in these isn’t too big so whatever you use normally for plain stockinette socks will likely work for you. If you need more or fewer stitches, increase or decrease in units of 4 so the colourwork section on the bottom can be extended or reduced to fit.
Toe
I did my socks toe up on 64 stitches. I use a rounded toe as follows:
Cast on 24 stitches (12 for top, 12 for bottom) using Judy’s magic cast on.
Increase row: top: k1, m1r, k to 1 before end of top, m1l, k1. Bottom: same.
Increase every row until you reach 26 stitches per side (52 total). K one row, add another increase row, k 2 rows, add another increase row, k3 rows, add a final increase row (32 stitches per side, 64 total)
I knit around .65 inch of plain knit rows after this to get the bat to sit where I wanted.
Bat Chart
Do the top chart (starting at the center line row) for Steven. You can repeat the chart twice or do as I did and use the + motif (bottom right) to fill out the bottom. This just means fewer long floats on the bottom of the sock.
If you start at the bottom of the chart like I did, the bats will be head-up to others but head down to you. I kind of like it this way, but if you don’t then just start at the top of the chart instead.
Cable
I knit another 8 rows plain before starting the cable. I used 1 repeat of motif 101 from the Japanese Knitting Stitch Bible, and added a border of two purls and a knit through the back loop on either side. I lined it up directly over Steven’s head; note that this uses an odd number of stitches so you will have one extra on one side.
Heel
I used a center-increase heel. Since my toes are wider than my ankles, I don’t quite increase all the way to double my bottom stitch count, so i increased to 60 stitches instead of 64. As a result, after turning the heel i have 60 stitches in total. I used a slip stitch heel and switched to the contrast colour when i started working on the heel stitches only.
Leg
Continue the cable pattern in front. If desired you can repeat it on the back too. If you did like I did and decreased your stitch count note again that your numbers for the back will be different than the front. I continued for two repeats of the cable because that lined up nicely, but you can do whatever.
Cuff
I used motif 200 from the Japanese Knitting Stitch Bible. This is a 6 stitch motif, so if you used a different number of stitches than I did you might have to either increase/decrease/add an extra rib. I used the contrast colour.
Photos
Happy Halloween!
Steven the Bat socks with the charm bracelet from the Halloween boxSteven the Bat socks. A set of handknit socks modeled on feet. They feature a colourwork bat, a cable motif along the top of the foot and front/back of the leg, a contrast-colour slipped stitch heel, and a fancy cuff also in the contrast colour.
This one’s for all the folk who might not “look” queer: the bi folk in “straight” relationships, the trans and non-binary folk who maybe don’t “look” queer to outsiders, the ace folk, and everyone else who struggles with whether they’re really “queer enough” for a LGBTQA+ space. This free shawl pattern is intended as a gift to the many people who’ve wondered how they fit in as well as those who are gloriously out.
Queer Enough Shawl modelled by the designer, Terri Oda. It is a crescent shaped shawl featuring rays made from lace and tiny cables. The shawl has been made in bright rainbow colours.
I’m going to warn your right now that the name “Queer Enough” is also a pun on “Clear Enough” — I’m intentionally not writing out all the details because I’m worried if I aim to make it perfect and beginner-friendly it’ll never get out there. As such, I’d say this pattern requires intermediate-level pattern reading skills or the sort of mind that sees patterns easily. You might have to search for your own tutorials if you need ’em. But I know you can do it! You’re resourceful! Go you!
And if you’re the sort of person who *loves* filling in these details and just knows you can make this pattern better, please get in touch because I’m happy to have it improved, I just didn’t want to block myself from releasing it. I do plan to improve it as I go if I can.
This shawl was originally knit as part of the Quiet Queer Craftalong, a June-July knit-a-long intended to encourage folk to make things using patterns from queer designers and materials from queer dyers, kit makers, and more. I consider myself queer enough that this should count, but I always encourage you to also purchase patterns/materials from queer folk who make fiber arts part of their regular income! (I’m a computer security person professionally and get paid more than enough to be able to give away patterns but not everyone can afford to do that.)
Edit Aug 9, 2022: Added little repeat charts for each section. Also, thank you to the many people who told me the message and the title of this pattern resonated with you! <3
Shawl overview
“Queer Enough” is a top-down crescent shawl pattern with simple lace and cable “rays” that come out from a center spine.
Gauge/Needle Size/Yarn are all flexible. Use what feels comfortable to you and make it as big or small, thick or thin as you like to wear.
My gauge was 21 sts and 36 rows /4 inches (unblocked in pattern) and I used a US 6 needle and sock/fingering weight yarn.
Choosing colours
I used KnittedWit sock-weight yarn in an older version of a temperature rainbow kit available from the ShannaJean Etsy. These use 10g “gem” sock minis, which are smaller than the more commonly available 20g mini size. This particular yarn inspired the pattern because it has dark/light pairs of colour for the garter/lace rows to pop a bit more. These kits come with 14 colours, I only used 12 for my shawl.
You could get a nice effect by using a single main colour for one of the sections and minis for the other, or just using two skeins of yarn.
Shawl worn bunched up around the neck as a scarf
If you like to wear shawls wrapped around your neck like scarves, please note that the garter section may tend “stick out” and be more visible, particularly if it’s been a while since your shawl was blocked. If you tend to wear your shawls less bunched up, the lace section will block to be larger and potentially more visible. You can choose your colour configuration with those in mind! I used the brighter rainbow for the garter and the pastel rainbow for the lace.
Icord cast on/set up section:
Use Judy’s magic cast on to cast on 6 stitches (3 per side). We’ll be using this as a provisional cast on to make a 3-stitch icord edging, so you’re going to be leaving behind those rightmost three stitches until setup is done, and we’ll be adding one more to the “left behind” section with each row.
Row 1 (first after cast-on): knit all 6 stitches.
Rows 2-10: Slip 3 stitches to left needle and work only those 3 stitches in this row. Knit front and back in first stitch, knit next two. Do not turn work. (increases 1 stitch)
Once this is done you should have 15 stitches on the needle.
(If that all sounds terrible/confusing, you can also make a 9 row long icord and pick up 9 stitches along the side and three stitches at the beginning for a total of 15. I just wanted to try a cast on option that wouldn’t include picking up stitches.)
You can mentally divide your 15 stitches like this:
3 left icord border,
2 left shawl body,
2 for left leaning cable,
1 for center,
2 for right leaning cable,
2 right shawl body,
3 right icord border.
Row 11 (wrong side): slip 3 (place marker if you like to have a border marker), knit front and back, knit 3, place left spine marker, slip 1, place right spine marker, knit three, knit front and back (place border marker if desired), slip 3. (increased by 2, stitch count 17)
I didn’t bother with border markers, but I’ve noted where they go in case you want them. Slip them as you come to them from now on.
Row 12 (right side): knit 3, knit front and back, knit 3, right leaning 1 by 1 cable, slip spine marker, left-leaning 1 by 1 cable, knit 3, knit front and back, knit 3 (increased by 2, stitch count 19)
You’re now set up to start in a garter section.
General Pattern Overview:
Your shawl is going to come in 5 “wedges”: two matched borders on the edges, two “body” sections, and one slipped stitch spine in the center.
Right Border icord + increase:
knit 3, knit front and back (right side, increase 1)
knit front and back, slip 3 (wrong side, increase 1)
Right Body section: this will vary depending on whether you’re doing a garter or lace section.
The garter section features cables and a spine that “float” over the garter stitch, with 9 stitches between garter rays (10 if you include the bottom part of the cable, for a total of 11 stitches per repeat).
Right side row:
Border + increase: Knit 3, kfb
Work right wedge:
If you have enough space before the first ray (12 stitches) to add a full repeat then do so by working a 1:1 right leaning cable, k9. This should take you to 1 stitch before the next ray
Knit to 1 before ray, work 1:1 right leaning cable. There will always be 9 knits between cables (or 10 stitches between rays of you count the bottom of the cable as a stitch)
If you have enough space before the center marker (12 stitches) to add a full repeat then do so. K9, 1:1 right leaning cable.
Slip center marker, knit 1, slip center marker
Work left wedge:
If you added a repeat in the right wedge center, do it again on the left wedge center. (work 1:1 left leaning cable, k9. This should take you to the next ray.)
Knit to the ray, work 1:1 left leaning cable. There should be 9 knits between cables in the middle
If you added a repeat in the right wedge edge, do it again on the left wedge edge.
Increase+ border: kfb, knit 3
Wrong side row:
Slip 3, kfb
Knit to center marker but slip each ray as you come to it (I find it easier to use stitch markers to mark the rays, but you can count)
Slip center marker, slip 1, slip center marker
Knit, slipping rays when you come to them
Kfb, slip 3
Queer Enough Shawl: charts for cable sections
If you find out your stitch counts are off so there’s not enough space between rays (it should always be 9 knit stitches or 10 if you’re counting and include the bottom half of the cable) or your left and right sections aren’t set to start a new ray at the same time, you can fudge them by adding an increase or decrease next to where the ray happens; the rays can disguise the adjustment. (Or you could go back and fix the mistake, but who has time for that? I give you permission to fudge if you need it.)
If you miss a slip on a ray, you can correct it on the right side by undoing that stitch and letting the yarn hang behind.
Lace Section:
The lace section features “rays” coming out from the center spine with yarnovers on each side and a decrease on the outer edge. The center ray needs to line up with the previous row.
Right side row:
Work border + increase: k3, kfb
Work right wedge:
If you have enough space (12 stitches) before the first ray, start a new ray with ssk, yo, k2tog, yo, knit 7 (which should take you to 3 before the first ray.)
[knit to 3 before next ray, ssk, yo, k2tog, yo] repeat until center marker. There should be 7 knit stitches between inner rays.
If you have enough space before the center (at least 11 stitches), start a new ray with k7, ssk, yo, k2tog, yo.
Slip center marker, k1, slip center marker
Work left wedge:
If you worked a new repeat on the right wedge center do it again on the left. (Start a new ray with yo, ssk, yo, k2tog ssk, yo, k2tog, k7.) This should take you to the stitch before the next ray
[knit to next ray, yo, ssk, yo, k2tog] repeat until last 4 border stitches. There should be 7 knit stitches between inner rays.
If you increased on the right edge, do the same on the left edge. You need at least 15 stitches including the 4 stitch border+increase), start a new ray with k7, yo, ssk, yo, k2tog
Increase + border: kfb, k3
Wrong side row:
Slip 3, kfb
Purl to center marker
Slip center marker, slip 1, slip center marker
Purl to last 4 stitches
Kfb, slip 3
Queer Enough Shawl: charts for lace sections
The new rays should be paired: the two center ones happening at the same time, and the two edge ones happening at the same time (but not all 4 at once). If your stitch counts don’t match in these places, you’ve probably made a mistake. You can go back and correct it or just fudge it
In the lace section, the easiest place to adjust without it being noticeable is the decrease beside the ray: make it a double decrease (to remove an extraneous stitch) or make it a k (to add one).
Continue this section until you want to switch back to garter. I stopped after a wrong side row when I no longer had enough in my mini skein to complete two rows. You can use a scale to figure this out and maximize your use of yarn or just eyeball it. I won’t tell. I actually switched yarns near the end of a row because I got in a groove and didn’t realize I was running out of yarn a few times and I don’t find it very noticeable.
If you’re feeling fancy you can start the lace repeat a bit early and fit only one yarn over and decrease in. I’ll leave this as an exercise to the reader. Please note that although the shawl increases are all on the outside, because of the way the rays tilt you will have +1 space to count towards your repeat in both the center and edge sections. So if you start your half-lace the instant you can, you’re going to need to keep it going twice before you get to a full repeat. If none of this makes sense just do the repeats when you’ve got the full 11 stitches and save yourself the headache.
Lace to Garter Transition Row:
I found one extra yarn over helps make the cabled rays and the lace rays line up better. They won’t line up perfectly unless you block it very carefully (and as you’ll see below, that’s not an option in my life) but I like the transitions better this way.
Close up of shawl showing the transition between lace and garter sections and the fact that my rays aren’t perfectly straight.
Right side row:
Knit 3, kfb
Right side: knit to 3 before each ray, ssk, yo, 1:1 right leaning cable, knit to center marker
Slip center marker, k1, slip center marker
Left side: knit to ray, 1:1 left leaning cable, yo, k2tog, knit to last 4 stitches
kfb, knit 3
For the wrong side row and onwards follow the garter pattern.
Queer Enough Shawl: Chart for transition rows
Continue swapping between garter and lace sections until you run out of yarn or you decide you’re done.
Charts
These charts are intended to help you see visually how to line up the sections so that the rays continue in unbroken lines. (The lines will, however, still be a little wobbly at the transition unless you’re very careful about blocking them. It’s ok.)
Legend for Charts
Here’s a very-wide chart to show how everything fits together:
Very Wide Chart (click to enlarge)
And here’s it split into two hopefully more readable segments:
Right side chart. Note that the left side of the chart will line up with the Left Side Chart)Left Side chart. This needs to line up with the Right side one)
If I try to make a printable version of the pattern I guess I’ll have to make these prettier.
Final section:
For my shawl, I ended on a lace section. I like the way the lace can be blocked to points so I used a strechy bind off added a picot at the end of each ray. If you don’t like frilly edges, you could also try ending on a garter section and using an icord bind off.
Start the last two rows on a wrong side row: slip 3, kfb, knit to 4 before end, kfb, slip 3. Turn work.
We’re going to do a stretchy picot bindoff where the picots go over the end of each ray.
Bind off part: knit 2, take two on right hand needle and knit 2 together through back loop (bound off 1 stitch). After that first pair, you can just k1, knit 2 on right hand needle together through back loop. (Every time you add a picot you’ll be back to the knit 2 beginning again, though.)
Picot part: cable cast on 2 then continuing binding off as before.
Bind off with picot row: bind off 1, picot, bind off until stitch before ray, picot. Continue in this manner until you reach the center spine. On the left side of the shawl, switch to adding picots after binding off the ray stitch. Add one more picot when you reach 2 stitches left at the end.
Close up of the shawl showing the center picot after blocking.
Finishing the Shawl
Like most lace projects, this shawl should be wet-blocked and stretched well for best effect.
Rainbow shawl being spun in a salad spinner. This is one way to remove some excess water after soaking (another example would be to wrap it in a towel and squish)
People always seem to have questions about blocking. Unfortunately, my process is ridiculous because I have a child who wants to help. So here it is for posterity, but what you should do is search for someone else’s blocking instructions if you need them.
Shawl blocking in progress. You definitely don’t need this many blocking wires.
Blocking this shawl was a lengthy process:
1. Soak shawl 2. Squeeze shawl and put in salad spinner 3. Child hears salad spinner and nearly has meltdown because he wanted to do it. I manage to negotiate not re-wetting the shawl so we can “start over” 4. Dog hears child with salad spinner and comes to investigate 5. Child determines that face licks are detrimental to his process and banishes dog from kitchen. 6. Dog waits a few minutes then goes around to the other door and gets banished again. 7. Child decides this moment must be recorded (see reel), gets mad at mom for not hitting the video button and instead getting the second picture. 8. Shawl is finally released from its torment and taken downstairs. Gate is locked so dog can’t follow. 9. Dad opens gate to follow and brief altercation with child ensues. Dad insists he is not a dog who has learned to open gates, and not trying to horn in on special shawl blocking activity. 10. Blocking mats have previously been used for pom pom snowball fight and some cleaning must occur. 11. Shawl is blocked while child adds “traps” with extra pins and wires and a “timer” made from a stitch counter. 12. Child explains his creative process in great detail. Possibly as an attempt to postpone bedtime.
And there you have it, 12 “easy” steps. As I said, search for someone else’s blocking tutorial if you need one that doesn’t include child management.
I hope this is enough that at least a few people can make a Queer Enough shawl of their own. Thanks for reading!
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a sucker for tiny daily packages of yarn, but my enthusiasm for opening them is a bit beyond my ability to actually use them. (Oh, let’s be honest, my enthusiasm for all things yarn is beyond my knitting and crocheting speed.) I’m glad to see a few more countdown/advent style yarn things coming at non-December times of the year so I can spread them out! But that doesn’t stop me from wanting all the December goodies, especially since I have an end of year birthday to celebrate. It feels weird to be thinking about these so early, but since the folk who make them need to order supplies and dye early a lot of the ordering forms went up months ago.
Ones I’ve done in previous years that I probably won’t do again:
Jimmy Beans Wool Craftvent. My first advent style yarn box! I’ve had 3 of these now and they’re delightful, but I’m not excited about this year’s ornament box given that I still have crochet ornaments from 2017 to finish.
Indie Untangled Countdown. The previews and theme for this year looks great but I’m planning to sit this one out. The last one I did was was definitely a “wait and see all the yarn before deciding what to make” case and I don’t want the yarn to sit around for years again.
Must Stash Yarn sock advent: less of a kit, just a cute holiday colour and a nice pattern to go with it. I really liked the hobbit one I did, and I liked last year’s pattern but did it on different yarn later in the year on previously stashed yarn. We’ll see!
Wildstar Fibers new year’s countdown: 10 mini skeins counting down to new years. Loved this last year but I don’t think she’s doing it again and to be completely honest I haven’t knit up last year’s yet anyhow.
The Katrinkles advent. I loved the tools one but I have most of the little tools I want from them so it probably makes more sense not to get a mystery set. Although at least it doesn’t add to my knitting workload! I was pretty tempted by the quilt one last year though so I’m not going to make a final decision until the email goes out.
This year’s (expected) repeats:
By Sarahs mystery sock. If Sarah does one, I’ll definitely get it. These have been such a joy and the small amount of knitting makes it easy to handle alongside other kits.
Imagined Landscapes advent gnome. I keep telling myself I’ll just get the pattern and enjoy the story then do the gnome at some less busy time, but realistically I’m probably going to wind up knitting it once I see it.
Knitted Wit countdown. These have been very thoughtful and I like the community, plus I really like having one that goes right to the end of the year, but I’m worried about taking on too much! So I haven’t ordered yet but it’s reasonably likely that it’ll be a birthday gift to self, I’m just waiting for a more local yarn store to list it.
New to me this year:
ChemKnits Chanukah countdown. Kiddo and I have been making good use of Rebecca’s videos for food-dye yarn experiments and we had fun getting the spring yarns and watching along, so I’m probably going to sign up for this when it opens. The spring set is a rainbow that I intend to use together, but I suspect these may be more random stash enhancement that can be split up into separate projects. We’ll see!
Winter Skies advent from pnw_knitdesign and westcoastyarnco. I love her colourwork “doodle” patterns with all the charts and subbed them in to the Halloween Advent I did last year, so I’m really looking forwards to this one. I expect it’ll be a lot more subdued than my yarn choices have been lately (what with 2022’s “knit more rainbows” goal) and I’m thinking that might be nice. This is the one calendar that I’ve actually already ordered for December!
Non-December-y countdowns:
This year I got the Teal Torch Knits summer solstice box and it’s currently hung up to decorate my office while I try to decide on a good sweater pattern for this perfect fade. I’ve got to say, though, fades are kind of boring as mystery packs because so many of the colours are reasonably predictable and look similar. So even though I love the yarn, I don’t know if it fully scratches the mystery itch as it were?
Last year I tried Jimmy Beans Wool’s 13 day Halloween countdown and it was fun. I swapped in some charts from the autumn doodle pattern and they really made it cooler.
This year, I signed up for a package from Kitty With A Cupcake & Valkyrie Fibers for a countdown of spooky-cuteness and a skein of sock yarn to knit as a countdown project. I’m so excited!
So… I had a summer solstice countdown and I’m looking forwards to a Halloween one, but December is still looking busy with 1 ordered and 4 more earmarked for me to order if I don’t miss the signup window. Ridiculous? Eh, probably. And I haven’t even listed the ones I looked at and didn’t even make the “short” list!
But here comes the really tricky part: my kid shares my love of tiny packages, so I’m going to have to get him set up with some countdowns too! In previous years, I filled up an old craftvent calendar with chocolates and socks and bath bombs and random tiny toys, but it can be hard to find things that fit in those tiny boxes. I did a birthday one for him last year and it’s about time to start thinking about getting that started!
Update: I forgot one I already ordered! Channy’s “I ❤️ indie dyers” yarnament advent. It’s got so many cool dyers involved.
As in previous years, I chose four Fiber Goals for 2022. That small number always leaves me with a bunch of ideas that I toss out there on the post that I wasn’t committing to finish but also wanted to record as ideas. A year is a long time so some of those always manage to happen even if they didn’t make the top four.
De-stashing: I was lucky enough to find a local friend to take a big box of acrylic at the beginning of the year. She’d gotten into making crocheted baskets, so this box of sturdy yarn I’d “inherited” from someone else’s mother in law was actually useful! And just recently, my sister uncovered 7 giant tubs of yarn in my grandmother’s basement, and I was able to find a different crocheting friend who could take those. Cleaning out my grandmother’s house is a huge job and I was glad to have been able to help with one tiny thing from far away even though it was kind of a drop in the bucket. This was not the first cache of yarn my sister has found, but hopefully it’ll be the last big one!
Hatch observes the crates of yarn pulled out of the closet at my house.Layer 1 of the yarns I was able to fit in the shipping box.
Finishing some languishing WIPs: I jumped on a challenge from Sox Therapist and finished my Tunisian shawl finally as well as a Flickering Light Shawl that I’d started in New Zealand and never finished after we got back. I thought I probably wouldn’t be doing more Tunisian for a while but I keep thinking about it so maybe there’ll be some smaller swatch/dishcloths in my future?
Terri holds her completed Loveland Lite shawl, a Tunisian crochet triangle shaped two colour shawl. Yarn from Alwan Sultan Fiber.Finished Flickering Light shawl. Yarn was a kit from Space Cadet yarns.
Year-long project: I did the Get Together Advent wrap as a 24-week project (so half-year), but I also have an embroidery constellations kit and I’m doing zodiac signs around the year. (well, ok, I’m behind by a few weeks right now, but I’ll get caught up.)
Kiriki press constellation embroidery sampler. I’ve done the zodiac constellations as they come up in the year but haven’t quite finished Gemini yet.
Fingering Weight Sweater: As mentioned in the previous post: it’s started! I’m using the “I love me more than you” box of minis from Passionknits yarn to do big chunky stripes on the Playdate sweater from Tin Can Knits. It’ll be a rainbow when it’s done!
Sweater body showing 6 colours.Tiny rainbow sleeve swatch showing all the colours to come.
The Act of Sewing: I made the top, which was not a great fit and needs re-thinking, and the skirt with added pockets, which has become a wardrobe staple this summer. I might make a few more skirts.
Top from The Act of Sewing. Careful photography makes it look not awful here but it’s way too big.Bicycle print skirt with giant pockets. I wear this plenty now that it’s warm!
Glowforge: I made an embroidery floss holder as part of a care package for Marlene, and a no soliciting sign for our front door.
Yarn care package for my friend Marlene. The yarn is a hobbit themed one from Valkyrie Fibers and I picked up notions and tea to be on theme. The laser cut embroidery floss holder with the silhouette of the Lord of the Rings characters is on the top left.A wooden sign that reads “No Soliciting (The dog gets very upset)”
Knitting machine: We made a tube with some of the yarn my kid dyed and he uses it a lot for play. Most often it’s attached to a toy so he can play a fishing game involving throwing all his stuffed animals on the floor then tossing his “fishing rod” out to touch the one he wants to catch. But I haven’t done much since then!
Tube made with green/yellow hand dyed yarn.
That’s a pretty large number of non-goals achieved or in progress! Not all of them, but the destashing ones were especially a relief.
Most of what I’ve done since then was this one sweater, which was “something famous” and “self striping” and “kit in stash” so it definitely counts:
Me wearing an unfinished sweater.
That’s the Sock Arms Cardigan, knit from a kit from Must Stash Yarn. It’s a delightful pattern, but I accidently used the wrong needle for one arm and ripped that back, then accidentally-ish put in too many body increases and didn’t like the result. So I basically knit it one and a half times and it’s still not done. I had to take a bunch of breaks because it actually started hurting my hands in repetitive strain way! (And I only very very rarely get any sort of pain from knitting, so it was a big concern and I took it seriously.)
Anyhow, I’ve taken the month of December off for advent/countdown calendar knits, so the sweater will be back on the needles at the end of the month. I’m eager to wear it despite how long it’s taking!
1. Knit something famous
Gnomes!
Gnorwen the ice cream gnomeGnombleberry the Longest Gnight GnomeSurprise, two gnomes!
That’s 2 gnome knit a longs, and 3 gnomes because the second knit along had two.
I also had been intending to do Wingspan in the fall, but the sweater sucked up a lot of time. Plus I made a cute Halloween knit along hat that didn’t fit into any yearly goals:
All treats, no tricks hat from kit by Jimmy Beans Wool, mashed up with some charts from the Autumn Doodle cowl
2. Self striping stuff
Honestly it was more about the gradients for the last part of the year. I couldn’t resist casting on from Michele’s new book, Brioche Knit Love:
Chai Tea Latte scarf from PDX Knitterati’s excellent new brioche book!
And then I finally gave in to the temptation to get some yarn from Gauge Dyeworks, which has a fancy gradient where you pull from one end to do the heel, and wind off some chunks in between the matching balls for colourwork on these Wildflower Meadow socks. I guess they might count as famous too?
Mom’s xmas socksIf I double-layer my socks with Mom’s you can pretend they fit me.
3. Kits in stash
I did a few more Christmas ornaments from my 2018 Little Box of Crochet advent. I knew I wouldn’t finish them in 2018 because I had a baby, but I’m impressed that I’m still doing a few in 2021. They’re kind of a delight and I’m not in a hurry, though.
The holiday gnomes also used up an old Jimmy Beans Beanie Bag kit, so that was nice. I even found some dpn holders when I was going through the kits! I seldom use dpns (I’ve gotten fond of the small circulars and occasionally magic loop) but I use dpns for gnomes so they can live in that kit now.
Tiny gnome in progress with needles in a cardboard tube dpn holder. Cute mitten stitch marker from my Monarchy Threads advent.
I also did something I haven’t done in a while and tossed my stash to see what I have on hand. I definitely still have a bunch of kits, but I was impressed by how many two-skein sets I’d paired up with no particular plan. I’ve got a huge box of those mostly in one place now to facilitate using them.
4. Crochet cables
Nothing new on this goal. And that’s ok! I learned what I wanted to know. And I learned again with that and the ornaments and the Tunisian shawl that it’s harder to fit crochet into my day, so it’s going to continue to be a sometimes thing around here.
Other
These goals worked out really well, though I’ve still got a few things on my famous knits short list that I haven’t done, and I’ve got lots of kits and self striping yarn.
I’m strangely happy with the state of my stash after moving things around a bit, in that I can almost always put together something I want to make with minimal effort. Digging through it didn’t find as many gaps as last time and left me feeling like I didn’t need to go shopping! Which would be more convenient if it hadn’t happened right when it was time to buy myself some presents (my mom sends money for my birthday/Christmas every year and I like to choose at least one tangible thing to buy from her!). I’m going with the Sincere Sheep Made Here yarn subscription again this year for my year-long birthday present. (Happy birthday to me!)
The stash still needs to shrink a bit, but I feel like that will happen in time as long as I keep knitting. Still eyeing those expensive sock machines to make it happen faster, though!
So that’s a wrap on this year. January 1 I’ll post up my 2022 goals!
My mom paid me the ultimate compliment a sock knitter can receive: she let me know that some of the socks I made for her were starting to wear out! It’s going to be a while before I can go do some darning for her, so I cast on another pair instead.
The yarn is from the well-named Must Stash (they do a weekly drop off colours and while they do revisit colourways it can take months so if you love something you kind of have to snag it when you can). I stashed this one with Mom socks in mind because it’s just so beautiful!
The pattern was this year’s Must Stash advent knit, but as you may recall my advent dance card was a teeeeeensy bit full so I didn’t try it but I did put the pattern in my queue for later. It’s the Candy Kisses Socks by Sivia Harding. I loved the cute little xoxo cables:
Okay, the colour is maybe not the best for showing off tiny cables, but they’re fun.
You can tell from the photo above that my mom’s foot and mine aren’t exactly the same size! I don’t mind knitting bigger socks when I know they’re going to get worn, though!
It’s funny: when I started knitting, I thought I’d never really do socks because it seemed like so much work for something you’d wear out. (Plus I lived in New Mexico then where wool socks aren’t always the most desirable.) But I decided to do Socks on Vacay one year and I’ve slowly but surely fallen in love with wearing them. Especially this year where I’m out walking the dog in the cool wet, they’re very suited for our damp winters. They’re just… Really nice? I don’t even know how that happened, but I don’t really mind.
The Dread Pirate has definite opinions about my finished object photos, so this was his composition. Then he did a little dance and I think sang a song about grandma socks. Bringing joy even before they made it to my mom, for sure. ;)
The yarn is amazing. It looks like a perfectly elegant tonal in daylight and brilliantly variegated under black light.
The pattern is full of twisted stitches that really pop. It’s both charted and written, and it’s well described but the repeats are long enough and the pattern just unpredictable enough (particularly around the top of the butterfly wings) that I had to put in extra coloured section dividers and stitch markers to stay on track. Definitely not an easy knit!
The end result is worth the effort, I think, but I was very relieved that I was doing the small size and wouldn’t need to repeat that last chart again!
Overall, great yarn, great pattern, and a really beautiful knit. And it proved to be the only “smaller shawl” I made from my 2020 goals (and i didn’t finish it until 2021!)
Normally I travel in December, which limits the amount I can participate in advent or countdown type stuff that all happens at the end of the year. But with covid-19, there was no travel to be had, and I might have gone a bit overboard as a result. In the end, I did 3 knit-a-longs and opened both a 12 day and a 31 day countdown calendar on top of that!
BySarahS mystery sock knit-a-long
I did a BySarahS mystery-a-long in May and September and they’re very fun. Simple sock knitting, mystery colours, cute surprises, and a friendly bunch of folk mostly on the other side of the country. This year’s socks were super cute:
Finished BySarahS advent 2020 socks.
And here’s one of the clever extras:
Flamingo paper clip for holding all the little pattern pieces!
This was as usual pretty relaxing knitting at not too much of it, so I knew I’d be able to take on more than one advent thing.
Other great extras: the adorable Christmas Flamingo from WeeOnes, and those fantastic tiny scissors.
Attitude of Gratitude
This was a fun kit from Knitted Wit and Shannon Squire, two of my favourites for yarny things. A rainbow shawl in many mini packages, plus a daily deck of gratitude cards to get us thinking about the good things. I recently learned that my grandmother used to keep a gratitude journal, and while my daily thoughts were definitely not as detailed as hers apparently were, it was kind of fun to feel that connection to her.
I learned that I *really* love some of those rock candy colours that Knitted Wit has.
The finished shawl:
This one has been one of my most worn shawls since I finished it, and I try to think about something I’m grateful for every time I wear it.
ADVENTure Gnome
I loved the summer gnome-a-long but had been planning to read the emails but maybe not knit this one because I already had two advent projects on the go. But then my friend Marlene got me a kit as a present so I had no excuse!
Yarn kit for the ADVENTure gnome
This was more interesting knitting, nicely spaced out, with some story and recipes and stuff. I learned that I stress out too much about variegated colourways in small circumference knitting, but everything worked out beautifully despite my nerves.
Gnome on a shelf.
Symphony Shawl
Since I had time after the two knit alongs ended on the 24th, I also finished my Symphony Shawl. This was a kit from Sweet Georgia that I did as a year long project.
J somehow failed to notice that the shawl was stuck on my fleece when he was taking the picture, but with the toddler and puppy frolicking around it’s hard to blame him. Definitely a good photo to sum up a 2020 project!
Me wearing the shawl
A Twisted Year’s End
This was a countdown to the end of 2020 calendar of minis from a variety of indie dyers, put together by Indie Untangled.
Lots of new-to-me dyers! I’d kind of expected to want to go buy full size offerings, but that didn’t happen because honestly I just wasn’t in a shopping mood by the time their marketplace opened, especially with all the shipping problems folk were having. But I followed a few new folk on Instagram so I’ll no doubt find a skein I’m in love with eventually.
Katrinkles 12 days of tools
This is the one I didn’t post about, because I opened it early in the month and some people saved it for post-Christmas so I didn’t want to post spoilers. Also, to be honest, I was feeling kind of weird about having all these calendars especially in such a year. But these were fun, and I use some of them regularly. Particularly this little personalized box which holds my yarn needle and some removable stitch markers.
And also this yarn width tool which has become my spinning companion.
The Katrinkles and BySarahS packages had matching flamingos. :)
Thoughts
I didn’t have too much trouble keeping up with the knitting, but it definitely *felt* like I’d overdone it on the calendars.
I’ll play it by ear next year depending on who’s offering what (and whether I’m traveling again!) but I don’t think I’ll do the Katrinkles or Indie Untangled boxes again. They’re both great, but I think I got what I wanted out of them. I’ll be making less mystery purchases from them both for sure, though.
I’ll definitely do mystery gnomes and bysarahs mkals again, but maybe I’ll skip the Christmas ones next year and do something new? I already skipped the Temperature blanket kit that followed Attitude of Gratitude, but I *did* get a rainbow without planning to do a blanket. (I’m thinking shawl but not ruling out having cute tiny stripes in a sweater or socks.)
Next year I think I’ll stick to one or maybe two in December. But in keeping with the Attitude of Gratitude, I’m going to say that I’m very grateful I could afford all these, that I got to support so many women-owned small businesses in a year that was hard for many, and that I had time to knit and enjoy so many beautiful things.
I really want to design my own daily package kit, too. Maybe one day I’ll do it!
The blog has had some server changes behind the scenes and it accidentally broke the way I usually post from my phone. But while I’m working that out, here’s a recently finished project:
The yarn is a real winner here because it’s so perfect for colourwork. Very forgiving, blocks like a dream, easy to felt in ends as needed since it’s non-superwash, and the colour palette was perfect for this project.
Palm side of the Mando gloves showing the non-repeating pattern.
This is not a pattern for the faint of heart: I found it easy to get caught up in the chart and miss the written directions (which are NOT “just follow the chart” but have increases/decreases/ribbing). And honestly, it’s just complicated non-repeating stranded colourwork. Plus I somehow managed to hurt my hands in the middle of knitting them and had to take a few days off to recover.
Back side of gloves, featuring a Mandolorian helmet and Baby Yoda
The results are cute, though! I did them to be larger, with no decreases and a larger (US 2) needle size so that they’d fit my husband. I rarely knit him anything but we actually made time to watch the Mandolorian together, one of few adult TV shows we’ve watched (though we also loved Carmen Sandiego, which is suitable for watching with our 3 year old although he’s not as excited about it as we are.) I managed to finish them the week we had snow, so at least they got a day or two of use before going away as spring starts here!
2016 Fiber goals are in bottom of 2017 post above.
1. Knit something famous.
I’ve never knit a Find Your Fade or anything by Stephen West. But I did try something by Casapinka and some Imagined Landscapes Mystery Gnomes this year, and I had a lot of fun! I’m not going to bother to categorize what “famous” means, but I have a few things in my queue I’ve seen shared or knit or just talked about a lot. Maybe it’s time to try a few more things: they must be loved by others for a reason, right?
2. Self striping stuff
I’ve put together a nice little cache of self striping sock, but I’ve been doing sock knit a longs that don’t use those yarns. Time to give that self striping some love. Probably mostly in socks, but I’ve been eyeing that Sock Arms sweater (though I’d have to cardigan mod it). I’ll probably allow some gradients too. I just got a cool book for my birthday to help with this one!
3. Kits in Stash
Revisiting a 2018 goal: I love buying kits and making my own preplanned sets of yarn for projects but I have a habit of saving these for travel, which obviously didn’t work out in 2020 and 2021 isn’t looking so hot for that either. The queue searching this year was really helpful, so I think pulling out some of those preplanned kits (and maybe putting some in my queue if they’re not) might similarly get my mind going. And if I don’t think I’m going to do them, maybe it’s time to earmark some for gifts or release the yarn into the general stash.
4. Crochet cables
I’ve seen a couple of beautiful designs with crocheted cables, and I was sorely tempted to pick up this year’s Jimmy Beans Wool Craftvent box because I loved the design. But by the time it came around, I already had two other advent-y things in mind, so I’m putting it on this list instead. There are so many neat crochet techniques, maybe I’ll learn a few more if I get back to picking up my hook!
Other goals I’d considered:
Learn some new spinning techniques, but I’m pretty sure I’ll do that without putting it on a list. Core spinning is the next technique I think I want to play with (not because I think I’ll love it but because I have a batt to use and it seems like a fun thing to try!) I also got some new equipment to learn so I’ll start with that in 2021.
I’m also considering being more intentional about what I buy, but I don’t really want to resolve to have a “yarn diet” because (a) no fun and (b) I have money and many small businesses in this industry could use it. But I’m low on physical space in my office for more yarn, so I need to figure out some changes that feed my love but takes up less space and still helps the fiber world. More yarn as presents? Buy ridiculously expensive fancy fibers? Make sure every nth purchase supports minority businesses? Upgrade tools? Buy more patterns? (Ok, that last one is definitely good.) But since I’m not sure how yet, this didn’t feel like a full goal yet. I’ll experiment, I guess.
I still want to spend more time on dyeing, since that was fun, but I may stick to food colouring so it’s still toddler friendly. My order of undyed yarn is apparently gone astray, though, so it may be a while.
I got the $2.49 Craftsy subscription, so I’m going to explore that some. Maybe learn some dye techniques as well as the spinning I’ve enjoyed this far.
I debated an embroidery goal but honestly, I’m kind of happy to just muck around and try to find my style(s). So far I know it involves a lot less satin stitch! Maybe I’ll try to do some embroidery on clothes? Learn to use the embroidery machine a friend gave me when he moved? I don’t really want to put pressure into this one.
I’ve got design and design tool goals in mind, but I don’t want to put them on the list because I’m trying to find space in my day for them that doesn’t take away from family time or sleep. Most of my goals I can do without isolating myself (eg, I knit while toddler finishes lunch) but not these ones.
Basically, I wanted to stick to goals that were fun for me without too much deep thinking. So that’s what made the top four. Here’s to 2021!
The big work in progress for me this time was my 2018 Little Box of Crochet Advent. I still haven’t finished it, but I made it further and I’m pretty happy with that. I may turn the rest into my year-long project because they’re good palette cleansers, but if I crochet too much at once sometimes I get a cramp in my hands and have to take a while off.
Robin crocheted ornament hanging on the tree.Crocheted Holly
I didn’t hit the queue as hard, but I *did* finally finish the Aspen Leaf scarf, which was the design that inspired me to give brioche another shot!
Aspen Leaf scarf with real trembling aspen leaves!
2. A Bit of Brioche.
I did petit brioche, then the Heliotrope hat and made it to the Aspen Leaf scarf that was my brioche goal, but I’m definitely not done.
Heliotrope brioche hat
I took a second PDXKnitterari class and started her Syncopation Shawl, which I put on pause to do seasonal things but intend to finish in the new year. I may restart it, though: I’d been thinking about doing the thinnest width but after rescuing a shawl end from puppy mouth today I’m thinking the wide one might be safer to wear right now!
3. Top to Toes
I did a few more top down socks! The top down version of my favourite Sundae Socks:
And two more Made By SarahS knit a longs:
So definitely a success!
4. Some Smaller Shawls Sweaters!
As well as finishing my Pocca sweater, I did a Hazelwood sweater:
And the Stepping Stones cardi:
And I bought some lovely yarn for the california poppy one from By Hand Serial (though I got the blue colour, because having just completed a yellow sweater I didn’t think I was in the mood for a peachy one). It’s going to be my first adult sized fingering weight sweater!
It wasn’t the goal I’d planned, but I’m pretty pleased with how it worked out.
And I *did* cast on for one single-skein shawl, but it got dropped in favour of end of the year knitting, so it may be my first finish of 2021.
Plus, as I mentioned in the mid year update, I did a bunch of the goals I’d considered but hadn’t chosen too. Pretty good for a very unusual year!
I know a lot of folks have had more time for hobbies, but I’m doing a full time job in 4 hours per day and being the solo parent on duty for the other 4. So I’ve got a lot less time to craft than I used to and I spent a month pushing burnout before we got my workload right (mostly I had to drop projects that needed a lot of meetings or weren’t in good time zones, and I took up more training and documentation instead). So I’m really happy we managed to find ways to do things like the yarn dyeing as a family, and glad that kiddo is starting to enjoy more independent play so I can knit and help him build/do/pretend when he wants to do it himself.
I mentioned in August that I seemed to be doing some unsettled knitting. Fast forwards a few months, and I’m entering a bit of a pattern: one big project for sitting, one tiny project for knitting on the go, and a few more complicated things for my “nights off” (where I’m not in charge of getting kiddo to sleep). Pre-pandemic, I typically had one on the go project and (sometimes) one bigger home project but since they’re both pretty simple right now, I’m enjoying rotating in a few other things that engage my brain differently.
Big project right now is the Stepping Stones Cardigan.
Terri in a harvest gold Stepping Stones vest.
It’s a boxy open front sweater with nice lace detailing on the front, hem and cuffs. The pattern has a lot of options for customization of the sleeves and I really appreciated those. The lace made knitting the body seem not so repetitive.
Books and knitting the front panel.
I love the yarn, which is Arranmore Light from The Fiber Co in the colour Finian. It’s kind of got a rustic handspun 2 ply feel. It’s also unfortunately easy to tear a single strand if it gets caught on something like a zipper or an over-enthusiastic 3 year old who wants to be in my lap. So I got a new tool to help with that!
This is a yarn ball holder from Hansen (better known for their espinners). I’d coveted it since Tina from Black Sheep Fiber Emporium showed me hers, because it is a beautiful piece of engineering: perfect smooth wood, balanced bearings, thoughtful design. But it didn’t fit into my life then. I’m happy to say that it does now!
Small project right now is socks for my Mom.
It’s the usual Sundae Socks pattern with some mods. I’ve been keeping the yarn colour a surprise, but it’s a matched pair from Must Stash Yarn.
More complicated knitting is the Butterfly Dream Catcher shawl.
This is done in this great special yarn from Black Squirrel Berkeley called ‘sup witches. It glows under black light!
Other alternate night off projects:Crochet
I’ve picked up my Christmas ornament advent from Little Box of Crochet. I got this in 2018 and didn’t plan to finish it all in December, but two years later and I just finished day 6. Whoops. But I need ornaments this year and I didn’t before! Probably should have started earlier than November, though.
Spinning
I’m still spinning but less regularly mostly because I’ve been getting paper books from the library and I can’t read those and spin! I need some more audiobooks. I usually enjoy podcasts but they’ve been kind of getting me down lately.
Craftsy sent me an email offering a full year for $2.49 and I’d wanted to try more of their spinning content so I did that and it’s helping keep my interest up because sometimes I watch spinning videos while knitting. I’m still not blown away by Craftsy. The content I’ve watched is good but the site itself makes it hard to find and doesn’t help you keep track of what you’ve watched, which gets more annoying the more I watch. But for $2.49 I already feel like I got my money’s worth out of it, so that’s ok.
Embroidery
I got a cute Christmas tree set from Dropcloth Samplers, but I haven’t gotten much further than the day I took this picture.
Other
I also finally finished a wooden marble run kit I got to make with my toddler (who I guess is more of a pre-schooler now?). It wasn’t the easiest to do with his help, but we got out the washable markers and he coloured while I built. He coloured most of these not just the scribbles, but sometimes he told me I had to help fill them in if he got bored (and sometimes i did the first scribble and he filled in).
I feel like I have so many things I want to do and so little time before December hits and I switch over to the advent style packages I plan to knit. I might have gone a bit overboard on the advent things this year since I won’t be traveling: I got the ShannaJean Gratitude box, the BySarahS Christmas mkal, and I signed up for the Gnome one too. Plus I got the Katrinkles tool one, though that’s shorter and I don’t have to knit anything.
But on the bright side, Mom’s socks are the only ones I actually “need” to finish in the next couple of weeks if I want to mail them off in time for the holiday! And I don’t have to finish any of the advents on time either!
Pattern: Half the Knit Sky by @pdxknitterati inspired by photgraphic star trails. It’s such a great concept!
Yarn: Gold cache gradient in “Bleeding Heart” from @fiercefibers (bought at @pearlfiberarts) and silver twist in “Good Silence” from @madelinetosh (bought at @foryarnssake)
I always enjoy Michele’s patterns. They’re clever and often have stunningly beautiful results with easy to memorize patterns.
This one I stuggled with a bit not because it was hard but because I was so bad at counting anything over 9 stitches for some reason! Thankfully some stitch markers helped keep me on track without to many further incidents.
That gradient from Fierce Fibers nearly steals the show. I really loved that there were instructions and tips for using as much of the main colour as you could. I don’t usually mind some yarn leftovers, but splitting up a gradient this gorgeous was just not going to happen!
For a while there it matched my much beloved Hydrangea.
I was worried about the single ply (off-white) because I don’t always love it especially with colourwork, but it actually worked quite well in this pattern.
Of course the Dread Pirate wanted to get involved when I started taking pictures. He actually is getting some skills at styling and taking photos. But this time he just wanted to squish that beautiful yarn and who could blame him?
And I even won a finisher prize: a beautiful bee themed needle minder and a lanyard holder that says “vote” in beads.
This one’s going to get a lot of wearing as the weather cools down. Those dreams of clear skies and summer colours are a must for our rainy winters!
This time, I dragged my friend M into it. We’d been talking about doing something a little more epic together for her birthday this year, but then covid-19 hit and birthday in person had to be postponed. A sock knit a long is not at all the same, but at least it was something we could do together safely?
This time was a choose your own adventure sock on a camping theme: the pattern came with a little story about what you did, so you’d choose to, say, eat or swim, and open that package. Plus the colours weren’t the same between kits, so we didn’t have to worry about spoilers.
Possibly the cutest thing in the whole kit was the stitch marker from WeeOnes. I got a squirrel! ?️
We had huge wildfires with smoke during the first week of September, so it was maybe a bit too campfire-y. But with us all trapped in our houses and even mail delivery largely suspended due to unsafe conditions outside, it was really nice to have some tiny packages to open. I let the Dread Pirate open most of mine, though that did often mean I had to share my treats.
Sock 2 pictures below.
Lots of things around me weren’t working out, but this pair of socks was a bit of joy in a hard month in a hard year.
I suspect these socks may remind me of all the politics, the disease, the wildfires…
But also all the extra time with my kid, playing with all the tissue paper and shaking all the tiny yarn.
And also how even in the midst of awful, we found out we were prepared for a lot. We owned bedroom air filters (for my husband’s allergies), we had plenty of food on hand for a week of not going out, and I was doing a knit a long that helped us add some new treats and play to our routine while trapped.
So yeah, another successful pair of socks, but one with so many stories attached. Here’s to resilience and socks!
The Sharon Show was a mystery knit a long for a very long square shawl, easy knitting combined with some light hearted cat themed entertainment. I don’t actually love the long wraps, but I’d never tried a Casapinka pattern and I liked the pitch of $7 worth of entertainment.
Part of clue 1 with my original choice of colours.
It didn’t start off so well: my needles were too rough and the yarn colours weren’t thrilling me. The needles are the short ones from Knit Picks, which I love, but the finish on them wears off and the layered wood sometimes wears down at different rates. I temporarily fixed them with nail polish (the theory works but I think I’d like to sand and refinish them properly), and in the end I invested in some new tips from Chiaogoo. I love the Chiaogoo metal-core cables, and had recently learned that they made a shorter bamboo tip (4inch to knitpicks 3ish). It’s a bit pointy. I can knit with it but I have a toddler who launches himself into my lap, so the blunter can be a serious safety improvement! Still, these worked out well and hopefully I won’t have to replace/refinish them every few years.
Swatching new colours in place.
My colour B just didn’t look good to me: the contrast was fine but I didn’t like it, and as a result I was finding any excuse not to knit it. So out it went, and I was a clue and a half behind.
Clue 1
After that it went a lot better, though!
Clue 2
Not all of the drinks appealed to me (when your body hates both alcohol and fizzy drinks, sometimes by the time you’re done substituting you don’t have much of a mix) but I really enjoyed The Floofy Tail enough to make a few variations.
The Floofy Tail cocktail
What I really enjoyed later in the game was going off script, sometimes with the help of pictures people had posted in the forums.
This shawl and I made it though the wildfires, several books, and several other projects as I needed a break from it.
I started getting worried about how long it was getting and started shortening things up and wondering if I should skip the last clue. But I’d come so far! I took out some repeats and kept going.
Honestly, it was too much shawl for me, and though I enjoyed it, I was seriously wondering why I hadn’t committed that time to a much more useful sweater. Especially when it blocked out to 7 feet long and I thought “oh no, I’m never going to be able to wear this.”
But then I put it on and it fits perfectly!
And not *just* on my kids toy car. ;)
I’m going to need a selfie stick to show you those ends, though. ;)
Overall: very fun and what I was hoping for from the pattern. But I’m also very glad to be done, and next time a pattern tells me it’s going to be 5 feet long in the “small” size, I’m going to seriously consider doing a sweater instead!
I started the month planning to do a gnome mystery knit (because I’d never tried one) and The Sharon Show (because the pitch of $7 for cat themed entertainment appealed to me).
Gnicki the gnome sits on this month’s Fantastic Strangelings book pick. The name of the pattern is “Nice to Gnome You”
I did manage to finish the gnome, and it was such a delightful little thing that I’ll probably sign up for the next. The pattern was clever and even in something relatively small, had a few new techniques to try. (The slip-stitch cables in the beard, and the knit-on-purl-bumps applied hoodie/bunnyhug pocket.)
First start to my The Sharon Show wrap, with lighter yarn for colour B.
The Sharon Show did not go as well. I didn’t love my yarn choices, so I wound up casting something else while I was deciding if I even wanted to do it. Enter the Heliotrope hat.
Heliotrope hat with a mistake many rows back
And then I found a mistake many rows back and nearly put that project in timeout too. In the end, with some encouragement, I ripped back the brioche and kept going. Emboldened by that, I also ripped out the shawl and was so much happier with it that I made a token attempt to catch up.
Clue 1 of The Sharon Show with dark yarn in colour B.
But then I went on vacation this week, and it reminded me that I hadn’t really been doing the Socks on Vacay knit a long this year. So I abandoned the shawl again to cast on a sock and even took it to the beach so I could pretend for a few pictures that this was a normal kind of vacation (and not an exhausting week of strong-willed toddler parenting).
Sock at the beach.
I finished the sock last night, and I haven’t even mentioned the spinning I’ve been doing!
Finished Sundae Sock, with increasing/decreasing stripesFinished skein of green/tealish yarn, a spin during the “intermission” between the two (!) Tour de Fleeces this summer. One for the original dates, one for the new dates for the Tour de France that inspires the event.
I’m still a full clue behind on the shawl and haven’t finished the brioche, and I didn’t finish my second “intermission” spin before the Tour started today, but… It doesn’t matter. I’m loving the shawl pattern now. $7 *was* a good price for cat-based entertainment. The pattern is simple but the drink suggestions and catty section names make it fun. The brioche will keep giving me a break when I need something different. And the spin will just continue through to be my first skein of Tour de Fleece 2.0.
Rainbow spinning in progress.
I think I’m even going to cast on another sock. My vacation may be drawing to a close, but I’ve got enough time to finish the second before labour day for socks on vacay! And then maybe I’ll finally get back to my very long delayed Geek Sock, which has been quietly happening as a tiny purse project on my self-care walks and other times I wanted something small.
Also happening this month was a tiny sewing project because my kid wanted a doggy bone he could carry around in his mouth.
Stuffed Doggy bone, and some duplo toys
And I also finished Half the Knit Sky, which deserves its own post but I’m just going to post a finished object here in case it’s a while before I do that.
Half the Knit Sky shawl, showcasing a lovely Fierce Fibers gradient.
And also Hazelwood, which was mostly done much earlier but I had a big fight with my sewing machine and had to order more yarn. It also deserves a full post, but for now, here’s just a finished photo!
Hazelwood sweater with pockets! The Dread Pirate toddler’s fluffy head is just visible at the bottom of the frame, and the full picture has him hamming it up (but we’re giving him the gift of some internet privacy, so the photo is cropped)
I’ve been feeling unsettled a lot this month, and I think I’m knitting in a slightly unsettled way as a result. But in a world where we’re not going to solve a pandemic or US politics or racism any time soon, I guess I have been finding it reassuring to finish knit/spin/sew stuff even if I’m not doing it the way I normally would and instead flitting from thing to thing. The unsettled knitting, at least, is a thing that I think will pass.
Time for a little reflection on how my 2020 fiber goals are going!
1 Whittle down the WIPs and Query the Queue.
This has been really successful! I finished up my Poca sweater that had been languishing for two years, the Cascadial Wrap that had been in there nearly as long (no blog post yet because it was finished in a tough week), and it’s kept momentum on things like the Craftvent shawl and Geek Socks that ran into snags and could easily have ended up abandoned.
Poca sweaterCascadial Wrap
The queue part hasn’t gone as fast as the WIPs, but I did get the Geek Socks from deep queue and honestly I feel like looking more often has helped me know and plan.
But I’d still like to get some next steps patterns in. I’ve got some yarn ready to go, but once it got hot here I didn’t feel like knitting brioche so much. (But sweaters were fine? Brains are weird.). I don’t see any point in fighting it so I’m going to resume briocheing once it cools off. I’m excited about what I’ve got planned next!
3. Top to Toes
Success! I did my first Geek Sock and used the top-down pattern in the Made BySarahS Mystery Sock Knit a Long. And it turns out I like top-down just fine. I did have to learn some new measurements for the afterthought heel, but I know those now so I’m good to go.
Geek Sock
To be honest, learning that afterthought heel has left me dreaming of owning a sock knitting machine and churning out tubes and tubes and tubes. They’re so expensive that it’s hard to justify just for fun, though!
Made BySarahS mkal socks
But back on the top-down topic, I’m probably going to make a few more top down socks this year and going forwards. And I won’t try to steer away from top down patterns due to my lack of experience, which I tried not to do but was probably totally doing. To be honest, most of my sock patterns came from a single designer, so just knitting other people’s patterns was a bit out of my comfort zone! I have learned that her rounder toe is still my favourite for my foot, but I know how to adapt toes and practiced it now so that’s not a barrier any more.
I’m hoping to join the next BySarahS Mystery which I’m guessing will include a top-down pattern! But I’ve got a few other beautiful things in mind… Once I finally finish the second Geek Sock.
4. Some Smaller Shawls
This is the goal that I thought would be easiest, and it’s the one that’s gone by the wayside! It’s a casualty of the pandemic: I’ve been using working from home as an excuse to focus on bigger projects that I would normally have trouble finishing. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, and I may let this goal go by the wayside this year as I adapt.
But small projects still still nice for me to have on backyard toddler adventures (especially when sweaters get too big for my toddler adventure shoulder bags). So I’m thinking maybe I’ll just downgrade it to *one* shawl and pull something out of my queue to make it happen. I’ll definitely wear whatever I make!
Other
I listed a few more things at the end of my 2020 fiber goals post that I wanted to quick mention because although they hadn’t made my top 4, I actually did them!
Sweater — I did Poca and am nearly done a Hazelwood sweater
Dyeing — I turned food colouring dye into a family art project and we had a lot of fun with it. I’m hoping to do more, but I’ll need more undyed yarn.
Spinning and Hazelwood sweater
So… The year is going really well, from a crafting perspective. Don’t ask me about politics or my sleep patterns, though! Still, it’s nice to see how much I’ve accomplished against this one metric. Hurrah!
