Happy new year! I haven’t decided if I’m going to record my ink selections on my blog all year, since they’re already recorded in my journal itself, but I like seeing other people’s choices so here’s January’s inks!
Image Description: My January ink palette (the colours I’m using for writing in my journal this month) surrounded by the fiber and yarn from my spindle spin, which has a very similar set of colours. The fiber is a slow gradient of pink to purple to blue and back again and it’s visible in two braids, one of which is attached to a cross-arm spindle, and two “yarn turtles” (wound squarish balls of yarn made on the spindle). The ink colours are Diamine Lullaby (light pink/purple), Diamine Baltic Breeze (light blue with coppery shimmer), Diamine Nutmeg (grey with gold shimmer), Pilot Iroshizuku Yama-budo (dark fuschia), De Atrementis Cyan Blue Copper (bright blue with copper shimmer) and Diamine Cosmic Glow (medium blue with pink/fuchsia sheen).
I didn’t particularly intend for the ink and fiber to match, but I had them both sitting out on the table in my office and decided it was fun to photograph them together. The fiber colourway is listed as “omni pride” which I think is very similar to the bi pride flag. I like the richness of the colours and the gradient — I’d been planning to ply the singles together and get something with a bit of marling but I may chain ply instead because I’m so fond of the colour shifts I’m getting in the singles as they are.
Image Description: Short January book review notes written my January palette of inks with different fountain pens. I haven’t gotten around to writing out the text of these reviews yet but the important part here is to see the colours together showing the pink/purple/blue giving a slightly dreamy vibe because so many of the colours are very light. There’s also a cute “cat sleeping on a crescent moon” sticker visible at the edge of the photo where my journalling pages start.
The inks are a little less saturated and honestly the Lullaby is probably a bit too light for this pen/ink/paper combo so I may switch it out later. But I like the dreamy vibe and it goes well with my sleepy cat sticker sheet! Lullaby is weirdly fun colour to write with because of the way it dries on this paper so I’m enjoying it right now even if future me may have regrets when I try to read things.
You may notice that most of this is from the Diamine Inkvent Black box; this is because I honestly don’t own that much other ink. Most of my collection was half-empty sample vials before I bought the inkvent calendar. My goal is to use the inkvent inks heavily in 2025 and see how far I get before I decide if I’m doing another ink countdown at the end of 2025. I really enjoyed the whole process of swatching and using new inks every day for most of December, but I am very concerned that if I do this every year I’ll be over-run with more ink than I can use. So step 1 is using at least a few inkvent inks every month and we’ll see how it goes!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
I like advent boxes, even though it’s a busy time of year and normally I’m traveling so they’re not really convenient. Jimmy Beans Wool makes one they call Craftvent and I enjoyed it in 2017. In 2018 I bought it to save for later but then I got a lot of great travel opportunities and it’s still unopened (Maybe it’ll be a quarantine project for April?). But I finished the 2019 one only a few months late!
Craftvent 2019, days 1-9
This year’s kit came in little magnetic metal tins, which is brilliant and more reusable than previous ones which came in giant cardboard boxes.
Craftvent 2019, days 10-18
As usual, the tins either contain yarn, a notion, or a small treat. A larger namaste snap project bag and their “smart stix” needles were also included not in a tin. Loved the bag, though you have to be careful not to get the snaps caught on the lace.
Craftvent 2019 days 19-24
They’ve made a big effort to have more yarn than in the last box I did. It’s still not a good value in pure retail cost of the stuff, but you’re paying for the experience and packing here is significant, so I feel that’s reasonable.
Start of shawl, not the original colour.
Since I was busy and opened the first many boxes before starting to knit, I spent time contemplating the colours and decided to sub in some more purples in place of the teals that came with the kit. It makes for a less striking shawl, but one that I was pretty sure would fit better with my wardrobe. I used one of my minis from Yarn Indulgences for the first colour.
Craftvent progress shot
Many people on the associated Facebook group hated the main colour, a fluffy mohair style yarn (Fyberspates Cumulus). I love it in the final piece: it’s light and warm and lovely. But it combined with the metal needles left me with sore hands. Part of why this was months late was the multiple breaks I had to take from knitting at all because it was hurting me. It got better after I switched to my preferred short wooden needles, but it didn’t entirely stop. I’ve got some of the yarn left, but I think I’ll have to try holding it double with something if I want to use it
Mostly finished Craftvent draped on back of chair.
The “wrap” is a weird shape. It uses short rows so that it’s long, thin on one end and wide on the other. Kind of like a scarf with one really flared end? It sounds odd but it’s pretty wearable!
Full shawl stretched out for blockingSo wide!
Overall, despite the literal pain involved, I really like this shawl. It’s so light and yet so warm, it’s interesting, and with my colour alterations it goes with many of the things I wear. It wasn’t quite the experience I was expecting with the breaks in between, but I used the time to work on my embroidery skills and that was pretty fun.
Me wearing the finished Craftvent wrap
Will I do Craftvent again? Maybe. I’ve finally got enough notions to kit out a few bags so it might be better to do a yarn-only option. Or maybe Must Stash Yarn will do another advent sock-along, which is much more manageable for me at that time of year. But I had a good time this year, even if it wasn’t mostly in December!
Sweet Georgia Yarns made this lovely set of yarns as a holiday kit, and I loved it so much I bought two: one for me and one for my friend M as a Christmas present. It has 15 yarns, so I figured I’d do it as if it were a monthly yarn subscription, and maybe double up a few months. But as it turns out, the pattern has 12 sections if you count the setup one, so I haven’t even had to divide it up myself!
January set up
January’s up was teensy tiny but since I had advent projects still on the needles and the Rose City Yarn Crawl MKAL to start, that wasn’t a problem.
The yarn feels like a standard sock yarn to me. Did you know that there’s only a handful of yarn wholesalers in the US so most of our indie-dyed stuff uses the same bases even if they give them different names? Sweet Georgia is based in Canada so they may have some other options, but I bet not *that* many. It’s a solid base, and after my overdose on single ply I’m very glad to have a more durable sock yarn. And those colours! Saturated jewel tone tonals. Beautiful.
February lace section
I debated doing the colours backwards just to be different but decided I liked it too much to mess with the order. I’m barely started — that’s only one extra-mini down, 14 to go — but it’s already interesting and fitting nicely in as a shorter break between projects.
I had been planning to go subscription-less this year, but at the very end of the year I decided to try one that seemed particularly interesting. I’ll write about it soon!
This was a particularly satisfying pattern to knit. It starts out so small and that first chart seemed daunting. It’s well written, but there was just So Much Going On that I needed to concentrate and I despaired of ever finishing with a toddler around.
But once I made it through the first chart, and there wasn’t some new thing appearing at the edge ask the time, I started to find my rhythm.
Rhythm, breast pump… I amuse myself.
And it just felt so natural that it seemed weird that I’d been thinking of this as a terribly technical pattern. Surely it was just obvious?
The pattern is Aroha Knits’ Whakairo Cowl done with the shawl variant. It’s really worth reading the pattern description about how it’s meant to minic Maori wood carving.
I can’t remember how many repeats I did of that 3rd chart, but it was enough that I had it memorized and didn’t even look at it by the end. Kind of amazing.
The yarn is Kupenda in colour “free range” by Fierce Fibers. It’s a super soft alpaca/silk/cashmere blend that is slippery and a little fluffy and oh so soft. I was worried about the stitch definition because of the halo but I really didn’t need to be. Even if it wasn’t a luxury yarn, this is the most luxurious gradient I’ve ever used. The colours are so saturated, the colour change is so perfect, and the yarn has been re-straightened so unlike most gradients it’s not in that “just unknit from the blank” stage.
I already bought more. (And got a personal delivery to my desk at work, but that’s another story!)
It very much needed blocking. It was a toddler-sized shawl when it came off the needles! I liked the tight lace with all those twisted stitches, but you could tell it would open up.
Even blocked, it’s not quite the right shape for the way I like to wear a triangle shawl: it’s really designed as a buttoned cowl. But that was easily solved with a shawl pin.
I’m super happy with the way this one turned out. It’s a very technical shawl but mathematically predictable and just feels satisfying to me. Plus, that yarn! This will see a lot of wear… As soon as I’m not worried about getting hair dye on it if it rains, anyhow! (Not pictured here, but my hair is dark blue/purple/pink now.)
I bought this yarn because the name, “time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana” reminded me of my biochemist parents, and then my mom asked for socks so away we went.
It was also socks on vacay time still! And Mom’s birthday was coming up!
Yarn: Knitted Wit “time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana” in honour of biochemist Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard.
Pattern: Shannon Squire’s Sundae Socks. I sized up one more step than the pattern is written for, since Mom asked for them to be roomy. And apparently I got it right, since she’s requested another pair!
Shannon Squire and Knitted Wit have my favourite summer knit-a-long: Socks on Vacay. My first pair of socks took me around two years to finish, but I liked wearing them, so I foolishly joined in last year and knit 3 socks in time, and I guess I’m a sock knitter now?
So here’s a few photos of my first 4 (!) socks for this year.
Pattern is Shannon Squire’s Short Attention Span. It doesn’t actually go down to toddler size, so I improvised those a bit to scale them down.
My baby Dread Pirate (who is also so named thanks to Talk Like A Pirate Day) was utterly pleased with the socks, which was rather a surprise to me since it was hot and I didn’t think he’d want to wear them even for photos. But I think after he watched me knit them, he was pleasantly surprised to find out they were for him!
I’ve got two more socks finished but no pictures yet, so I’m definitely beating last year’s record!
Although I was terribly restrained in buying kits from Laura Nelkin, I did pick up two (plus her perfect little beading tin) so here’s the second!
This is called Hibisco, and it’s another beaded jewelry kit. I’m not normally a fan of pre-strung beads for bigger knits, but they’re not too annoying for a smaller kit and I do love the way they float in the fabric.
I should have gotten a circular, but I didn’t have any in size 2.75mm or whatever this was, so I made do. I may have to expand my small needle collection in the future, though!
Blocking was a challenge. A helpful person on the forum suggested a paper plate to get the curve consistent, which proved hard with the ruffles.
I’m super happy with the way it turned out! And it’s proved toddler-resistant, so unlike my more delicate chains, I can wear this at home! Yay!
I’ve already earmarked the next kits I want, but I’m going to try and hold off until I’m finished a few of my works in progress. They’re getting a bit out of control again!
Knitted Wit did this neat collab with a pile of awesome designers It started with yarn…
Yarn: Glow Up Knitted Wit kit (with main colour Oregon Sky)
There’s a lot of great patterns in the collection, but I particularly loved this one.
Pattern: Oregon Sky by Michele Bernstein (Pdxknitterati)
I took it to Albuquerque for the mini Maker Faire. (see how it matches the rainy Oregon departure!)
I found the perfect project bag:
I took it to Cleveland for Pycon and it was literally bound off in the sky on the way home:
This is a great pattern for travel: visually stunning and a great conversation starter, yet with short and easily memorized lace sections so I could pick it up and knit while watching the toddler, attending conference talks, or pretty much whenever. I think I told more people the name of this pattern than anything I’ve ever knit!
I had some fun taking finished photos…
I’m not sure why, but my toddler particularly likes this one, so while i was taking photos he gestured that i needed to throw it on a tree then grabbed it and ran away giggling …
And before I’d even processed those photos, I was lucky enough to catch a rainbow and get photos with it!
How amazing is that?
Great shawl, great yarn, and my only regret is that it might be a while before I try the other patterns in the collection!
After the Rose City Yarn Crawl mystery knit, I decided that I’d had so much fun that I should try out Romi’s annual mystery knit too. I wouldn’t say that the mystery was hard because it’s extremely well written and well tested, but it’s definitely a pattern that requires concentration. I actually like that, but it did mean I made some mistakes.
Clue 1:
Knitting surgery with Dr. Terri/Clue 2:
The fixed clue 2:
Clue 3:
Clue 4:
Clue 5:
Done!
Overall, this was definitely a more technical knit than I’d done in a while, but in a good way: it was nice to do something complicated and succeed at it. I even finished the MKAL in the allotted time!
I’m torn now: this is always going to fall near the Rose City Mystery-a-longs, but they’ve been hit or miss for me because they’re geared to be accessible to beginners and also include cowls which experience tells me I won’t wear. Do I plan to do this mystery instead, or do I do both, or neither? I guess I’ll just play it by ear for next year!
Incidentally, I always thought I would be a toe-up two-at-a-time person, but in practice it turns out the joy of finishing is such that I haven’t had much trouble with second sock syndrome since I switched to one-at-a-time. I guess next I’d better try a top-down to see if I like that! I also need to work on some afterthought heels for the self-striping I have in my stash.
I’d hoped to finish this for the lotsofsocks downs syndrome awareness kal, but alas it was not to be. Still, I love it, and I think I’ll be not matching my stripes on future socks either. It’s freeing and also out turns out I just like them this way.
My 2018 JBW Tosh Shawl is also finally finished! I already did the half year post, but here’s a picture again:
Cascadial Wrap – I actually finished another colour before switching to the JBW shawl, so it’s progressing!
Flickering Light Shawl – planned after the Cascadial wrap, but maybe only not around my toddler this time since he loved the drop stitches a bit too much
Sock – done!
JBW Tosh Shawl – done!
JBW British Invasion Kit – in hibernation. aka, after looking at my queue I’ve decided I’m not excited enough about this one and I’ll save it to be a grab-and-run kit when needed
New Objects
So of course, now that I’ve finished some and have mentally put a few in hibernation, I started my two knit-a-longs!
Romi Mystery KAL 2019 (clue 1):
Oregon Sky Shawl for the Glow Up Knitted Wit CKAL
The Oregon Sky shawl helps me fill in the gaps when I run out of MKAL clue, and it gave me a nice project for Albuquerque Maker Faire on April 6-7 so I wouldn’t fall into the same pattern of starting something new and then abandoning it. I don’t know that I’ll have enough left by May 2nd when I head to PyCon, though! But for now, I’m enjoying the Glow Up hashtags on Instagram for the knit along. People have such different rainbows!
The Queue Curation
I finished my cull, and the queue is hovering around 90 items. Not bad! Of course, now that it’s only 3 pages long, it’s much easier for me to see what was missing. For example: I have yarn for Shannon Squire’s That 70’s Shawl (I even have several options to choose from) and Composition Book Mitts but somehow never queued either pattern. And I bought a Space Cadet yarn kit for the Bubbles of Joy MKAL but somehow never queued that pattern either. Nor did I start it; I was a bit over-optimistic in my ability to finish the RCYC MKAL and missed the boat entirely on this MKAL. But it’s an absolutely beautiful pattern that I’ll definitely be knitting eventually, so I pushed it up near the top of the queue.
It’s been really fun matching stash yarns to projects. I also think I finally have a pattern for my one unassigned sweater quantity of yarn. We’ll see if it’s still my favourite when I get to casting on, but I bought the pattern so I’m pretty convinced.
Other fun finds: I had queued a pile of sock patterns, which was kind of weird since I wasn’t really a sock knitter until I got hooked during the Socks on Vacay knit-a-long last year. But now that I actually enjoy knitting socks, there’s some great skill-improvement patterns in there, something I now want as I mentioned right back up at the beginning of this post. Thanks, past me!
It took 14 months instead of 12, but I finished my Tosh Shawl Club shawl! This was how I spent some birthday money last year. Since I have an end of year birthday, it tends to get subsumed by the holidays, so this was a neat way to celebrate monthly instead.
Despite the “shawl club” name it’s honestly is more of a wrap. But it’s warm and squishy and while it’s not a kit I would have bought if I’d seen it finished in a shop, I loved the process of getting mystery yarns and clues for a full year, so I definitely got the experience I wanted. Plus, part of the fun was going outside of my usual comfort zones.
July
August
September
October
Whoops, wrong year on this one and the next…
November
December
And the full shawl:
Definitely a fun experience! Looking back, I’m sort of sad I didn’t opt to continue my subscription for this year, but they took the mystery out and the planned shawl just wasn’t floating my boat, so I’m trying something new this year to get my monthly mystery fix!
Last year I subscribed to a year-long mystery-a-long as a birthday gift to myself. It was really a great thing to do, though as I’ve mentioned I didn’t keep up on the last quarter. I haven’t finished, but I figure this is the sort of thing that should be split into two posts anyhow, so this is part 1!
This year’s Rose City Yarn Crawl was something of a disappointment to me. Not because it wasn’t a good weekend, but my husband booked a conference on top of the crawl (after promising not to do that, he looked at the website before it was updated properly and got the wrong dates, so it was as disappointing to him as to me), my friend who usually visits for the crawl couldn’t make it this year, and while I had two most excellent friends visit from Seattle and help with the toddler-wrangling, the Dread Pirate was not really interested in letting me look at more than one or two displays before he wanted my full attention. I didn’t even manage to finish my mystery knit-a-long in time to wear it on the crawl!
In the end, I hit three stores and got some pretties and escaped with a slightly miffed baby and bemused friends, and all in all it went well, it just wasn’t what I wanted. I feel kind of weird feeling dissatisfied about what was frankly a pretty nice weekend with friends visiting, but I guess sometimes you just feel the way you feel. Anyhow, here’s my pretties:
My three stores were Twisted, where I got the Hazel Knits yarn (intended for one of the Elemental hats, probably Toph); Knotty Lamb, where I got the little Sweet Georgia rainbow cube and the Twill & Print progress keeper/stitch marker “yarn bomb”; and For Yarn’s Sake where I picked up a Knitted Wit gradient sixlet to make pdxknitterati’s Lucky Star Shawl pattern (which I’ve wanted to do since I saw it).
I also hit up Black Sheep for my usual knitting group, and they’re having a 30% off store closing sale (I’m so sad, but they’ll stay open online) and picked up skein of Teresa Ruch tencel that… I’m not sure what it’ll be but I need another summer shawl and I wear my other tencel stuff All The Time once it gets warm. I picked up a few skeins of Scrumptious the week before, and I’ll pick up a few more things this weekend I imagine.
However, I did finish the MKAL after the fact, and I’m really pleased with how it turned out! You’ve already seen clue 1, so here’s the rest.
Clue 2 (now we change directions):
Clue 3 (omg, a new colour appears!):
Clue 4 (ooh, lace time):
Clue 5: finished! I added a contrast bind-off because I didn’t feel like playing yarn chicken. I probably would have been fine, but I knew I was tight on yarn so I’d been planning to do it anyhow, and after seeing some finished shawls on the crawl and on social media, I was convinced it was the way to go. And it was! It really kicks the lace up a notch, I think, especially while worn:
And here’s a more full-shawl shot so you can see the glory that is the full design. This was a Romi Hill design and I hear she does some other fun mystery knits, so I might have to see about taking part in another of hers. But not any time soon! I’m still digging out from my half-finished projects.
It would have been nice to have it done to wear on the crawl, but this is definitely going to get plenty of wear anyhow. And it was fun to knit!
So, despite my personal disappointment, I had a good time and … well, at least I didn’t spend too much money on yarn this year?
I made myself an “art project” on Instagram, so I’m cutting and pasting here because I want a copy of my own data. This was supposed to go out the same week I posted the pictures, but I accidentally locked myself out of the web server with the WordPress app and then we all got the plague. I’m scheduling this for later… In fact, I’ve already finished one of these projects since this was written!
Work in progress week! I’ve got an unusually high number of projects on the go so I’m going to try to document them (as part of my “document better” fiber resolution for this year). This is my unfinished @littleboxofcrochet advent calendar. I knew when I got it that it wouldn’t be finished in 2018 because of travel in December and I’m looking forwards to using these as palette cleansers between bigger projects this year.
Work in progress week: day 2. My current project, the @rosecityyarncrawl #mkal . Clue 4 just came out so I’m very behind: this is clue 1! I’ve done a few rows since then but missed both my usual knit groups this week so progress is slow.
Work in progress week day 3: Cascadial Wrap. I saw this pattern knit up at the yarn show I went to in Quebec and took a picture of the tag (the yarns were lovely but the booth didn’t have colours for me) and then when I went to @oregonflockandfiberfest I saw kits that were totally in colours I’d wear and decided it was meant to be.
This was my Christmas holidays travel piece knit while i was visiting family, though I also made a hat for the Dread Pirate because it was cold and he needed a thicker one. (He hated it, of course, because he hates everything you try to put on his head.) It was a *great* travel pattern; interesting enough to watch it grow, but repetitive enough that i could do it in low light, while chatting, while being a warm napping surface for said toddler, etc. Looking forwards to getting back to it!
Pattern by @remadebyhand
Yarn from @elementalfiberworks
Work in progress week day 4: My Flickering Light shawl visits the Hobbit holes on the movie set in New Zealand!
This is a fun pattern but those elongated stitches proved to be too enticing to my toddler, so my vision of getting this all done on the trip didn’t work out and it’s unfinished. But it was *perfect* for the long drive out to the Shire! Hopefully it’ll get finished in my toddler-free knitting time (mostly at knit group).
Pattern: Flickering Light by @paperdaisycreations
Yarn: kit from @spacecadetyarn (and oh, the squish is lovely)
Bag fabric from @firesidetxtls
Work in progress week day 5: the backup sock. For the past several trips (Ottawa, Scotland, New Zealand) I’ve had a ball of sock yarn and needles handy in case I ran out of knitting. I didn’t run out of knitting, but with my toddler liking the other shawl a bit too much, out came the simpler backup sock and after all that travel, it finally got cast on in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Pattern: Sundae socks by @shannonsq (though I think I subbed in the heel from her Spare Time socks)
Yarn: @knit_picks felici in “time traveller” (inspired by the dr who scarf but with fewer colours) — goes well with my camera strap!
Bag: @tombihn organizer pouch I’m calling my “baby safe” because the clip I added through the zipper pull keeps my toddler out. (Someone in the forum mentioned these locking clips for pickpockets and they’re great for toddlers!)
Work in progress week day 6, my Tosh Shawl Club from @jimmybeanswool. I was so good at staying on top of this until my trip to Scotland, whereupon I never caught up. But it’s a really fun pattern with lots of texture and it was neat getting mystery yarns year round for 2018. I’ll catch up on this one soon; there’s a few months worth left but they’re small balls.
Pattern: Tosh Shawl Club
Yarn: @madelinetosh
Narwhal bag from @twinklentwilight
Work in progress week, day 7: British Invasion kit. This is a neat sampler of British wool with a simple cowl pattern. I honestly don’t remember when this was started: i think maybe one of several trips to the Seattle area this fall, though it’s possible it was the backup kit for my summer Ottawa trip. I clearly didn’t get very far! But it’s not the cowl, it’s just the way my fall went.
Pattern: Mosaic Tiles cowl
Yarn: British Invasion sampler from @jimmybeanswool
Bag: I think this was the first fabric I got from @firesidetxtls’ Patreon
And that’s the last of my #wipweek ! I have a few more works in progress around (my unfinished Poca sweater will be back on the needles soon enough) but I think 7 is enough for now.
I had a great time with last year’s Tosh Shawl Club yarn subscription from Jimmy Beans, but decided to try something new this year rather than renewing.
This is https://www.yarnindulgences.club/. My first shipment finally arrived on February 21. (It shipped on Feb 11, I subscribed January 1st.)
When it arrived, my first thought upon seeing the plain white envelope it came in was “wow, that’s flat!”
Opening it up showed what I expected from the form factor: vacuum sealed yarn. How clever! I figure that’s how they can afford to send me posh yarn from Ontario for only $10. Shipping cost $1.80! I don’t know why January’s came near the end of February — I’m guessing it’s when it was dyed as opposed to when I get it?
It puffs up perfectly once opened and inside is some really soft hand-dyed cashmere/merino/nylon. I can’t wait to try it out! I’m thinking maybe some stained glass style colourwork in a hat? Maybe wait to see if it goes with next month’s mini? I don’t know but I’m going to pare down my active projects a bit first.
I gather they will rotate bases so I’ll get to try out their other options. This is great, since I sat in their booth at the yarn show we went to in Quebec and suffered such decision paralysis that I wound up not buying anything! Well, it wasn’t just decision paralysis; I also had to limit my shopping so it would fit in my luggage and I’d already fallen in love with some other yarn in another booth, but if I’d made a decision I would have been able to fit a mini!
Still, maybe then I would have been satisfied and not looked them up on the Internet and never subscribed to https://www.yarnindulgences.club/
So, uh, win?
One of the reasons I decided not to do the Tosh Shawl Club again is that I was tired of the single ply Tosh Merino Light, though, so I’m excited that my first package isn’t single ply as well as that it’s super extra squishy and wonderful.
Compare with my last package from Jimmy Beans:
Definitely more flat.
Comparing with the other $10/month subscriptions I’ve tried:
Yarn of the month: 2-3 swatch sized samples (maybe 20 yds each for a total around 40-80 yards?), Swatch patterns, one full sized pattern. Huge variety of yarns many of which I’ve not seen elsewhere.
(The company has changed hands so this has changed a lot since I was a subscriber.)
Jimmy Beans beanie bags: 3-4 swatch-sized samples (so around 60-80 yards total?), small project pattern for actual yarn (knit+crochet options, typically coffee cup cozy sized). Reusable zippered pouch. Small notion (eg, ruler, yarn needle). 5% back every quarter, so the $10/month is sort of $9.50. More familiar yarn brands.
(This one’s changed a lot since I was a subscriber too.)
Jimmy Beans Tosh Shawl Club: 80 yards of Tosh Merino Light (single ply, hand dyed, exclusive), year long mystery shawl pattern to go with yarn. Same deal with the cashback. No extras, though their cardboard shipping boxes are solid enough that we’re reusing them for small electronics projects.
(This one’s changed a bit this year, but not as much as the other two)
Yarn Indulgences mini-a-month: 100 yards hand dyed on their different bases, which look pretty nice! No pattern, no regular extras. (They say they might do that occasionally.) $10/month but prepaid subscriptions get a discount, so I got a year’s worth for $110, equivalent to $9.17/box.
Each one has its strengths, but this new one definitely wins for most yarn! This is what i wanted because I’m hoping to spark some creativity with mini skeins and maybe do some pattern creation over the year.
I’m not what one would call a monogamous knitter: that is, I don’t do one project at a time. But things have gotten a little out of hand because I start a new project with every trip, and I’ve had a lot of trips since the fall with not enough time in between to finish things. So my normal “one bigger/more challenging at home, one for in my purse” has ballooned to… I don’t know, maybe 7-9 projects?
It’s a bit silly of me to start a mystery knit a long, especially when I’m probably not even going to get to do the full yarn crawl this year (J is traveling, my friend who usually comes down to visit can’t make it this year, and I’m not up to toddler wrangling through 11 incredibly busy stores on my own. I’m planning maybe 2-3?). But I was watching from afar (literally: reading the Ravelry threads from New Zealand) and people were saying that this year’s knit was challenging and had unusual construction, and I was curious enough to try.
I managed to get my yarns out of my stash:
The gold colour is what I chose for colour 1. I love this yarn so much. This was an impulse buy at Knotty Lamb maybe during last year’s crawl, and it’s from Farmer’s Daughter yarns.
Colour 2 is Madeline Tosh and I might not have enough of it, but I liked the two together so much that if i have to bind off in colour 1 to make this work, so be it. I picked up that one at I think Knit Purl (now closed) a few years ago in the crawl.
As promised, some interesting construction. Can you see the yarn overs at the edges?
And here’s Clue 1 complete to those last two stitches:
I’d never done a “reverse” icord bind off!
And then on to picking back up for clue 2… Clue 3 is already out, so I’m quite behind! But, life, toddler, and if you look in the back of that photo, I’m learning pcb design too. Sometimes the must amazing thing about being an adult is that I hardly ever have to be bored!
Cutting your knitting is scary, but I did it and survived!
I tried out two other new things in the process: Studio Donegal “Darnie” fingering” which is an Irish-made yarn that was perfect for this. So many rich colours, really “toothy” for nice colourwork. I honestly wasn’t sure I’d like it, because it’s a bit stiff feeling until it’s washed (and oh does it bloom beautifully) but it feels satisfying to work with in a way I can’t quite articulate. I might have to plan out a fancy colourwork sweater now that I know I love knitting with it.
Second new thing: those flexible double pointed needles. They’ve been available everywhere but since I mostly do magic loop on circular needles, I hadn’t tried them. But this was a needle size where I didn’t have needles I loved, so I gave it a shot. Not bad at all! I don’t mind dpns but with a curious toddler around they’re a hazard. But sometimes magic loop is a pain in small gauge. I’ve found a hat pattern using this size to try next!
Ready to cut. I borrowed those scissors but i covet my own now.
Cutting!
And blocked on the mug:
Success!
I’ve got enough yarn to do it again, and next time I’m going to do a few things differently: I want a sightly wider icord and I need to catch more of the edge into the sewn part. I had to use a felting needle to push in some errant strands, which is no big deal but makes me think I need a bit more rolled into that edge. I’ve got enough yarn to do a second cup cozy, so I’ll definitely do that before attempting a steeked sweater, but I do think I will try a sweater eventually!
I think these past few years of setting fiber goals has been fun, so here’s what I’m thinking for this year:
Learn steeking. I’ve already signed up for a class in January so hopefully this one will be easy! It’s been on my to-learn list for a while.
Document better. I haven’t been good about this since February last year, which not coincidentally is when I went back to work. I take pictures but haven’t been blogging or updating Ravelry. And I’ve got two patterns that I could maybe release this year, if I ever write them up.
Finish another sweater. I’ve got one for me started but hibernating since early fall, and I’d like to do another toddler one. Plus I have others planned!
Play with mini skeins. I’ve swapped out my yarn subscription for the year to one that’s monthly mini skeins with no project, and I want to play with designing for them. Maybe I’ll finally make that Christmas in July advent calendar I keep thinking about? (I know someone who might be willing to work on it with me so I’ve got to knit up some designs asap!)
1. Project kit success! I made up a beanie bag, started a cowl kit (but haven’t finished that one), and bought and started a Cascadial Wrap kit. Plus I mostly kept up with my Shawl Club subscription. I guess new kits don’t solve my pileup problem, but they make me happy and it’s nice to see that investing in pretty kits is a good thing to keep doing.
Cascadial Wrap:
Shawl club:
2. Amigurumi success! I made the baby Dread Pirate Potato an elephant that lives in his travel toy bag, a dino that lives at home, a pumpkin, and started an amigurumi advent calendar that will be my decorations next year.
Elephant:
Dinosaur:
Pumpkin:
Advent:
3. Fiber fail? I didn’t touch the kit, but I *did* do some pretty spinning and dyeing so I don’t feel so bad about it. Turns out the Dread Pirate loves my spinning wheel, which is great because I can leave it set up and he’ll touch it and enjoy it, but it’s hard to get time to use it myself. I’m going to have to work on a habit for next year.
Dye and spin experiment:
4. Stash success! I got most of the yarn into organized boxes other than the worsted and sock yarn I peruse regularly for inspiration. I managed to use more older yarn this year because it turns out I select based on squishing and comparing. So the stash has become better inspiration — something I really thought deeply about because I read A Stash of One’s Own this year. Total win!
Partway through organization:
There’s a row on the bottom that’s fabric boxes full of fabric, kits, and some recent purchases.
Appropriate current state:
More baby proof! It needs smaller labels.
Decoration/closeup:
Summary:
3/4 clear wins isn’t bad and I think my dye and spin experiment filled a similar niche to the fiber kit I didn’t touch, so I feel like I kept some spinning up even if I did it a different way. I think the yarn kits were a good fit for me, and the stash re-org got me in shape so that my office in nearly toddler friendly, and it helped me find treasures.
I’m still figuring out what I’ll strive for in 2019. Maybe this year is the year of the fingering weight sweater? Try the spinning set again? I’ve already got plans to take a steeking class so maybe that’s the easy goal #1!
Day 5 is the pi shawl, which I’ve always kind of wanted to try because of the name, but I hadn’t gotten around to it until this day!
After the square shawl, I decided to try a circular cast on with a crochet hook. It felt a lot like magic loop for knitting, and I liked it a lot more. I also knit with a circular needle, which is awkward to start but ok once it got big enough. Still, it did look funny when it was in progress:
It did block out, though!
Bind off is Jenny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off, for somewhat obvious reasons when you see the stretch in the blocking.
Yarn: Rowan Super Fine Merino DK, also from that Feb 2016 beanie bag. My goodness, this is the roundest of round yarns. The construction of this is what the network engineer in me wants to call twisted pairs, but in yarn it’s a cable construction (network cable, clearly). It is soft and lovely and so nice to knit with. Would definitely use again.
I did run out before the pattern was done, so I subbed in some pink yarn (leftover from the medallion hat, blue sky fibers of some sort, I think?) but then when that was running out I realized there wasn’t much more for me to learn by doing the whole thing so I just didn’t. Kinda like how it went with my math homework when they stopped checking it so I stopped doing it as a teen. (I think it dropped my grades by 2% and I decided I could live with that. Who knows what I’ll do when my kid is old enough to have homework…)
Day 4 was a square shawl. I don’t think I’d done a piece from the center like that, and I didn’t like the giant hole left by casting on 4 and joining, so I tightened it up some after casting off. I did this on double points which was pretty finicky especially with a sleeping baby on my lap. Not sure if I should blame the uneven yarn over sizes on the double points or the baby, but I’m not going to worry about them.
I did an icord bind off again, because I was curious how it would look and it was one of the recommended ones when I did a search for square bind offs. I like it on this little swatch, though I can see why people cast on conditionally and graft. I faked it and it looks ok to me, though!
Yarn is Knit Picks Diadem (if I remember the name correctly). This is leftover from a mystery cowl I did and it’s not my favourite because it doesn’t travel well on my bag. (It felts itself into knots.) However, I only have small double points and this was smaller than the dk sized sampler bag I was using. And more importantly, this stuff is soft, so it was a texture cleanser after day 3’s terrible yarn. Mmm, silk alpaca.
Day 3’s shawl is an asymmetric triangle shape. I like this one’s particular slip stitch/yarn over edging.
Yarn: Rowan Colorspun. This is a mohair-wool-polyamide blend, also from the Feb 2016 beanie bag and I hated it so much. To me, it felt like I was getting splinters in the sides of my fingers while I knit. I’m usually ok with mohair, so it might be the wool part of the blend that was the problem. End result: I couldn’t even bring myself to finish knitting up the sample.
Texture aside, it’s an interesting homespun lumpy blend with some subtle colour. But that texture was just too awful for me.
Day 2 is a crescent shawl, a familiar shape with an increase that’s unusual for me, and I’m not sure I’ve ever used it in an edging like this. The garter tab looks jarring on such a small piece, though I hardly notice those on larger shawls.
Unblocked:
I added an icord bind off because I couldn’t remember trying one before. It’s a nice edge, but feels weird on a shawl where I’d normally go at least a bit lacey or pointy. I can see using it on a sweater or maybe even a scarf, though, so I’m glad to have it in my repertoire.
Blocking:
Yarn is Rowan baby merino silk dk, a pretty heathered merino silk blend from the same Feb 2016 beanie bag. It’s more slippery in the ball than knit up, but it is still lush. I’m a sucker for silk blends so no surprise that I like this one.
I managed to split it a bit in the bind off (likely because I was doing it in dim light with a cranky baby Potato who didn’t want to sleep, no fault of the yarn) but other than that my own poor choices, this was great to knit with. I would definitely use this again.
