New Year's Resolutions?

It's that time of year. When we reflect on the year just ending and start to plan and dream about the year ahead.

I am not one to make big new years resolution announcements, for a few reasons:

1. My work schedule in January is not conducive to starting and maintaining any new habits
2. By openly stating any new goals I feel like there is such a set up for failure - if there is any weak moments or divergence from the goal everyone knows and it is much harder mentally, for me anyway, to get back on track. I know for others this has the reverse effect and by announcing their resolutions to the world they get the motivation and accountability they need to succeed.
3. A resolution made on 1 January may not be relevant days, weeks or months after. Life moves quickly and what seems important in the moment, may not be in the long term. I guess that is why a lot of new years resolutions are "eat healthier" or "exercise more" - these are general and will always be things that are required in order to live a happy and healthy life. I'm not saying that I won't try to do either of these things, I'm just not sure that I need to make them a new years resolution.

What I like to do at this time, is look back on what I have achieved in the past year. We spend so much of our lives doing and being, that often the milestones and achievements pass us by without any thought or celebration.

2015 was a big year for me, especially in my craftiness:

My nine most liked Instagram posts of 2015

• I started this blog in March and have fairly consistently posted entries.
• I started dyeing yarn, experimented and found a true passion.
• I opened my etsy shop. AND I have had sales. It's one thing to open a shop and put my creations out into the world, but for other people to decide they want to spend their hard earned money on my yarn is an amazing feeling.
• I knit a lot; including four shawls, a jumper, one soft toy, six beanies, two pairs of mitts (including the cupcake mittens), and at least 8 pairs of socks (I have been super lazy and have not entered my sock projects in to Ravelry).

Do I have things I want to do and achieve in 2016? YES - lots!!! I look forward to sharing my crafting progress and business growth with everyone.

Digging into the stash - knitting with that "special skein"

After taking the time to review my stash in preparation for Bendigo (see previous post), I rediscovered some amazing yarn. Not forgotten, more like I had moved it to the back because I did not know what to do with it and felt that it was too special to knit with.

I found a simple shawl pattern on Ravelry; Reyna by Noora Laivola. I liked that it had garter and some lace sections, without being a complicated pattern. As I wanted the yarn to be the star.

During this dig into the stash, I also realised how many partial skeins I have. Leftovers from socks and shawls, but not enough to think of as scraps. So out came the scales and I weighed the portions that I had, sorting them into size piles as I went. The Moonraker Shawl, by Melanie Berg, seemed like the perfect way to incorporate a couple of my smaller skeins into a large project.

My small skeins are from two projects that I really enjoyed. They are a sparkly purple left over from my Low Tide Cardigan and a sparkly blue/grey from the My Hope shawl I made my sister for her wedding.

   

Finished Object - Bloom Shawl

It was so great to come back from Bendigo with yarn for specific projects and so motivating to cast on straight away.

When I arrived home on the Sunday afternoon I immediately balled up the charcoal and teal corriedale I had purchased for Colleens Crafts to make the Bloom Shawl by Kiri FitzGerald-Hillier.

The version of the pattern I followed is the original as it was published in Issue 31 of Yarn Magazine.

My default for reading patterns is the written instructions and then referring to a chart, if provided, as a reminder guide as I complete each round. After completing this pattern, my advice for anyone else is to follow the charts, as the written directions seem to be inaccurate or at least confusing in parts.

First thing I did was find a tutorial on how to do the pinhole cast on - I used the one from Very Pink Knits. It took me a couple of tries to get it right but overall not a hard thing to master.
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The directions were for 5 dpns, but I knit the whole motif on magic loop. One thing that was not clear in the written directions was where to place markers - to split the motif into its four sections. If I had realised this earlier I would have been able to get this information from the chart. I guessed a little as I went along and I think in the end it is not noticeable that I fudged it a bit.

I made several modifications in the wing sections. For the decreases on both the left and right wings I knit two together through the back loop. I tried a few different decreases and decided that in the garter stitch I liked the look of this method best. I flipped the wings, so that the decrease side was the top edge, the finish and angle of the wing seemed to lay better that way. I also connected the blacks at the top of the motif together by knitting the last black stitch of one wing with the first black stitch of the other.

This was a super quick knit - it took me 15 days and zoomed along. I think part of the reason for this, apart from being knit in a DK, was that until you get to the edging there are really not many stitches on the needles, so the rows are short.

In the end I used all but 8 grams of the charcoal (from 213 grams). I do have plenty of the teal left, having only used 40 grams of a 100 gram skein.

I wet blocked the shawl, using blocking wires on the motif to make it square. Then pinned the wings and edge into shape around that square. I also pinned out each point of the lace pattern.

Cupcake mittens, deadlines and making changes to the pattern

My sister requested that I make her Cupcake Mittens.They looked super cute, so agreed that I would give them a go.

I am satisfied with the end result and pretty happy with my colour work, but these were a hard slog.

The beginning of this project caused me frustration. I had trouble getting gauge, first they were too loose, then they were too tight - playing with needle size and stitch counts until I on the fourth try I was happy with the cuff. I also found that by knitting the cupcakes on the palm as well as the back of the hand the mitt was very tight (partly I think due to my inexperience in colour work). So I chose to rip back to the cuff and change the pattern. I knit the cupcakes on only the back of the hand, five on the first row, four on the next and then alternated those two rows. I also knit three plain rows in between, in order to give myself a break from the colour work, provide an opportunity to knit in ends as I went and to hopefully prevent the overall mitten from being too tight.

I also changed the pattern further, by making the mitts convertible. I used the directions from the ChemKnits tutorial for transforming any mitten knitting pattern into convertible mittens.

After three repeats into the cupcakes on the first mitt, I thought that the thumb as written in the pattern was going to end up making the mitts too tight and not sit correctly, so I made the decision to start adding in a thumb gusset. The end result was a stumpy looking thumb that looked weird and felt wrong. I blocked it so see how it would end up, and had my sister try it on. Immediately I knew I had made the wrong decision with the thumb. I put that completed mitt aside and started the second one, following the pattern.

Although the first mitt ended as a bit of a fail, it had actually knit up quickly once I had started. So I was keen to get going on the second one to get it right. But the one by one twisted rib on 2mm needles broke me and I struggled to get it going. I knew I had a deadline, my sister was waiting for these mitts and now, not only did I have to knit the second one, but I had to go back and see if I could save the first!! But the brain is a funny thing, right? I wanted to cast on other things, or didn't feel like knitting at all. I think if I had no deadline and the first one had been a success I would have been into it and quickly finished the second. But with the weather getting colder and my sister eagerly expecting the finished pair, progress on the second one was slow.

I think I was also dragging on knitting it, because I knew I was going to have to tackle fixing the first one when I was done.

To begin this process I looked to see if I could rip it out from the bind off, but because it had been blocked, the ends were hard to find and it had fused together a bit, not felted, but just difficult to rip out. So I grabbed a pair of scissors and cut the top off the mitts, just above where I needed to restart with the thumb as written in the pattern.

As painful as that was, it ended up being the best option. Once I had taken the plunge, ripping out and picked back up where it needed to be I felt so much better and it took me less then a week to then knit up the rest of the mitt.

Lessons learned:

• I really do not react well to deadline knitting (when the recipient is expecting the item).
• I should have followed the pattern;
• or at least read it through first - perhaps if I had read the entire pattern I would have started a thumb gusset earlier, preventing the stumpy thumb I created.
• I enjoy the result of colour work and would like to do more, perhaps on a jumper.

First attempt at self-striping sock yarn

After dying for longer colour repeats on a chunky yarn, I decided the next thing to try was a self-striping sock yarn.

I used the same method for winding and dying the yarn as I used for the previous experiment and again sectioned the yarn into four equal sections.

Colours used this time around:
a light blue/green - mixed using emerald and turquoise
a dark green - mixed using emerald and turquoise
light purple - straight from dye stock
gun metal - straight from dye stock

The bottom image is the toe of a sock, I could not wait to cast something on. I am fairly happy with how it has come out, although the stripes are not very thick. For thicker stripes I am either going to have to limit myself to two colours per skein, or find a new piece of equipment to wind longer skeins.

Dying for longer colour repeats - Part 2

I am so pleased with how this turned out, especially given that it is my first attempt at longer colour repeats.

As promised last week, here is my dying process, in pictures.

After the skein was dry I was keen to get it back into a shorter skein, but a little worried about how I was going to do this without creating a giant knot! Luckily for me the door handles in my craft room are the perfect distance apart to loop my long skeins around and then wind on to my umbrella swift. I managed to get it wound without any tangles and it didn't take too long.

I am sending this skein to a friend. She had seen the yarn I had dyed to match my winter coat and asked if I could dye her some chunky yarn for a cowl she wanted to knit. I am excited to see how it will knit up.

I now have ideas for trying gradients and self striping, based on what I was able to achieve with my first attempt at longer colour repeats.

My equipment is clearly very basic but for now it works. I am getting results that I am really happy with and having fun along the way.

knitrospective - socks

For this knitrospective I wanted to look at my journey in sock knitting.

When I first started getting serious about knitting I read quite a lot of blogs, I did not (and still don't) have a knit group so everything I learned was what I found out for myself online.

My current "vanilla socks"

I really didn't have any fear when it came to trying new things or starting a different kind of project, after all it is just yarn and the worst that can happen is that you rip it out and start again. I did that back then and I still do it now. I have even put terror into a group of people at work, when while knitting at lunchtime I decided that the socks I was working on were not right, so I just pulled out the needles and ripped. Why continue if you know it's not right.

Quite early on I decided that I wanted to knit socks, because it seemed like the thing to do and the idea of hand knit socks really excited me. Everywhere I was reading about "plain vanilla" socks and I thought that this was some magical universal pattern, a secret amongst knitters. I searched the internet, looking for the plain vanilla sock pattern, but nothing had that name. So I found a pattern that sounded simple enough and gave it a go. Only after knitting those socks and more internet research did I actually find out what plain vanilla meant, and that for each person these can end up being completely different. I now have my plain vanilla's - 56sts, 2.75mm magic loop or 2 circs, toe-up, short row heel (knit from the other end of the ball if I don't want to break up the striping pattern), short cuff.

But it does take a while to get to that point with socks, discovering the preferences of the toe shape, cuff length, heel shaping is all very personal and only becomes right with trial and error. I also like to explore new techniques and heels to see if there might be another way I would prefer.

Below are my very first pair of socks. They are pilled, have a hole in the cuff and are not even the same size. But I love them and I use them as bed socks. I don't know what pattern they are knit from (done before Ravelry), I know I knit them on double points, but I clearly had inconsistent gauge, maybe even different stitch counts and didn't understand that I needed to alter the stitch count in order to get socks that fit.

I have since knit eleven pairs of socks that I have listed in Ravelry. And I think at least another four pairs that were knit prior to Rav and gifted. I would not call myself a pro sock knitter, but I do like to always have a pair on the needles and will continue to add to my sock drawer.

Finished Object - Miranda Sweater

This is the quickest sweater I have ever knit! I just checked my Ravelry page and I shocked myself. I started it on March 10 and finished the knitting on 19 April. I did however swatch for this project about a year ago, so in a way it has still been a long time coming.

Here is a breakdown of the project:

Pattern: Miranda by Josée Paquin

Needles: US 6 (4mm) and US 8 (5mm)
Yarn: Bennett & Gregor Wirraworra - 494 grams
Colourway: Wattlebark - (Brown)
Purchased at: Bendigo Sheep & Wool Festival 2013

With weaving in the ends (not that there were many as I used one giant ball) and blocking it was officially completed on 25 April.

Modifications:

• added 7 stitches at the underarm and then decreased back over the following 2 rows - I always find that there is a large gap if no stitches are added at the underarm and better to knit the fix into the garment than have to sew up a hole at the end
• I missed a small section of the pattern that asked to knit 4 rows without increases before putting the sleeve stitches on holders. Instead I added the 4 rows without shaping directly below the arm holes. The fit does not seem to be impacted by this 

Notes:

• The pattern was very wordy, which made it more difficult to follow (and hence why I missed the section mentioned above).
• For each section/row I wrote out the number of the pattern repeat row and marked out where the increases would fall. Then as I knit each row I crossed off the pattern row number, to keep track of the middle panel.
• When it came to increasing the front panel I felt the instructions were not 100% clear. The edges may not have worked out perfectly, I just made sure that I read my knitting and followed the pattern as already established as much as possible.
• I used almost all of the 494grams. I knit all of the giant ball and then knit directly from my swatch to finish the second sleeve. I had knit two swatches, one flat and one in the round - if I had only knit one swatch I would have had enough to finish the sweater.

The weather is starting to get cold, so looking forward to an opportunity to wear it. I will try to get an "out in the wild" picture soon, and will post it to instagram.