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.

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.

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.

Dying for longer colour repeats - Part 1

Up until now all my dying projects have resulted in highly variegated colour-ways. I have kept the skein the size I purchased it in, and dyed the entire skein in one go.

So, for this dye project I made a longer skein and dyed it in four sections.


First I had to figure out how I was going to create a longer skein. I do not have a warping board, or even flat back chairs that I could run the yarn between.


I scanned the house for something that could work. I settled on the coffee table, flipped upside down, and wrapped the yarn around the legs in a Z pattern.


My first attempt I confused the way I was wrapping the yarn, not realising until I was tying it. This led to rewinding the yarn back into a ball, untangling as I went. The second attempt I chanted to myself as I wrapped - over, under, over, under - so I would not make the same mistake again.

 I tied up the skein with numerous ties, made it into a loose crochet chain and left it to soak.

Now for the dying...

I dye in my kitchen and do not have the space to attempt hand painting, so I needed a plan to that would allow me to still do immersion dying but in sections.

I set up my baking tray on the stove top, and then a tub for the undyed portion of the yarn and a pot for the dyed portions.

I had put temporary ties in the long skein to split it in to four sections, as I fed each section into the pan I removed these ties and made sure that the dye overlapped at these points so there was no white.

Colours for this project:
section 1: emerald and turquoise
section 2: purple and periwinkle
section 3: orange and russet
section 4: sky blue

I posted a mid-dying colour photo on Instagram (link on the left).

Check the blog next week to see the colour progressions, what solution I come up with for re-skeining my long skein back to a "normal" sized skein and the finished dying project.

Toy Knitting - a.k.a I can't say no to my nephew

Until last week I had only heard of minecraft, but had no idea at all what is was.

Now I know what the "face" of a creeper looks like and I have charted out how to knit it (those with any minecraft knowledge will know it's not a tricky face).

My nephew is currently obsessed with this game. He also understands that I knit and he was not at all timid in asking if I could knit him a creeper toy. And of course, when he asks me so nicely and appreciates the knitted toy there is not a chance in the world that I would say no to him.

The challenge here was that I found a picture of a knitted version, but no complete pattern to follow. Luckily it is not a complicated shape and I was able to play around to get something that looked similar to images of the creeper.

To make it stand up I inserted a thin cylinder of cardboard (made from a toilet roll) inside the body when I stuffed it, then messed around with different legs until I figured out a version that was able to support the rest of the toy.