Category: Yarn & Fiber

#craftygoals Check-In: July 2023 #2

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Hello again, my crafty lovelies! I missed a couple beats on the crafty check-ins, but I’m trying to get back into it again. I do this every year: I think that summer vacation will mean lots of downtime and I’ll use that downtime to sew and knit and embroider and paint and all the happy creative things that make my heart sing, when in reality summer vacation is doing a lot of stuff with the Brookelets and trying to get the house cleaned up and ready for the next school year. Not an actual lot of time for crafting. AND THEN I think, “OK, well, just wait until autumn and when the kids go back to school because then you’ll have time for crafting.” But nope! That’s when pep band, drama practice and everything else starts. The teenager years are busy, busy, busy!

The Big Declutter 2023 Project is still going big in our house, so that’s cutting into crafty time tremendously. Also, the kids have become obsessed with spending time together as a family in the evening, and I had scheduled the bulk of my sewing time for the evenings because they normally do not want to spend time together after dinner…so…yeah…even less crafty time happening because I’m choosing to spend time with my kids when they ask for it. It’s weird and I don’t know how long it will last, but I’ll show up for every minute until it ends.

Patriotic Mini Charm Chiffon Baby Quilt: I officially started and finished quilting it today, so major progress finally happening on this project! I ran into a lot of problems getting my new machine set up, and the craft room was a disaster that needed some decluttering, and then blah, blah, blah…took a while to get going on the quilting. After I’m done writing this post I’m planning to head back into the craft room and trim it and hopefully get the binding done today. I’d really like to get this into the mail on Monday.

Scrappy Thursdays: I started working on my Farm Girl Vintage “Mixed Berries” quilt this week! I have background squares and stem squares cut for all sixteen 12-inch berry blocks.

Going forward, I think I need to boot the Clementine Quilt out of the Scrappy Thursday line-up because I simply don’t show up to work on it when it’s its turn. I am not gelling with this quilt right now, and I think it needs to be back into hibernation so I can get some actual work done on anything else. Clementine’s time will come, eventually.

Next week I’m supposed to work on the Leaders & Enders quilt, but that might change because I have no plan whatsoever for it and I’m eyeing Christmas on the horizon and I’d really like to start on some Christmas gifts. We’ll see…

Smitten EPP Quilt: I pieced my first of many of the small hexagons into a large hexagon filler block, and started working on the second one. I need to cut some diamonds for the filler blocks. I work on this while I’m sitting in the car at my kids’ music lessons, so it limps along in the summer due to last-minute cancellations and the like. It’ll pick up steam in the autumn when lesson schedules are consistent again.

Nilla the Unicorn (Knitting): I’ve made it a goal to knit for thirty minutes after lunch most days. Renaissance bought a cross stitch kit on one of our excursions in recent weeks, and so she joins me outside each day as well and we stitch in the sunshine together. It’s one of the best parts of my day!

Since my obsession with the Little Cotton Rabbits has not died down, I decided to do a test run with knitted animals and dug out a knit unicorn kit that I bought four or five years ago for Rachel at the Madrona Fiber Festival that she never got around to knitting up and I’ve been working on that. My family has named it Eeyore and insists that it’s a donkey because it turned out that I had no yellow worsted-weight yarn scraps to make its horn and I’m waiting for my KnitPicks order to arrive so I can do that.

So that’s it for the last two weeks. #craftygoals for the upcoming week are:

  1. Finish the Patriotic Mini Charm Chiffon Baby Quilt and get it in the mail!
  2. Possibly start on the Farm to Table Baby Quilt.
  3. Scrappy Thursday: Either keep working on the Mixed Berries quilt or start a scrappy Christmas gift. (I’m pretty sure the Leaders & Enders quilt is not going to be happening right now.)
  4. Use music lesson time for EPP and not phone scrolling. (I can’t really make a more specific goal for this quilt each week because it’s so dependent on so many different people’s schedules lining up.)
  5. Possibly finish Nilla the Unicorn.

FINISHED: Building Block Socks

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They’re so finished that he’s even worn them to church already.

Details:

Pattern: #216 Beginner’s Lightweight Socks, by Diane Soucy of Knitting Pure & Simple (my favorite sock pattern!)

Yarn: Knit Picks Felici Fingering Weight in “Building Blocks” colorway (colorway discontinued), 2 skeins with very little leftover.

Needles: US 0 (2.0 mm)

Modifications: I used the wrong needle size somehow. It should have been a US 2 (2.75 mm).

These were supposed to be done in time for Christmas, so I had to enact the “public shaming” method of pressure to get myself to work through to the end despite missing my original deadline. I will say that this method definitely works for me.

I did use the wrong needle size somehow. The last pair of socks that I made for him, I didn’t write down what size needles I used, and just looked at the picture of them to guess what needles they were and then hunted down a similar-looking set and got knitting. I think I may have a set of gold-colored US 2s and a set of gold-colored US 0s, and…there you go, mistake made. As a result, these are a dense fabric and a little on the snug side, but he says they work well in his church shoes, which are a snug fit, as most church shoes are.

He likes that they’re bold and peppy. I wasn’t expecting that. He’s more of a “dark, monochrome colors” for his socks kind of guy. I was trying to use up stash and I’d had this yarn since 2013.

On Second Thought: A Case of the Februaries Might Not Need New Projects

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I wrote a few days ago about how I’ve been hit by the February ennui that tackles me every year, and how I’d decided to just give in to every new project that flitted across my radar in an attempt to give myself some happy chemical boosts and weather out the rest of this gray month. I published my post, went off to continue working on the new Linen Stitch scarf, and as I was knitting away the day, my mind wandered and I remembered something I read about in the The Twelve Week Year called the “Emotional Cycle of Change,” which comes with a handy little visual in the book:

I recalled the first time I worked The Twelve Week Year system, way back in the summer of 2020, and how much impact that little image had on me because I absolutely identified with it. When I was putting in the work on that cycle’s goals, I hit that nasty wall of despair right around Week Five and it stuck with me for a good two or three weeks where all I wanted to do was give up, give up, give up. But, thankfully, I was aware of it, I had people to talk to about it who encouraged me to keep going, and yep, I kept at it and eventually pulled up and out of that funk because I didn’t give up and I didn’t shift my focus onto something else. I got to experience the high of sticking with that project until the end, even though I really wanted to just die for a few weeks whenever I thought about another stupid day of doing this.

And I think that’s what’s going on right now. I started the new year with the idea of doing good on crafty goals, and I’ve been going forward with all the energy and zeal of an optimistic goal-getter, and it’s now hitting really hard that progress isn’t an overnight thing and I am smack dab in the Boring Middle of it all. The answer isn’t to quit or switch focus, because when I get to the end of this twelve week cycle (in the last week of March), I don’t want to look back and regret that I stopped working on these goals. Honestly, it’s a bit of a weird goal cycle because I don’t have anything huge going on because I just couldn’t come up with anything except “take a break from striving all the time,” because I’ve been striving hard for eighteen months straight and just felt like I needed a break. So I’m only doing some low-key stuff to help prep me to do bigger things come April, but it is important to me to tie up a lot of these loose crafty ends, if only to “close the circuit” on these open/unfinished projects.

So the answer right now is that I’m having a normal reaction to change. I’ve been really good at showing up to work on these crafty goals; it’s become my routine and it’s no longer a new, exciting thing, and I’m jonesing for the high of a new project…but that’s what gets me into this mess of having eighty-seven UFOs cluttering up my craft room and driving me crazy all the time. The answer is to just keep showing up and doing the work, even if I need to grit my teeth somedays, and remind myself of how good it’s going to feel to get that pile of quilt tops completed. In a few weeks’ time I’ll start seeing the results of that consistency and I’ll start getting excited about the dash to the finish line, and the high of finishing a big goal is way bigger than the high of starting a new project. Lasts longer, too.

Another thing I might to watch out for is the impulse to indulge in retail therapy–it might be one of the first signs that I’m approaching Stage 2 or Stage 3 of this cycle. That being said, there is a still an ungodly amount of yarn currently making its way to me in the mail because…well, I didn’t figure this out until after I’d already ordered it. Guess I’ll be making a lot of socks and fingerless mittens for the foreseeable future, even though I know I’m only capable of about seven pairs a year, given my “comfortable knitting” calculations I just figured out.

How many skeins of sock yarn did I order? Nine. *sigh*

I’ll do better the next time.

A Case of the Februaries Demands More Knitting

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I do have a finished project post to show you, but I also keep procrastinating driving to the post office and actually mailing it off to its intended recipient, so…I could spin it to sound like the USPS is sucking at its job, but it would be an absolute lie because it’s really just me.

Although, the USPS is taking its sweet time getting a package of yarny goodness to me that was supposed to be delivered last Monday, but then it disappeared from their radar for a couple of days, and magically popped up at a regional distribution center yesterday. Hmph.

As predicted, February has cast a grayish pallor on everything in sight, and I’m feeling it, hard. I keep telling myself that it is a temporary feeling, that life really isn’t just cold and dreariness, and that spring will be here soon with sunshine and birds twittering and flowers, but then you have to stop thinking about spring and re-focus on what’s in front of you and…it’s February. Usually there’s some crazy weather going on to distract me, but not this year. Just cold and drizzly rain, and a lot of fog, which is just unsettling. There’s not supposed to be fog when you’re driving to the school to pick up your kids in the afternoon. It gives me the heebie jeebies.

We are having a couple of nice days right now, but I absolutely do not trust them at all and I refuse to allow them to get my optimism engaged, only to have it crushed and ground into the asphalt next week. No. This is fake spring. I’ll try to get outside and soak up some desperately needed sun, but I’m not going to let my heart get carried away. It would be a great time to do some clean-up in the garden, though…

I think the fabric and yarn companies have figured out this February sloggy feeling, because geez, the sales and deals coming out of ’em right now are incessant. It’s been bad, people. But oh so good. But I may need to set up a temporary email filter on any incoming messages from the crafty stores because this past week has shown that I have no known defenses against their February sales. Dear goodness. Cara, it doesn’t count for much if you’re trying to reduce your stash and UFOs, only to then gorge yourself and bring in more stash.

The Yarn Harlot wrote up a blog post in recent days that echoes my sentiments about February, and she admitted that she’s just giving in to every “start a new project” impulse that rises in her heart. And I kinda sorta love that idea, because I am in desperate need of dopamine hits at the moment and indulging in some Startitis to achieve the effect is far friendlier to my bank account than retail therapy.

So I’ve started making wild promises to my kids about knitting them things and I will probably regret it in a month’s time, but whatevs. Michael’s socks are finished, and I was looking through my Ravelry project page to figure out which family member has gone the longest without receiving a handknit from me, and it turns out I’ve not knit a thing for my boy since he was in the first grade. (That’s five years for those of you who are also experiencing the Februaries and don’t want to do the math.) I called him over and we perused the Ravelry pattern database, and he finally decided that what he wanted his dear ol’ mum to knit him was a pig hat. Because he’s sad that his monkey hat doesn’t fit anymore.

ca. 2010

Guys, I knit that monkey hat for his first winter of his life. He’s worn it ever since, and would probably still be wearing it except that I outlawed it because it’s simply too small. I don’t care that he can technically stretch it over his noggin…it’s too small. The boy is knitworthy, to say the least…but only if it’s an animal hat, apparently, because I made him a fair isle hat in the first grade, and he dutifully wore it that year, but then reverted back to the monkey hat in the second grade and I don’t think I’ve seen the fair isle hat on his head ever since.

ca. 2015

The pink yarn listed in the pattern for the pig hat? I ALREADY OWNED IT. Can the Universe be any more clear on what a great idea this project was?!?!

Except, when I went to go unearth it from the stash, I couldn’t find it. I scoured the stash from top to bottom three times, went through the knitting UFO bin twice, and then looked around in every other UFO bin just in case it randomly got put in them when we moved, but alas, none of the perfect pink yarn could be found. I think I got rid of it when we moved? It’d been sitting in a partially-knitted state for years because I bought it to make a vest for Nathaniel when he was little, but it turns out that he gets heat rashes from wearing vests, so I never finished it, and I was trying to cull crafty supplies and it wasn’t a shade of pink I particularly liked to begin with…so, I think I got rid of it. There’s no notes in my stash listing on Ravelry, but I can’t find the stuff, so I’ve now marked it as “given away.” But I honestly have no idea what I did with it.

Undaunted, I hunted down various shades of pink bulky-weight yarn, screenshotted them all and cropped them into a grid, then texted the image to Nathaniel and asked him to pick one, and he picked one of the most brightest shades of bubble gum pink and he is thrilled that it will be adorning his head in a few weeks’ time. I love it that he loves pink, it’s adorable.

Since I was paying for shipping anyways, I figured I’d throw in some more yarn to my order and looked up which family member was next due for a handknit, and it turned out it was Renaissance, who I last crafted for three years ago. She wasn’t terribly interested in anything, but then I had a bold flash of inspiration and reminded her that football season will be back all-too-soon, and wouldn’t a pair of fingerless gloves with fold-over tops just be amazing during the outdoors flute-playing season? She immediately agreed, and I added in some maroon superwash merino to my order. I did also add two more projects’ worth of yarn for things for myself, but then got rid of them because knitting season will inevitably wind down come spring and gardening and English paper piecing time, and most of my stash is comprised of these kinds of orders–the extra skeins I buy because I was paying for shipping anyway. If I’m still interested in the projects for myself come autumn, I’ll buy the yarn for them then.

Sooo…not exactly “knitting from the stash,” but I am excited about two new projects. And while I was rifling through the stash, trying to find the perfect pink yarn, I noticed that I had a lot of blue & green sock yarn leftovers in the yarn scrap bin, and I thought they’d probably go together fabulously in a linen stitch scarf. And since my yarny goodness package fell off the radar for half a week and I finished Michael’s socks and I think I may have knit them on the wrong size needles but won’t know until he finally tries them on but it’s a busy week and we’ve really only seen each other as we turn off the light to go to sleep, that hasn’t happened yet…and I don’t want to start another pair of socks for him from the stash because I don’t know what size needle to use anymore, but it’s February and darn it I need a project, so I cast on for a linen stitch scarf with those sock yarn scraps:

I think the scraps go together a little too well, actually, so it will lack that fun contrast that I like in this pattern when you use colorways that don’t match perfectly, but it’ll still be a pretty, analogous scarf. It took me a year to knit the last linen stitch scarf I made, so I’m not expecting a quick finish with this. I think it will be my couch knitting project.

And, just for fun, I’ll finish with another picture of the Monkey Hat of Yore:

Hopefully he’ll love his pig hat just as much, minus the yarn-chewing. Good luck surviving the rest of February, however you choose to do it.

Progress: Building Block Socks, and Notes on How Long it Takes to Knit a Pair of Socks

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Getting close to the end of these, which is good because I may or may not have fallen prey to a yarn store-closing sale that is now shipping seven new skeins of sock yarn to me as we speak…sorry/notsorry.

As I’ve been knitting on these, my brain keeps trying to make me feel bad about how far behind I am on these, and it occurred to me that I might have a faulty sense of how long it actually takes to knit a pair of socks, thereby dooming myself to always feeling like a failure whenever I knit a pair of socks. As it stands, it feels very comfortable to knit a stripe’s worth of yarn each day on these, and so I counted up the stripes in the completed sock, and it’s 23 stripes. That’s a little over three weeks’ worth of knitting at a comfortable pace. Multiply that by two (because two socks in a pair) and you get 46 days, which equals 6.5 weeks to make a pair of socks for Michael.

In my head…I thought it took four weeks. So of course I always feel like I’m behind when I’m knitting socks for him. It’s good to figure out the numbers on stuff, because numbers generally don’t lie, and I like knowing exactly how things are going to go and numbers are the way to figure that stuff out. It takes seven weeks to knit up a pair of socks for Michael. No wonder I can never finish the “started in December” pairs I always try to make for Christmas. This timetable has been noted in my Christmas preparation notes.

More Progress: Michael’s Building Block Socks

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I aim to knit one stripe a day if I can. I’m now about halfway through the heel flap. The plan is to have these done by the end of the month, which should be an easy goal to achieve. What are you slogging away on?

Still don’t know what hand stitching project I’m going to work on once these are finished. I’m really tempted to just keep cranking this pattern out over and over again simply because I don’t have to do a lot of thinking when I’m working on it. I like that.

In other news, today is Emms’ 18th birthday! So weird. If you don’t hear from me in the next few days, it’s because I’m still crying. 😜

Progress: Michael’s Building Block Socks

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Now that the Nereid Mitts are finished for my bestie, I’m moving on to the pair of socks I had hoped to gift to Michael for Christmas. I really love the idea of knitting him another pair of socks each Christmas, it seems so homey and cute. This/last year’s socks are a little more bold than I normally go for him, but I unearthed this yarn in my stash, and, eyeing the atrocious shipping times on everything last autumn, decided to work with the yarn I already had on-hand.

(A little funny: I was in the midst of deciding whether or not to use the stash yarn or order new yarn, and I mentioned it over lunch with the kids. Nathaniel said I should definitely use the stash yarn because it would “make your husband glad you didn’t spend any more money, which might feel like another gift.” Which made me laugh, but then also made me wonder what’s going on in that kid’s head regarding husbands and wives and their money?)

Socks-in-progress for the husband, made from KnitPicks’ Felici Sock Yarn in “Building Blocks” colorway

So, this is my hand-stitching project for the next little while, and I’ll update you with its progress each week until it’s done! I’ve got one sock already finished, so I just need to power through this one.

The real question is: What hand-stitching project will I work on next? This is the last hand-stitched overdue Christmas project, so I can kind of do whatever I want after this. Work on a UFO? Start something new? Decisions, decisions. Maybe I need to dredge up the list of knitting UFOs and my Ravelry queue, so I can make an informed decision. I am monstrously green-eyed as I scroll through my IG feed and see the many oh-so-lovely knitting WIPs going on at the moment. Hmmm…there’s also EPP and historical sewing to consider, so there’s a lot of potential projects to choose from. What’s a girl to choose?

Nereid Mitts Update

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Yeah. They’re finished. And it never would have happened this fast if I wasn’t publicly shaming myself to get through them. Blogging is awesome.

I hope they bring you joy, Denise.

It’s so funny to read through other people’s write-ups of this pattern. Not many like it. It’s not a bad pattern at all, it’s just finicky and brain-consuming, and a lot of knitters knit in order to zen out. This is not a “zen out” pattern at all.

I’m also worried that they may have turned out a tad small. Which would be highly annoying, seeing that it took me almost ten years to make them.

Details:

Pattern: Nereid Fingerless Gloves, by Denise Sutherland (Ravelry link)

Yarn: madelinetosh Tosh Sock, “Flashdance” colorway

Needles: US 1 (2.25mm)

Modifications: Not on purpose…ha ha ha

Click here to see this project’s Ravelry page.

Fourth Monday in January

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Monstrously behind in my crafting schedule, but there’s just not much I can do about freak nerve pinchings, and I really needed to get that COVID booster shot. This week has a little bit of extra free time in it because the kids don’t have school on Thursday and Friday, so I’m hoping to get a little more crafting done on those days. We shall see.

The fast and dirty rundown:

  • Cat Lady Quilt: Done and blogged.
  • Rachel’s Birthday Gift: In-progress, near completion. With the loss of almost two weeks of creating time, I had to give up on the idea of keeping this secret, so Rachel knows about it. It’s another circle skirt, this time made from the “Cast a Spell” floral print in the “Spooky & Sweeter” collection that Art Gallery Fabrics put out last year. It works well that she knows because I needed to measure her and then I figured I’d ask her if she even liked the idea before sinking hours of time into making it. It’s been super cute–she “wanders” into the craft room and stands behind me while I’m at the sewing machine and watches as the skirt gets stitched, and then wanders away, only to reappear an hour or so later to check on my progress.
  • Mini Charm Chiffon Baby Quilt: I ran into a hiccup on Rachel’s skirt and needed to take a break from it, so I went around and gathered up the various materials I needed to work on this and prewashed everything that needed it. Ready to baste. Could potentially finish this week.
  • Far Far Away Quilt: Also prewashed everything for this with the Chiffon stuff. It’s A LOT of fabric! So excited to hopefully get to working on this.
  • Brickhouse Quilt: Blocks 1-4 done.
  • Clementine Quilt: Almost done with Month 3. Probably finish this week.
  • Berry Quilt: Haven’t started, but will probably start this week.
  • HST Leaders & Enders Quilt: Haven’t started, probably won’t get to this month.
  • Nereid Mitts: Done! Need to photograph and blog.
  • Building Blocks Socks: Putting in the time, so they’re coming along.
Skirt with pockets!

It was a very productive weekend after many weeks of feeling poorly. It’s amazing how much you’re actually capable of doing when you finally start feeling better.

Second Monday in January

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Good morning, lovelies! Hopefully the new year is still treating you well and you’re making progress on the things that matter most to your heart. This week I’ll be (hopefully) finishing the Cat Lady quilt. The quilting is finished, and it’s trimmed; I just need to get going on the binding and label. I’m thinking I’m going to use the loads of C+S Bluebird scraps I have on-hand from when Denise made a dress for Em out of that fabric, which means I’ll be doing a scrappy binding construction because the scraps are very weird shapes–there’s very little yardage that will work for WOF cutting. BUT…it’s C+S fabric, and I have loads of it that I’ve been trying to sew through for years, so this will make a significant dent.

I had hoped to finish the Cat Lady quilt last week, but geez, what a week! Washington got a lot of snow and ice and rain and it just threw everything off kilter all week long. My kids had a two-hour late start for school four days out of five, the roads were flooding over…you don’t realize how stressed you’re feeling about stuff until you get past it and realize that you’ve been holding your shoulders up to your ears for days. And now we have to deal with rescheduling all the stuff that got cancelled, and adding it on top of all the regularly-scheduled stuff…I just wish that people would let things go when they get cancelled? Like, it’s too bad it didn’t happen, but let’s try again next year, rather than trying to fit it into the next couple of weeks that are already booked? Please? But alas…that’s a rare outcome.

Once the Cat Lady quilt is complete, I’m hoping to start work on Rachel’s birthday gift, and I can’t show you anything about it or she’ll figure out what it is. Which also means I have to clean it up everyday and not leave it lying around on the cutting table or the ironing board. Let’s see if I can actually remember to do that everyday…who else thinks that I’ll forget and Rachel will know what her gift is before it’s even finished? It also just occurred to me that I can’t work on this over the weekend days because she’s somewhat of a constant fixture in my craft room on the days that she’s home. So I guess it will take twice as long to stitch this up because I really will only have two days a week that I can work on this. Awesome.

I’m still working on the Nereid Fingerless Mitts for my bestie, and hopefully will have good news to report on them soon. This “tell people you were making them a gift if you didn’t finish it before Christmas” idea has been the perfect motivation to keep me working on those gifts. It might add extra incentive to get things done before Christmas in future years, too: I’m going to lose that special moment of surprise if it’s not done before Christmas because I’ll have to announce it on the blog. I don’t like doing that. But I do like finishing stuff, and so here we are.

Scrappy Thursday this week is for working on the Clementine Quilt. I don’t know if anyone remembers that I was one of the quilters in the original Clementine Quilters group, but I had to quit because we were moving. I hated quitting, but it was definitely the right call at the time because here we are, four years later, and it’s only now that I have the feasible time to work on it again. Fat Quarter Shop supplied me with the fabric to make the quilt, and I don’t feel right accepting fabric from people and then not using it, so it’s been on my mind ever since that I definitely need to get this completed so I can fulfill the obligation that I signed up for originally.

Update on Marshmallow: He’s doing better than he was. It looked like his hind legs were permanently paralyzed for many days, but in the last three or so days he’s started using them again, somewhat regularly. We changed up his meds the day before that development, so it looks like we’ve hit on a combo that works well for him. Pretty sure he’s gone blind though–he seems to only be responding to sounds, and he runs face first into things a lot. He got pushed down the stairs by Charlotte the other day because he walked near her, which is not a thing he used to do because she’ll bat any cat in the face that gets that close to her. (She’s such a GRUMP.) I feel like I need to set something up that will keep her away from him while I’m gone from the house because I’m afraid I’m going to come home to a murder scene or the like. Sigh.

So yeah, bad weather and geriatric cats…last week was intense. Hopefully things are a lot calmer this week!