Like the wind!

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I’ve been cruising along with my crocheted sweater, and it’s been fun getting to stretch out of my yarn-crafting comfort zone.

I’ve noticed a few things:

  1. I do not like making bobbles, but I do like how they look. (In fact, I made an executive decision to halve the number of bobbles on each bobble-row. It’s a decision I stand behind.) To be fair, a crocheted bobble is much less of a pain than a knitted bobble. So at least there’s that.
  2. Crochet uses different muscles than knitting. I could knit for hours and hours with no discomfort, but my forearms start talking to me after only a little bit of crochet. I don’t think there’s anything wrong, just my body getting used to something new.
  3. Y’all, I forgot how fast crochet goes! Between kids not sleeping and, you know… general life stuff, I haven’t been getting my usual sit-down-and-do-hand-work-time, and still, I’m almost done with the front of this sweater. It’s amazing how fast it’s going!
  4. Crochet patterns are wild! Or maybe it’s just this one. I’m so used to super-precise knitting patterns where every stitch and increase are accounted for, while this pattern is more of a loose “recipe.” It’s kind of fun to try such a different pattern!

I’m really enjoying this project, and can’t wait to wear the finished project!

Have you tried anything new (or new-ish) lately?

1000

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You want to know what’s really wild?

This is my 1000th post.

I know! I don’t believe it either.

It’s been (almost) 9 years since I started the blog, and in that time I’ve:

  • Published 100 patterns (which I didn’t realize until I sat down to count them right now!) Some of them are… questionable, but some of them I’m really proud of. My most popular pattern (Socks by the Numbers) has been knit up more than 500 times according to Ravlery! (Unfortunately, my photography hasn’t improved much over the intervening years.)
  • Written 1000 posts. Sometimes I feel like I’m just letting my inner (knitting) monologue blurp out onto the screen, but sometimes I feel fairly insightful.
  • Knit close to 300 projects (assuming my Ravlery count is accurate… which I can’t imagine it is).

And, in my personal life in that time I’ve:

  • Bought and moved into our current house.
  • Changed “day jobs” 3 times.
  • Got a dog.
  • Made 2 kids and keep them warm with more woolens than they know what to do with.
  • Survived at home for approximately one million years with said dog and children.

It’s certainly been a wild ride. Thanks for taking it with me. Here’s to a thousand more!

Trying something completely different

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OK. I gave up on the striped sweater. I’m sure I’ll come back to it, but right now, it’s not “sparking joy.” So, into the hibernation pile it goes.

I thought for a while about what I wanted to make next- I wanted something quick (or at least quicker than the striped sweater) and I wanted to use my stashed yarn. I thought maybe a scarf or a hat, but none of my yarn was exciting me, and I couldn’t find a pattern that spoke to me.

But I do have a sweater-quantity of fingering weight yarn that I thrifted from our local craft-supply-resale shop (Seattle Recreative… it’s really amazing, if you’re ever in town). It’s in two lovely shades of blue-gray. I like it, and want to make something with it, but I don’t want to knit a sweater with fingering yarn. In fact, that’s the whole reason I am looking for a new project!

Then it hit me! I don’t want to knit a sweater, but maybe I want to… crochet? It’s been a minute since I pulled out my hooks, and I don’t think I’ve ever actually crocheted a garment (maybe some hats in high school?). I took to Ravelry to look up crochet sweater patterns, and dang! Crochet patterns have gotten cute since I last looked at them!

It was a tough choice, but I settled on The Goldfinch Sweater by Hailey Bailey, a super-cute, boxy, lightly cropped pullover with lots of texture.

I got to work, and within an evening, I already had several inches worked! It’s wild how fast crochet is compared to knitting (especially knitting on tiny needles).

It took me a bit to figure out how to read the crochet pattern- I truly don’t know the last time I crocheted (let alone used a pattern), but I’m figuring it out. It’s actually kind of fun to re-learn a new “language.” I already love the results, and can’t wait to keep going!

Have you tried any “new” crafts lately?

Still going

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Not much to report yet on my sweater, except that it’s still going… I’m at the bit I was worried about last week, the super super long rounds around the chest. I’m so close to splitting for the arms, but still it’s killing me. It takes me close to a half hour to do one round (assuming I’m paying attention and not spacing out and scrolling Instagram instead). But, soon, I should be to the body, and that should fly by by comparison.

Hopefully.

I’ve gotten all five colors into the sweater now, so the next thing will be to decide what to do about stripe order. My initial plan was to do the stripes at random, but now I’m second-guessing myself. Maybe I keep the red-gray-brown-green-cream order, repeating it down the body? But will that make it look like a rugby shirt from 2002? Is that a bad thing? I’m not sure.

At least I’ve got plenty of time to decide before I reach the next stripe. I’ve got four more rows… at least 2 hours of buckle-down knitting time. HA!

What would you do? Random stripes or a repeating pattern?

I DID NOT THINK THIS THROUGH

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Or, rather, I did think it through, I just don’t like the answer.

So, it’s my sweater from last week. I like it. The design is going to be solid (at least it is in my head). The yarn is nice and soft. It’s fun to knit stripes.

But here’s the thing: This is a not-small adult sweater being knit on US5s. When I finish the raglan increases (knitting around the chest and shoulders, just before I split for arms), I’m going to have more than 400 stitches on my needle. That’s more than I had when I was making my big blanket. Ridiculous. It’s going to take forever.

Here’s what happened: I’ve used this yarn before, and while Swish is a super soft yarn (superwash merino), it’s really not hard-wearing. I’ve used it for sweaters before and they end up pilled about fifteen minutes after you try them on for the first time. I’m hoping to combat that by going down a needle size or two. So here we are with US5s (4s on the cuffs). I think it’s the right decision in the long term, but, man. It’s going to be a heck of a slog.

But, honestly, there’s something to be said for just miles and miles of stockinette. Nothing’s more meditative. Right? …Right??

Have you ever miscalculated about how much work a project was going to be?

Another day, another stashbuster

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Now that my big project is done, it’s time to start fresh- and by fresh, I mean “with stuff that I already have in the basement”.

I’ve been itching to make myself another sweater- a simple pullover this time. I’ve basically been living in a uniform this winter (overalls, tank top and pullover), and I’ve only got so many pullovers (and they’ve all seen better days, if I’m being honest. The “nice” one has paint on the cuff from when I painted the basement last fall).

So, I dug around in the basement and found a bunch of KnitPick’s Swish DK from a pattern I was working on earlier this winter (keep an eye out for it next year some time). It’s a sweater’s worth of yarn in five colors that go pretty well together. (Do the colors look a little more Christmassy than I’d like? Yes they do. Do I care? Eh, not really.)

I’ve only got a couple skeins of each color, so it seems I’m making a stripy sweater, with cuffs and collar in cream (since I have extra of that). I’m planning on a raglan V-neck (a sweater I can almost work from memory, once I reference Ann Budd for the starting stitch counts).

I’m excited to get moving (and more excited to have it done- I want a new sweater!)

Have you started any new projects lately?

It’s… FINALLY… Finished

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I can’t believe I’m actually writing this, but the wedding blanket is finally, finally finished.

I made it through 10 of the 12 skeins of Simply Wool Bulky, but couldn’t keep going. The blanket was just so big and heavy, I couldn’t keep going. It’ll make for a fantastic snuggling, but it’s not the most fun to knit on (my poor arms would ache any time I worked more than a row or two). So, I finally gave up, bound off and declared it done.

I even blocked it! That’s how done it is! I soaked it in the sink and spread it out in the basement (where the children and dog can’t get to it) on a clean drop cloth. (I know… such a fancy setup.) And, lucky for me, it’s been super dry here, so it blocked in just a couple days.

The blanket ended up roughly square, which is fine with me. I just love how it turned out. I even took it out into the snow for a few glamor shots.

It’s taken me 9 months since I received the yarn, and I’m only 7 moths late for my friend’s summer wedding. But, dang it, I finished this thing. And that’s what matters.

Now let’s see how long it takes me to get it in the mail…

Have you finished any big projects lately?

Speeeeeedweve

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You guys, I’ve got a new tool, and I love it!

It’s a Speedweve-style darning loom, and it’s just the coolest. I’ll be honest, I found out about this from an ad on Instagram, so you know, not the most high-brow place to learn about new tools. But, regardless of where I found it, I’m excited to have it, use it, and tell you about it!

First off, here’s the little loom. It fits really nicely in my hand, and has two parts. A lovely, smooth wooden disk that goes inside the sock (or whatever garment you’re darning), and a hefty metal piece that goes on the outside. They’re held together with rubber bands.

My favorite part is flipping the little hooks back and forth. It’s just so satisfying! In fact, it’s so satisfying, I taught myself how to make an animation, so you can experience it yourself:

Lucky for me, I’ve got about a million socks on the verge of falling apart, so I’ve got lots of darning ahead of me. This is one of my less-embarrassing socks:

So, I slip the wooden disk into the sock, and arrange it under the bare patch, hook up the metal part of the loom and lock it in place with rubber bands.

Then I get a nice long piece of sock yarn and start warping the loom. You make tiny stitches at the bottom of the area to be patched, and loop the thread around the loops.

Then it’s just a matter of weaving through the warps. Flipping the hooks back and forth lets you lift/lower the threads of the warp, which makes for faster weaving. And, at the end of each row, you make a tiny stitch into the sock, fastening the patch in place as you weave it.

After that, I take off the loom, sew the top warp loops in place with the whip stitch, and I’m on my way. I ended up making four different patches to cover all the thin spots on this sock- truly living my Oliver Twist Fantasy. (And like I said, these are some of my least disreputable… I really have to start up sock knitting again.)

Do you darn your socks? Do you have any fun new tools?

And Done!

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I have hemmed and hawed about these eyeballs for longer than was strictly necessary. But, hey, that’s just how I roll. I do love to overanalyze.

I had gotten myself a brand new tube of black puffy paint, and tried it out on more scrap fabric, with similar results as the pearlescent blue paint. Both dried halfway between lumpy and smooth, but the black at least didn’t show every single little bump the way the blue did.

I went back and forth about the eyes for several days, afraid to pull the trigger on the puffy paint eyes, but not wanting to do anything else. Then, Saturday night in a fit of either confidence or frustration with my own commitment issues, I went ahead and just did it. I just did the eyeballs in a minute.

And… I like them! I mean, they’re obviously not as perfect as safety eyes would be, but they’re functional and cute, and I’m sure they’ll last for a long time. Plus they were so easy and fast.

I don’t think they’re the best eyes ever, but for stuffies for my kids, they’ll work great.

And I got them done before Christmas! Now, if only I could finish the last couple inches of that ding dang wedding blanket…

Are you finishing up any holiday knitting this week?

(Also, I just realized I forgot to add mouths… oh well. They’re mouthless butterflies, I guess…)

Eyeball Experiments

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So, I’ve been experimenting, and need your input. Last week, I “finished” the little butterfly stuffies that are Christmas gifts for my kids. “Finished” is in quotes because they still don’t have faces. Just unsettling stitch markers where the eyes should be.

Obviously, I’m too late to add safety eyes (the safety of which is debatable), and buttons/beads are right out since I have a very chew-y one-year-old. I might do a bit of embroidery, or applique on little felt eyes, but that’s fussy.

There must be a better way! I’m a child of the 90s, so, I thought maybe puffy paint would work?

I pulled out an old swatch and gave it a try:

Cute, right? And promising! The paint beaded up nicely, at least at first. I let it dry, and…

Pffffft… Well, that didn’t dry as nicely as I wanted it to. It’s lumpy and flat, not nicely beaded up, like it was when it was still wet. On the plus side, at least it was really sturdily on there. No kid (even a heavy chewer) is going to get that paint off.

I added another coat of paint, in hopes that it would bead up, like I wanted it to in my dreams. And then I added another coat.

For comparison:

One coat was super-flat, 2 coats made a nice bump, and 3 coats was almost spherical. Unfortunately, all three versions were weirdly lumpy. But, I wonder if that’s a matter of the paint being kind of pearlescent. I think I’m going to go get some plain black, and try again.

I feel like this has the potential to be a great eyeball technique, but I’m not yet convinced. I think I need to do more experimenting before I commit to painting the butterflies (I don’t want to mess them up so soon before Christmas!).

Do you have any tricks for great eyes?