It Still Takes the Same Amount of Time

If it takes ten hours to complete something, it will take those ten hours, whether you spend an hour a day for ten days or two hours a day for five days. The days spent changes but not the total time. When you have many projects on the go at once, it feels good when you finish them but you are not actually finishing more projects than if you had just one project at a time. It just feels that way especially at the end of the year when I am making an effort to finish projects.

I think I have mentioned before that I don’t know when I became a multi-project person but I know I have said many times that my actual number of WIPs always exceeds my ideal number of WIPs. When the number of books I was reading started to become as bad as the number of projects I was working on, I decided I needed to retrain my brain.

I used have just two books in progress, one audio, one regular, but then a non-fiction book got added and then I started to read a different book in bed. And then there were other excuses for more books. So in April I decided to read just one book at a time (audio excepted). It felt good but strange to work my through my partially read books. And when we went away a couple of weeks ago it was easy to stick to the one book rule and I want to keep it that way. Except it is my life and I can impose any rules I want. For example, the non-fiction book I am reading is heavy with quite a few pictures so not suitable for reading in bed or while knitting, so it is an exception. The other two exceptions are when I have to read a book for bookclub and when the book I am reading, for whatever reason, can only be read in short bursts.

Having easily applied my reading rule I decided to apply a knitting rule. I had finished a project at the end of April and started a new project on 1 May which became my main project although I did not take it on vacation. It was an easy project and easily finished within the month. So I came up with a simple knitting rule. One easy project, one not-so-easy project and one crochet project. Although, no surprise, there are plenty of exceptions I have given myself. Blankets to use up left over yarn don’t count, the yearlong socks project doesn’t count as long as I work on them each month, the two projects that were on the needles at the start of the year don’t count (one I have deliberately turned into yearlong project), the Pi shawl doesn’t count as long as I finish it in time. Gift knitting doesn’t count.

I have an easy project on the needles that I started on 1 January, I have a crochet project I started on 3 May and I will cast on a pair of socks tomorrow to cover the not-so-easy part.

I’m sure there will be times when I break all these rules but, although strange at first, it does feel good to simplify.

And here is the project that restored almost monogamy. The yarn I had bought in the closing down sale specifically for this project. It was only 30% off, so as for the crochet project I wanted to get this on the needles quickly. Although as DH pointed out it only mattered if the yarn was still available when the discounts were bigger. (It wasn’t.) I was lucky to get the pattern for free when it first came out.The finished item is soft and squidgy.

The yarn is Moonshine by Juniper Moon Yarn in five different colours and the pattern is Tadasana.

Final Vacation Hat

Yesterday I mentioned that I had nearly made a complete hat on our drive home from vacation. I finished it yesterday so that it was not sitting around for months waiting for the next trip.

It is the same pattern as the first crochet hat with a few changes. I used a size smaller hook, 5mm instead of 5.5mm; I added in a contrast colour for two of the pattern rounds; I finished the hat with two rounds of front post/back post double crochet instead of front post/back post single crochet.

 

 

 

The pattern is Simple Seed Stitch Beanie. The link will take you to the designer’s website. The pattern for the knit hats that I showed yesterday is Humboldt Hat.

 

Knitting on Vacation

For a while I would start a new project on vacation but when my WIPs were getting out of hand I started to take existing projects with me. There are advantages to both. There’s the excitement of being on vacation and starting a new project which, hopefully, will last the whole vacation. But the disadvantage of the project not working out and then what do you work on? With an existing project you have already worked out needle size etc but what if you finish the project while you’re away. How many WIPs do you take with you?

We went away last week. It was about an 8-hour drive so for my car project I took yarn that had been frogged, printed off a pattern and packed a couple of different size crochet hooks. Just in case. For my actual vacation knitting I took a new shawl pattern, again with yarn that had been previously frogged. I had set up the project bag a while ago to take on vacation but it always stayed at home because I was finishing WIPs. Now was its chance. I also made sure to download some knitted hat patterns and have a few needles so that I had some easy knitting.

These choices worked out well. I made a complete hat on the drive to Arizona and nearly finished one on the drive back. I will finish it this week so that it is not hanging around. I also knit two hats. I am happy to use yarn from a frogged project as well as yarn that I was given from a friend of a friend’s stash.

 

 

 

 

 

I got about 1/3 way through the new shawl cast on. I will keep this as my vacation knitting but it may become a regular WIP at some point.

April and May

I didn’t show Day 4 of the Advent socks so here is Day 4 and 5 that I worked in April and May. I have been sewing in ends and working embellishments as I go along so that there is minimal finishing at the end. 

I cross stitched the berries as a change from duplicate stitch.
 

 

A Successful April

I thought that I would not finish April's small project. At the beginning of the month I decided that socks were a good idea as one of the designers for April was Cookie A and I have her Sock Innovation book. Cookie’s sock patterns are never simple and the one I chose was no exception with the start of round changing four times in each pattern repeat. But the good thing was the foot of the sock was all stocking stitch.

I finished the first sock within half a month but I really thought that the second one was not going to be finished on time for my arbitrary deadline. The yarn was a sight unseen fundraiser I purchased last year from Chicken Coop Dyeworks. The colourway is Rhubarb. The cable pattern ate up yarn and I used just under 75% of the skein. Before putting it away, I added a couple of rows to my crochet blanket.

 

 

There were also two other projects I really wanted to finish. One was the cardigan I started at the beginning of the year. I had finished the knitting of the sleeves and body by the end of March and blocked it at the beginning of April. All that was left was picking up stitches and knitting two front bands, picking up stitches and knitting the collar and buying and sewing on buttons. The buttons were purchased on Thursday and attached on Friday so just in time for an April finish. Except, the buttons didn’t work with the garment. So on Saturday I cut them off and sewed on different ones I had purchased in the closing down sale. The pattern is Baileys Irish Cream by Thea Coleman and the yarn is Breathless by Shalimar. A soft merino/cashmere/silk blend. Of course I’ve finished it just in time for never wearing sweaters!

 

The other project I finished was the crochet shawl I started towards the beginning of March with yarn I’d purchased in a closing down sale. As it was the beginning of the sale and the discount was only 20% I wanted to get this project started and finished as quickly as possible. The pattern is Waroo and uses four different yarns. (Although the pattern does include a 3-colour option.) The yarns I used are Hedgehog Fibers Cashmere Merino which I held double as it is a lace weight. I used all of the skein except for a small amount which I added to my crochet blanket. There was not quite enough of this yarn to complete all the rows so I used some lightweight baby yarn – probably Sirdar Snuggly – in a speckled white to work the last two rows of the first colour. (The little bit left over of this yarn was also added to the crochet blanket.) The next yarn is Elevate Fibers Deluxe Sock in the Butterscotch colourway. The last two yarns are both Alexandra The Art of Yarn Sun River. The variegated is Espresso and the last colour is Persimmon. I have not added any of the last three to my crochet blanket as I will wait to see if I want to use them in other projects.

 

 

Three projects finished; still a few on the needles. But did that stop me from starting anything new in May? Of course not! I planned my quick project but haven’t started it, I gauge swatched the sweater yarn from the previous sale and I started a project with the next purchase from the most recent closing sale. Again, it was yarn purchased for a specific project. It is an easy project so it would be nice to finish it this month even though it is not my small project.