First of 2022

As most of the hats I make are for charity, I quite often wait until I have finished a few before showing them here. But this one has to be shown as it is my first finish of 2022.

I started this hat at the end of November on a car trip and decided to keep it as a car project even though it added to the number of WIPs I started the year with.

Last weekend we went to San Diego to meet up with a couple of people for an urban hike – Seven Bridges. This was a fun thing to do on a nice Saturday when everyone is still working from home and limiting socializing. Although I called it a hike, it really was a leisurely stroll. What this has to do with a finished object is that I worked on my car project and it was almost finished by the time we arrived home. Later this week, I finished it off (only two rounds needed) and sewed in all the ends.

The pattern is my go-to crochet pattern – Better Late Than Never Beanie – this is the seventh one I have made, and is great for using small amounts of left overs. Usually I will make the medium size for the number of stitches and add more rows for length but this time I only added one extra row of single crochet. It is a little small for an adult; later in the year I will find a charity that wants hats for teenagers and then I don’t have to worry about sending hats to places where they are not wanted.

 

Apart from this hat, I have hardly touched my WIPs. I started a project as planned with the yarns I got in a swap and have kept up with that each day and the project I started as a gift is relatively easy and has been getting most of my attention. I have sewn in one sleeve on the jacket but the two new projects are priority right now.

It’s The Priscilla Show

In my plans for 2022 I wrote that I would be starting new projects on 1 January. I started three of the four projects and as I was texting my friend I realized that all of the projects I had started used yarn she had given me either as a gift or from her friend’s stash. Although I had plans for specific projects using these yarns, I thought it was funny that all of my cast ons on one day used her gifts. Especially as I didn’t get around to my fourth cast on until a couple of days ago and for that I am not using yarn from her.

That project, although a garment, has started with relatively easy knitting; the projects I started on the first, although small, are not completely mindless.

2021 Round Up Part Two

This is the other project I finished just before the end of the year. I started this project on 30 November 2019 as the 2019 Advent shawl. I knew I would not be able to keep up with the rows every day as it is complicated lace knitting but I wanted to get it started. I started 2021 with it about half-way completed and great plans to work on it every day. In the end I decided I would work a clue each month as there were enough remaining to take me through to the end of the year. And this I could keep up with. The pattern required a lot of concentration and, funnily enough, that made it quite boring so having a plan made the end achievable. Until I hit a snag. I ran out of yarn. Towards the end, I was weighing the yarn after every couple of rows and knew it would be close. The last clue was the edging which was a sideways knit edge with yarnovers and corresponding decreases and knitting the live stitches; yarn wise equivalent to a few rows. I could have undone two rows but I really didn’t want to do that. As I said the pattern is complicated and there are lots of double decreases also I would probably have taken out four rows just to be on the safe side.

So why not buy more yarn – because it was discontinued. I estimated I would need about 5g. I went to that trusty source Ravelry and someone was selling their leftovers. But the price they wanted plus postage was more than I wanted to pay for such a small amount of yarn. I had the option of using left over lace weight in a different colour if I really couldn’t find the same yarn. But first I approached someone else who had yarn leftover from their project. They were willing to send it to me for the price of postage. This was very acceptable.

The border wasn’t hard but having got this far, I wasn’t going to rush it so I only get worked on when I wasn’t going to be interrupted. The blocking was easy, apart from size, as I soaked it and then just laid it out with the top pinned. I did not stretch it out at all as I did not think it needed it. Although we had had wet weather, it dried very quickly and it was completely finished ends sewn in and trimmed on 31 December.

Here are pictures pre and post blocking.

 

2021 Round Up Part One

This is where I show the projects that I finished close to year end and did not post before 31 December.

I mentioned that I had worked some dishcloths to have some easy projects. I also worked a hat. I had included them in my meterage for the year, all except the last dishcloth which I was not expecting to finish before year end and also is the cause of a little lie for my 2022 plans as I included it in my WIPs at start of year. This particular dishcloth was also a total fail in the mindless knitting category as every row was different. Oh well.

First off the hat, which really was mindless knitting. The pattern is Luuk, although there are numerous similar patterns available. Rows of stocking stitch and reverse stocking stitch, using some Cascade from friend’s friend’s stash and some frogged yarn. This yarn is never ending, a bit like the dishcloth cotton that I will mention next.

 

I made four dishcloths and finally used up all the brown that I had rescued from a dishcloth swap exchange from a few years ago where I ended up with a cloth that was the size of a tray cloth. The brown has featured in four cloths. I wanted mindless knitting and as it was December I made season appropriate patterns. The first is supposed to be a Christmas pudding but looks more like a big cupcake, two different tree illusion cloths and then the not mindless mosaic cloth. I still have a bit of cotton left over and I can probably get one more very scappy cloth out of it.

 

Regarding the lie in my last post, I started the year with three projects, still two more than planned so finishing a dishcloth in the evening of the last night of the year is not really a huge change to the total.

2022 Here We Come

I am starting the year with more WIPs than I intended. Two are the result of wanting mindless knitting at the end of the year (and one not turning out to be quite so mindless). One is a jacket I was hoping to finish in December but when I finished all the knitting of the main part I realized I hadn’t blocked the sleeves. This delayed finishing for a day or two and then I decided not to rush especially as I still have to purchase buttons. And then there is the lace cardigan which is the only WIP I was expecting. I am a little disappointed that instead of one WIP I have three (plus scrap blankets and hat in the car) but as two of these projects meant I was actually working on something, it is not the end of the world.

A couple of my plans are the same as last year – complete WIPs and use stash yarn I was given for charity items. One thing that I was planning on doing was using up my dishcloth cotton but as I used some of it at the end of 2021 for mindless knitting I am going to save the cotton for year end in case I am in the same situation.

Although I greatly added to my stash last year I am not stressed by it and it will get used at some point. I still have two sets of yarn from the previous closing down sale that have not been used. I have chosen the pattern and swatched for one set but have changed my mind about the other set but am not going to get hung up about it.

I would like to make the Advent shawl from 2018 but as this will require a lot of concentration, I will finish the lace cardigan first. I also want to use the yarns I got in the yarn swap. Currently I have the pattern planned but need to decide on the order in which I will work the yarns. As the swap started on 11 December, I think I will start this on 11 January. And my knitting friends and I have a KAL planned to start in February.

All these plans do not mean that I will not be starting anything new on 1 January. Like last year I will be casting on all the things. I like to make a hat each month for charity. And this year I am going to make the monthly hats from Kelbourne Woolens. I was going to do this last year but was put off by the comments on the first couple of months that the hats came out small. Well, if I’m not making the hats for anyone in particular what does it matter what size they come out? As I don’t have a crochet project currently on the go (apart from the project in the car) I am going to make another Waroo shawl using a set of minis I was given for my birthday. I intend to change yarn as each one runs out rather than when the pattern dictates. But we will see. These are just small items, plus a gift I am going to make, so I am going to start a cardigan. This will be using my not-quite-oldest-yarn which was purchased to make a particular cardigan, but I couldn’t get gauge, so now I am going to knit a different pattern where I also can’t get gauge. But at least this one will be mostly mindless knitting.

As you can see there are not massive plans for the whole year, just the first month or so, which gives me plenty of leeway to start what I want as the fancy takes me.