Wishful Knitting

In my last post I said I cast on all the things but only had one pair of socks to show for it.

Of the five items I started, one is finished, one is more than half-way through, one will be completely frogged and yarn put back in stash, one has been frogged and will be restarted, one needs to be frogged. I am going to frog the second pair of socks I started, the pattern is fiddly (which I knew), but I am not enjoying the process and as I have a few other projects that require concentration I don’t need to keep this project on the go.

The other two projects that were unsuccessful are both cardigans and in both cases they are knitting up larger than expected. It is interesting that this is the case for both of them as I did swatch. I didn’t rush the swatching and I made them a decent size. I haven’t had a problem like this before. Both projects are knit in one piece from the bottom up and the only thing I can think is that all the stitches is making me knit looser. I am going to restart one of them and work a smaller size. The other one I will frog and change to a top down pattern.

Although it is disappointing, I hadn’t got very far in any of the projects so I will consider it part of the swatching process and not a waste of knitting time.

Oh, and to add to the disappointment, I started a Tunisian crochet project in the middle of February using yarn from friend’s friend’s destash. I knew I did not have enough yarn but thought I would have enough for the main part of the cardigan and use a contrast colour for the bands. It is pretty obvious that I will not have enough yarn for the body and sleeves, which is disappointing as I am enjoying working on the project and the fabric that is being produced.

To end on a good note, I have finished the hat for May.

 

At Least I Finished a Pair of Socks

As is usually the case when I don’t write a post for a while it is because I have been writing in my head, and then something else comes up but I feel I need to commit the first post to the World Wide Web, so nothing is posted.

My original post has been erased (from my mind) and here, eventually, is a sock post. Which is a post about socks and not a post pretending to be something else.

At the beginning of April I cast on all the things. I’m not really sure why I went crazy but it was a combination of having just long term projects on the needles, liking the challenges in Sock Knitters Anonymous, wanting a selection of non-concentrating and concentrating patterns and the start of a new quarter.

And as 1 April was a Saturday, I was able to start ALL-THE-THINGS. I cast on two socks (different pairs), and three cardigans.

The two sock themes for April that I was interested in were manipulating self-striping yarn and patterns that you have made before. I have a skein of self-striping yarn that I purchased way back in 2019. It is bold red, white and blue and I have struggled choosing a pattern for it as if the stripes are going to be manipulated, I really want them to be manipulated. While I was thinking about patterns I might like to knit again, I realized that a yarn I had got in a swap in 2018 was also self-striping. I was all ready to start but changed my mind at the last minute. I ended up using the gift yarn in a self-striping pattern – and these are the socks I have finished – and used the bold self-striping in a “repeat” pattern.

For the self-striping pattern I chose Margaritaville. This pattern moves the design with decrease and increases and works well with the yarn I chose as it is what is called jacquard stripes as some of the stripes create a pattern; you can see this on the sole. I started them on 1 April and finished them on 30 April. I don’t know why they took so long. Especially as I was away for two of those weeks and, apart from in the car, this was the only thing I worked on – one sock.