Third Time’s the Charm

 

I recently finished a project using yarn I was given when I left Calgary. It has not been sitting in my stash all this time as it has already been two other projects. Obviously, I had been trying to force it into something that wasn’t going to work, but I really wanted to use the yarn. To be fair, I really liked the first project, I just never wore it.

Here is my blog post from January 2014 showing the first finished item which was eventually frogged in November 2019, recast on in May 2021 and frogged again in December 2021. This isn’t the oldest yarn in my stash but close and as I want to use or remove my oldest yarn I have been thinking about patterns. Despite my original assertions that this yarn should not be a shawl, I had come to the conclusion that a Clapotis would be a good idea. It’s a simple pattern that would highlight the yarn. And then I saw this pattern on a video podcast and knew it was the one. So much so that I started it almost straight away.

After a few rows in, the pattern was easy to memorise and work on. So it became my take along project. I didn’t feel that I worked very much at any one time but it was finished in less than three weeks. And I am very happy with the result.

 

Older Projects Finished

 

It might seem as if all I am doing is knitting by the amount of finished projects I am showing. But the reality is that I had many projects close to being finished and each required a little work to be a finished item. Thus two more projects to show.

Both of these are projects that were started early in the year but not taken on the trip.

First is the crochet hat that I keep in the car. I started this in January when I met up with knitting friends and I forgot to take my knitting with me. I know that sounds surprising, in that I left the house without knitting but I left it on the hall table. Luckily, I keep yarn and a crochet hook in the car and was able to start a basic hat. And then it just stayed in the car. I always have a charity hat project in the car and at the end of the year when the WIP MAL is taking place I always make sure to finish whatever hat that is in the car.

 

The other finished project is a pair of slippers that I started in February. I started these because I wanted some easy knitting, although I knew they wouldn’t be easy for the whole project plus I wanted to use older yarn. The yarn has been in my stash since 2015 and I had two skeins of the black and one of the white. The yarn is very soft but I knew a hat wouldn’t work for me but I did want a project that would use most of the yarn. I looked at what other people had made with this yarn and one pattern that came up was a pattern for slippers that I already owned. The downside of using this yarn for this pattern was knitters saying that they had just enough yarn – and were they right!

The yarn is aran weight and I worked it double on 6mm needles for the foot and 6.5mm needles on the leg. 

And I have to include a photo of the yarn label as it shows the sheep (Andy) the yarn came from.

 

The Magnum Opus is Finished

 

My Mitred Square Blanket that is. Which I started in January 2018 and finished this month so a couple of months shy of eight years. The good thing is I love it, the bad thing is that I like it so much and I still have loads of scraps, I want to make another. I will try to be sensible and not do that until I have added these older left overs to my scrappy crochet blanket.

My blog post in 2018 when I first started this, said that I hoped to finish it by the end of 2019. What I didn’t take into account that as it was left over yarn this project did not take any priority as I worked with unused yarn first. Many months went by without picking up a square. At the beginning of 2024, I decided that was the year to finish all the squares. And this I managed and blocked them all. At the end of that year I purchased the black yarn for the borders and started joining in 2025.

On returning home, I finished the projects started on my trip and then returned to working on the blanket which was nearly finished – I was on the last border. Dealing with the ends did take quite a while.

Here it is in all its glory. 

 

All the Finished Things

 

In my last post I mentioned that I had completed projects with all the yarn I took on our trip apart from the airplane knitting project. So how about I show them all – two hats, mitts, a shawl, and the cowl and socks I made with yarn purchased.

My criteria for choosing these projects was that they had to be relatively easy but still hold some interest and I couldn’t worry about running out of yarn.

The hats and mitts were knit from yarn I had purchased in 2021. They are the same colourway, the hats in DK weight and the mitts in fingering weight. I thought instead of taking hats and gloves I could knit them on the journey and have them ready. I used two different hat patterns – Lonely Hearts Club, which I have knit before, and Chevron Rib Beanie which I ended up having to modify because as written the pattern makes a pointy hat.

 

 

The mittens were also heavily modified, which I was expecting before I even started. I like gloves with a top flap as you can keep your hands warm but when necessary, you can use your fingers. But I do not like the flapping flap on this style. Searching for patterns I came across one with a fold over flap but looking at the finished pictures, I liked the style but not the fit. I bought the pattern anyway so I would not have to think work out the construction while travelling and completed one mitt to see how it fit. I then worked out how many stitches I would need for my hand, frogged the original and worked two that fit to my liking. If I knit these again I would adjust the length before working the thumb hole.

 

 

I had some yarn I had purchased on the 2019 yarn crawl that I thought would work for baby knits, but it never happened. When searching on Ravelry for pattern ideas for that yarn, a lot of people had made the Virus Shawl, but I had already made one of those and didn’t want to make another. So with a bit more searching I came up with a shawl that used granny stitches and the virus stitch. And the beauty of the pattern is you can work any number of repeats of each pattern. The yarn is Katia Stella and the pattern is Starting with a Granny. 

 

 

The other two items were knit with yarn purchased while we were travelling. There is a yarn shop in Bergen railway station. Obviously it caters to the residents of Bergen but as there was time between having to leave our accommodation and board the train I was able to have a quick look around and buy some sock yarn. It’s not the most exciting yarn and I’m not really sure why I chose the colour. I was determined to cast on before we left Norway and the socks were started on the bus to Sweden! I didn’t want to make plain socks but nothing too complicated either so I chose Moldau by Caoua Coffee. 

 

And the other item was a cowl using yarn and pattern that my sister had given me and some yarn I purchased in Sweden.

 

What Did I Knit on my Trip?

 In March, I wrote about preparing yarn to take with me. I had two issues in choosing what to take:- I wanted to use stash but also I had a limited amount of space. I wound six skeins of yarn – two DK weight and four fingering weight, plus I had a couple of 50 gram skeins already wound and a couple of yarns that came ready to use.

The problem was, once wound, the yarn took up more space than a skein that can be stuffed into a small space. So I had to pare down my choices and hope I would be able to buy yarn if needed. Before we left I cast on a fingering weight hat for airplane knitting, plus a DK weight hat and a crochet shawl. In addition I took another skein of fingering weight yarn and purchased a pattern that I wanted to make with the yarn. I also took a set of interchangeable needles and a set of crochet hooks and a small notions bag with what I thought I would need, except, as it turned out, the scrap yarn I would need for a provisional cast on.

All this yarn was used except the airplane knitting which is still on the needles.

I did not want to make yarn browsing a part of this trip but if we came across a store we would go in. One of the difficulties of buying yarn in Scandinavia is the shop opening times. In most cities the shops closed at 5.00 pm and were not open on Sundays and these times did not fit in with our days spent in museums. I was successful in two places. There is a yarn shop actually in Bergen Railway Station where I purchased sock yarn which I did use. And in Sweden we had some free time and visited three yarn shops in one town and I found a set of minis to go with some yarn that my sister had given me with a pattern for a cowl. That project was started and finished on the trip.

Towards the end of our trip I really did need more yarn (ahem, let’s just forget the yarn I purchased in Ireland)* and we went to a store in Richmond, London. Having wound a skein of sock yarn by hand, I really didn’t want to do that again so I chose a skein of DK weight yarn as I had a pattern in mind. I’m so used to using a winder and swift that winding any yarn by hand is not fun, but I did it and started the project and worked on while we were away – but did not finish.

The truly souvenir yarn I purchased was a kit for Latvian Mittens purchased in Riga. I definitely wanted to go to Hobbywool to see their selection and this was made easy by happening across it while exploring the town. It is an old looking shop in an alley. 

 

The hard part was choosing which mittens to knit – so many choices. Finally I opted for this pair.

As we were economical with space, I had to say goodbye to the box. I also chose not to start them so as to not worry about having to follow a chart in what might be less than optimal conditions.

 

*I was worried about running out of yarn and in the pouring rain in Cork, Ireland, I went looking for local yarn. I purchased a skein of sock yarn and even wound it by hand but I did not get around to using it; mainly because I could not think which pattern to use.

The Yarn That Keeps on Giving

In 2014 on the first San Diego Yarn Crawl, I purchased four skeins of madeline tosh sock yarn to make a specific cardigan. I was concerned that I would not have enough yarn so I went back after the Yarn Crawl and purchased the last skein. Luckily it was the yarn store closest to me.

I actually didn’t use the yarn until 2022 as I could not get gauge for the original pattern I had chosen and working a different size to compensate etc wasn’t an option. Finally I found something I liked and worked with my gauge and I love it but, I used only four skeins. Yes, the original number I had purchased.

The small amount I had left over from the fourth skein went into my scrappy crochet blanket and the remaining complete skein was saved for socks. I used the yarn pretty quickly after finishing the cardigan but the pattern I chose was two colours so I still had more than half the skein remaining. I put that to use this month as I used it in another two colour sock. This time combining it with yarn from my friend’s destash to knit a pattern that I had been "given".

I have been destashing full skeins of yarn that are left over from projects and have just asked for payment of postage. Rather than people have to deal with PayPal or Zelle or similar I decided to be paid in patterns. Very handy when I am only supposed to be using patterns I own.

I followed the pattern as written, reversing the colours for the second sock. Unfortunately I did not have enough of the multi-coloured to complete the toe. So I worked it in the grey. I don’t think it looks too bad, but my preference would have been for cuff, heel and toe to all be in grey. In a previous post I had written how quickly a project grows when that is all you work on and having completed these socks in three weeks, I understand how I was able to complete two pairs of socks in a month.

February’s Socks are Finished

 

I did not start any new socks in January as I still had a pair on the needles from December. But as I had a dearth of projects in February, I cast on a pair. I had been tempted to cast on this pattern in January as they fit the theme of Colorwork but held off as that theme would always come up again. But when February’s designers were announced and this pattern was by one of those designers, I knew I had to cast them on.

This pattern also fit my own guidelines as it has been in my favorites for a little while and added bonus that it is a free pattern. And I would like to say that it is a pretty amazing pattern to be given away.

So what is the pattern? It is Film Reel Socks by Alex Parker Mooney. There are five sizes and four different ways of working the short-row heels. Pretty amazing for a free pattern. Looking at the various iterations of this pattern, I decided that it didn’t matter what the contrasting colour was but it was best if it was very tonal. (Although there is one lovely pair where a different colour is used for each section.)

I used the white and orange left over from these socks and the black was left over from these ones. I was worried that I would run out of the black yarn but finished with about 1g left.

The colour pattern was five stitches and I could have stranded the yarn but chose to practice the ladder back jacquard technique as I have used it just once since making this hat. This was an easy pattern to use the technique as I was making extra stitches from a row of black stitches and getting rid of them in a row of black stitches. Before I started I read other resources as well as the hat pattern and it is interesting that some resources say to make all the stitches with a backwards loop whereas the hat pattern said not to do this for all t the stitches. At some point I will have to see what the difference is.

As I said it was easy to use this technique on this particular sock pattern. I used it on the entire sock but now they are finished, I wonder how comfortable the sole of the foot will be.

 

As this is a colorwork pattern the designer suggested going up a needle size. I’m not a fan of that so I worked a size larger than usual but went down a needle size for the foot.

I hope you will agree that they are a lovely pair of socks with the kudos going to the designer and yarn dyer.