A Pink Dress

You would think with a title like that I could just show you a picture of a dress I had made with details of the fabric and pattern.

But, no. There is a story, of course. A story of an, as yet, unfinished dress.

When I finished the last quilt, I decide that I should get around to making clothes with fabric I had. I cut out, sewed back seam, side seams, shoulder seams and neck band of a dress; tried it on, loved the style and decided I needed more dresses. A quick trip to Jo-Anns before coupons expired and I had fabric. I cut out the fabric and did all the serger work and now had two dresses at the same stage. I decided not to add sleeves to this one and add sleeves to the first one, which was the opposite of my original plan. I quickly neatened and hemmed the arm openings and violà, a dress.

Jo-Anns is my only local option for in-person fabric shopping. I had wanted a printed knit fabric but they only had knit in plain colours. So I purchased this jersey knit. I am pleased with the end result, it is very different from the “first” one although it will be interesting to see how long it lasts. 

 

I Like Big Shawls, I Cannot Lie

Yes, another post from me. A couple of reasons for posts being so close together. 1) I finished two projects within a day of each other and 2) I had a post mulling around in my head and then typed out that I ended up not posting but in the meantime nothing else got posted either.

Now for my latest finished project; which I love. It is a shawl design by Stephen West using five different skeins of yarn. Three of them are from two projects I frogged last year, one was yarn I had been given – Dancing Leaf Dyeworks and one was yarn that I had purchased to support a small business – Evergreen Fiberworks - and ended up working really well with the other yarns.

I decided to knit this pattern because I had seen one on a podcast in shades of pink and thought that would be ideal for me and I had two projects that I liked but never wore because they were not big enough. There was the dark pink yarn (Candy Skein) from this project finished in 2017 and reading my post it is obvious I was not sure how I was going to wear it, so I didn’t. And then both yarns from this project, also finished in 2017. The light pink is another Candy Skein and the bright pink is malabrigo.

In my last post I said I didn’t want to start projects just to get yarn on the needles but that was the case with this project. Having frogged two projects to get yarn for this specific pattern, I didn’t want to delay in getting it started. And I’m glad that I did as this became my easy project. This is why it took me six months to make, but as I was getting near the end and near the end of June I was determined to finish it. Even with my husband saying “I thought you said, this project was never going to be finished.” I must admit it felt like it at times especially when faced with picking up stitches around the edge. But here we are. And there is a much better chance of it being worn unlike its predecessors.

Complete with sneak peek of a dress I made.

 

Mid-Year Round Up

I usually do an end of year review and a start of year plan. I’m not sure if I have written a serious review during the year before.

The reason for one now is that I am feeling relaxed about my stash. It’s almost as if adding to it made me less stressed, not more. Also when discussing the recent LYS sale with my husband he said: it will get knit eventually. So now I don’t feel obligated to knit it all up quickly and not buy anything else. And the yarn I purchased for specific patterns has been used so I have no pressure from those.

I still have not used all the previous closing sale yarn. But I did start and finish one garment with such yarn this year and have chosen a pattern and gauge swatched for another cardigan. The yarn won’t all be used by the end of the year. I am OK with that as I would rather have fewer projects on the go and finish them than start projects just to get the yarn on the needles.

I still have two works-in-progress that were started before the beginning of the year. One of them I turned into a year-long project, so, obviously, no expectation of being finished before December and the other one gets pushed aside every time I start a non-easy project. Looking at you Pi Shawl. Speaking of which, that should be finished on time towards the end of July. It turns out that it is an easy lace pattern. Also, that project is my oldest 2021 project. This is encouraging because that means I am finishing projects that I am starting. (Yes, crochet project, even you will be finished.)

I have ten projects in progress. Hmm…haven’t I said four is the ideal number? Let’s see if I can justify this number down. Two are year-long projects, two are long-term blankets and one is vacation knitting. That brings it down to five. I have one easy project and one crochet project, which means that three projects are not so easy – i.e. require concentration. That is actually better than I was expecting.

Having written this out, it is not too hard to keep my WIPs in check. As long as I have some variety I should be able to keep it that way.

What’s Going on in the Knitting World

In my personal knitting world I have two finished items to show and have been working away on my long term projects. But, still, there has to be hypocrisy and nastiness in the crafting world. Three things happened last month that I was going to write about; I actually had an almost complete draft of a blog post. But I am not going to publish it at this time as it is actually quite negative and am I any better than the people I am writing about if I am pointing out their shortcomings?

In this post I will show off one of my finished items. As you might have noticed I have started knitting socks again and enjoying it, even if there is only a small window where I wear them. And in the last closing down sale I purchased quite a bit of sock yarn, to be used for socks or shawls.

For June I chose the designer Rose Hiver and the pattern Charivari as I had purchased some self-striping yarn. I followed the pattern as written including the short row heel, even though short row heels are not my favourite to wear but this was worked in a different way. I didn’t like the finished heel but when I worked the second sock I realized that I had worked the heel incorrectly the first time. Worked properly it is quite neat and I am repeating it on my Advent Socks.

This yarn was quite difficult to photograph, the website showed it as pink, on the two cameras I used, the red showed as orange. The yarn is darker than shown in this photo which was taken outside.

 

What To Make Next or Why a Stash Is Not Always a Good Idea.

I feel like this will be one long run on sentence/stream of consciousness so I will try for this to make sense.

I have been making socks again and each month I check the challenges in the Sock Knitters Anonymous group. Some months the challenges have not appealed to me so I have not cast on; other months more than one option has appealed to me but I have restricted myself to one pair. The next month’s challenges are usually published about a week before the start of the month which gives me time to choose and get yarn wound if I want to start on the first of the month. One of the challenges for July is “previous mysteries”. I have chosen my pattern and yarn. Easy right? So what is the reason for this post?

I am working on a pair of socks for this month’s challenge. I chose the designer RoseHiver as I like her patterns and have knit a few of them. I remember when she first started designing socks as part of the Sock group and I said she should charge for her patterns but she said she wasn’t comfortable doing that. I am pleased that she has become more comfortable on that concept.

So… I have socks on the needles for this month and chosen for next month, what is the problem? One of the other challenges for this month was working a pattern whose first letter is the same as the first letter of your Ravelry name. I thought this sounded a fun challenge except I really wanted to knit the designer challenge. (I have found this quite frequently this year. Either I don’t want to work any of the challenges or I want to make a few of them.) I only want to work one pair of socks each month but August is a finishing up month so I could cast on something now and finish it in August. Decisions! I chose a pattern and decided on yarn. Yarn that has been in stash for a while. But then……

When looking at patterns that I had saved to look at later I saw a pattern for a drapey cowl – a style I like – and thought that would work perfectly with the yarn I had just chosen for socks. Added bonus, it is an easy pattern and I haven’t got anything easy on the needles right now.

Next step; wind the yarn and gauge swatch.

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.