Tag Archive | knitting

Cabled Cardigan Inspo

Okay, is anyone else watching Bad Sisters on Apple TV+? I’m midway through season two so no spoilers but please let’s talk about the knitwear!! The sweaters are amazing. The hats too – Angelica was wearing a yellow hat that looks much like one I knit ages ago – but I’m obsessed with the sweaters. Apparently some of them are from IrelandsEye and I could buy them…or I could spend around the same amount of money and devote months of my time to knitting them! I know which route I’m going, what about you?

This one is my favorite. I adore that gorgeous vivid green and I’m so glad I saw it on the show because the way they styled it on Eva is so much more appealing to me than the model on the website. I am not typically a big fan of knitting cables. Cables are fiddly and most of the time I want my knitting to be not fiddly. (Some people would question my statement, given how much lace I knit and whether lace is considered fiddly or not. Maybe it is just a brand of fiddly I am on board with.)

HOWEVER, Eva has convinced me that I NEED to make this sweater. I have already done some trolling for patterns and found this Book Club Cardigan on Ravelry. I would modify the bottom hem to be thicker like Eva’s sweater, and I could modify the sleeves to be that balloon style, but I’m not sure I’m going to.

The biggest question now is yarn. I don’t tend to stash sweater quantities unless I have a pattern in mind. I had a couple of possibilities from past projects, but those yarns are discontinued, so I’m on the hunt. Since it’s a cardigan and won’t be against my skin, I don’t have to worry as much about the itch factor, but I don’t want it to be so rustic/earthy that it’s unpleasant to knit with. I think I might want to go non-superwash with this one. I should probably go with something affordable like Cascade 220 (maybe the Christmas green here??) although the last cardigan I knit with that yarn pilled like crazy.

So, I’m taking suggestions! What are your favorite budget-friendly yarns for something like a cabled cardigan?

A Year in the Life

Mar22

Before yesterday, my last post was August 2023. That’s over a year and a half — somehow I didn’t realize it had been that long. It’s been a … full time. I was going to say rough, but maybe life just IS rough? I mean, not that every day is hard but every life has challenges and obstacles along with the joys and laughter and successes.

Things were kind of okay after we lost Grace. I was sad, of course, and missed her terribly. I still miss her. But I’d had time to grieve and mentally adjust to the loss even before it happened – that time to prepare can help more than I realized. About six months after we lost Grace, we adopted a 12 week old puppy and I named her Bella. She was supposed to be a black lab but ended up being mostly pit bull. She was our first tiny puppy, so adorable, but also so freaking smart. Smartest dog I’ve ever seen. She knew the names of all her toys and would go get them when I asked. Anyway. We had Bella for six months before she got injured in a freak accident and broke her spine, and we lost her. That took me out. It was so unexpected, so unfair. Grieving Bella has been harder than grieving Grace, in a lot of ways.

Because I am weak when I am grieving, we ended up back at the shelter about a month or so later. We’d learned that puppies bring joy, and we liked that joy. This time, we brought our youngest with us, and he fell in love with a little tan girl puppy. She wasn’t my first choice, but I did love to see him find his dog, the way I’ve found mine before. She’s mostly pit bull with a bit of dachshund, and she’s cute and snuggly and silly. I like her, but she’s not my dog. And that’s okay. For now, I’ve still got Jack and Duncan. Jack is 11 now and had a growth on his leg removed in January, but thankfully it was benign and he bounced back quickly. Duncan is 9 and just a big old potato with legs.

Of course there’s been more going on – a roadtrip to Philadelphia, a meet-up with the girl in Iowa – but dogs are always the highlight, right? For now, I’m looking forward to an April trip to Salem, MA for the Fiber Witch Festival with some of my little knitting coven. We’ve reserved a house and booked a walking tour and a trolley tour and of course we’re psyched for the vendor market but mostly I’m looking forward just sitting around and knitting with some of my favorite people!

Knitting as a Calling

Mar21

I find myself missing writing, or this type of writing anyway. There have been a couple of times over the last month where I caught myself composing posts in my head. So, why not compose them here, I guess? I’ve got the blog, might as well use it when the mood hits, although I stopped paying for the fancier subscription so photos will be few and far between. I did post this on Substack but that doesn’t feel like home yet, not like this does. Fun fact: apparently today is my blogiversary – I registered the blog 11 years ago!

I recently revisited an old journal in a fit of nostalgia and 25 years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child, I wrote that I wished I knew how to knit or crochet. I didn’t necessarily want to make something for the baby – I was just restless one night and nothing sounded appealing. I have no idea how or why knitting came to mind because nobody in my world was a knitter or crocheter.

I didn’t take the initiative to learn at that point. I wish I had. I think knitting would have helped my mental state a lot when I was struggling with motherhood, and with balancing motherhood with a job or marriage or just being my own person. I cycled through other hobbies – scrapbooking, jewelry making – but they didn’t stick. And they never had the same restorative, meditative qualities that knitting does. Maybe that’s why they didn’t stick?

When it comes to hobbies – and I even struggle to call it a hobby because it feels more important than that – knitting is The One for me. It completes me, soothes me, supports me, inspires me. I’ve been knitting for 12 years now and never gotten tired of it.

It’s given me a way to play with colors and patterns and textures in a tactile way. I’ve tried drawing and painting and those are not my talents. This, though, the pairing of yarn and pattern, this comes naturally to me, and the whole process brings me so much joy.

It’s given me an amazing community, a place where I feel accepted and encouraged. I love knitters so much. I love how so many of them have leaned into being truly, authentically themselves. Many of us knitters are weird, and I say that as a compliment because I love weird. I love being “weird” because it means accepting how I’m different – not just accepting but embracing. I have to thank the wild, powerful world of knitters for helping me gain that confidence

I love who I am now, and I think knitting has contributed so much to that. I wish young Bonny had had even a tiny bit of that 25 years ago.

FO: Librarian Vest

Jul10

With my Back to the Fuchsia shawl off the needles, I turned to my next biggest WIP – my Librarian Vest (Ravelry link). I had about 20cm of the body and needed 30, except actually I wanted more like 32-33 because the designer’s was shorter than I wanted. I knitted and knitted while watching Wimbledon and yesterday I finished and blocked it!

I love the gray and pink together, and I’m so glad I only did the pattern on the front instead of all the way around the body – that would have made it go so much slower, and who really sees the back anyway? I’m not a huge fan of the pooling at the bottom. That was before I started alternating my two skeins (WHEN will I learn??) and I didn’t want to frog back that much. And honestly, once I have it on, the pooling isn’t really that noticeable.

And yes, I have tried it on and it fits perfectly, which is a miracle given that my “swatch” was a cowl I knit three years ago with this yarn! I was a little concerned as I was knitting because it was definitely coming out too small for me, but then, blocking worked its magic and now it’s just right. Honestly, I’m kind of tempted to knit another one, but maybe in a solid yarn that wouldn’t require alternating skeins!

Beyond knitting, life is just trucking along, day by day. Work was super stressful for a while there, but now I’m in a quiet period, which I’m fully embracing. Grace is still hanging in there, the stubborn thing, though we’re seeing more signs of the disease’s progression. But she’s alert, she can eat and move around, she wags her tail and is happy to get attention, so I’m trying to go with the flow. We go back to the oncologist for a three-month follow up visit on Wednesday.

I took Jack to the vet last week. He’d had a couple episodes where he was drooling and his teeth were chattering so I was worried he had some kind of mouth/tooth problem. And I was worried they’d just tell us we’d have to put him under to examine him and then they’d want to do a cleaning too and then they’d find a broken tooth or something. But this time we got good news – the vet was able to get a good look and didn’t see anything that concerned her. She also said his teeth were worn but clean and looked good, so she didn’t even recommend a cleaning! Whew. Nice to get a good dog report now and then.

Happy Monday, friends.

FO: Back to the Fuchsia

Jul2

I managed to finish my Back to the Fuchsia shawl on the last day of June, a lovely bit of symmetry since I started it on the first day. I’m actually surprised I finished it that quickly, since there were a few times that the houndstooth pattern felt like it would take forever. But this was my main project for the month so I didn’t really work on much else. And I’m so glad I made it – it’s such a fun shawl!

The cream and black were both leftover partial skeins from stash so I’m thrilled to use them up. The black (actually charcoal) is a merino/silk blend from Julie Spins and the cream is Malabrigo Sock. The pink I bought for this project and it’s Baah Yarn La Jolla in Pink Tourmaline. I’ve got about 57 grams left of the pink so it might work well paired with a multi-colored yarn in a bigger shawl. I loved working with it – it’s so nice and crisp.

Blocking was a bit of a challenge. The designer recommended pinning first and then spray blocking, rather than soaking and then pinning. I don’t really know why but figured I’d better go with it. Because the lace sections had more stretch than the houndstooth, I had to fuss with it a lot to get it pinned out evenly and in the right shape. Got there in the end!

With that done, yesterday I had a bit of knitting time and had an initial thought of, “Wait – what am I supposed to work on now?” before remembering that yes, I do actually have several other WIPs that could use my attention now.

I also finished Friday Night Lights yesterday (alas) so I’m pondering my next binge. Thinking about The Bear. Anyone else seen it?

Happy Sunday, friends.

FO Friday: Wonder Woman Socks

Jun23

Here’s the thing: when you have a bunch of WIPs and you spread your knitting time around all of them (or at least some of them), then it takes a while for things to get finished. These socks, for example. I cast on in JANUARY and I just finished them, six months later. And they’re not even what they were supposed to be to begin with!

Originally, I had plans to knit these really cool Diana Prince (Wonder Woman) socks (pattern on Rav). It had the WW logo on the leg, but not only was the stitch pattern just charted and not written out (I don’t love charts – I usually find them harder/slower to read) but there was some weird fancy twisted stitch that looked super complicated and I just decided this pattern was more work than I wanted to do for a pair of socks. I like happy simple sock knitting. Of course, finishing these socks still took a few months after deciding that, but they’re done now and that’s the important thing.

It’s been busy and stressful and hot around here. The plants are appreciating the sunshine and the heat; the dogs, not so much, since it means they usually don’t get walks. I’ve made good progress on my Back to the Fuchsia shawl but have no illusions that I’ll finish it any time soon – that mosaic pattern has a tendency to get real tedious, so I have to take breaks.

This weekend is a busy one, by my standards anyway. Tomorrow I’m going to see Katherine Center with a friend (have you read her books?? I love them, especially The Bodyguard), and I think we’ll have dinner after, and Sunday I have a family birthday party. Both delightful things but I do hope I get plenty of quiet knitting time too!

Happy Friday, friends.

FO: Kitation Shawl

May31

I finished my Kitation shawl over the weekend. This was Casapinka’s pattern for Local Yarn Store Day, free with the purchase of any two skeins of fingering yarn. I was buying two skeins of Malabrigo Ultimate Sock anyway, so I thought, what the heck – let’s use it for this pattern! Well, this shawl felt like it took six months, not one. This was not one of my favorite projects.

I can look at the photos and recognize that it’s attractive, though for me that might be more about the colors than the pattern. So why was I not a fan? I had to carry two yarns throughout, which just got kind of annoying, but it’s not a dealbreaker. The first half of the pattern was almost like a stitch sampler separated by stockinette sections, which I kind of liked – it kept it interesting at least.

Then we got to the second half. It was mostly made up of four big sections that were basically the same: one side of vertical columns made with slipped stitches, one side of horizontal stripes, and each section alternated sides. As a concept, it looks cool. Knitting four sections of it got really boring. Like, REALLY boring. Plus, they recommended going up a needle size because of the slipped stitches, which I totally understand but then it made the stockinette sides looser than the previous stockinette sections. I noticed that more after blocking, and it’s admittedly a minor thing that I probably just noticed because I was already irked.

And then, after getting through all those boring sections, I made it to the “Garter Border”. Yay, the border, that shouldn’t be too long, right? Haha, wrong! The side to the right of the CDD had to go from 38 stitches down to 2 stitches, with one decrease every other row. I’ll let you do the math (mostly to prevent embarrassing myself in case I do the math wrong). Suffice to say, it was a much longer section than I expected a “border” to be and I was already so ready to be done with this shawl!

Finally! It was done, I blocked the sucker – which was its own challenge thanks to the unusual shape – and tried it on, both on myself and my mannequin. It was … meh. It’s awkward to style, because one side is so much longer than the other.

Now I’ve got a stupid shawl I probably won’t wear, so it will go in a bag of donation shawls for when I figure out where to donate shawls.

Oh, the pattern? Yeah, it’s apparently only available on Ravelry, even though Casapinka has a Payhip page. So if you can use Ravelry, and you’re still interested in this pattern, here’s the link.

I feel like such a grump with this post, but not all patterns are for all people. Who knows, one of you might love this design. And tomorrow is a new month and I have FOUR new projects all ready to cast on, whee!

Sock It To Me Monday

May8

Hooray, I finished a pair of socks for the first time in ages! This is only my second finished pair for the year, which is not typical for me. I actually cast on socks with this yarn on January 1. I was going to knit some paw print socks with some purple Araucania Huasco Sock Kettle Dyes, but it was slow going and then I gave up and decided to knit some simple socks instead. THREE MONTHS LATER, I have finally finished these simple socks. I’m not thrilled with them either.

On the first sock, I dropped a stitch and didn’t realize it until many rows later, so I used a crochet hook to bring it back up, but it was so many rows that it puckered the yarn a little bit. Maybe that will loosen up in the wash? And then, LOOK. They are not the same length. I know it won’t matter when I wear them but it bothers me nonetheless. These have now been tucked away in my sock drawer for fall, when I will pull them out and be happy to wear them because they’re such a pretty color and I will have forgotten how annoying the process was.

Anyway, how’s your sock knitting going?

FO: Classic Beanie

May6

This has been kind of a strange week. It’s been a good week at work – I’ve been productive, felt confident that what I’m doing is good, made good connections. But at home, Duncan has been limping for about a week now. He went to the vet on Tuesday, and the vet said the motion of his knee (both knees have been surgically repaired) looked good and his bloodwork came back perfect. She said to give him an anti-inflammatory twice a day for two weeks, cut back on food to get his weight down, and keep walks slow and calm. I gave him two walks after that, and both times it clearly aggravated his knee to where he could barely put any weight on it at all. Duncan’s not a complainer so he wasn’t whining, but it was obvious he was uncomfortable. I talked to the vet again yesterday, and she said there was a chance he’s tweaked something so we’ll skip walks for two weeks and give him a chance to rest and heal. I’m really hoping that helps.

I also finished another donation hat this week, the Classic Beanie by Woolly Wormhead. It’s a simple, free pattern and just what I was looking for, but when it was done, I was a little worried – it looked like I’d knit a hat for a conehead! Thank goodness for blocking.

And I found my way back to sock knitting this week too, after a long hiatus where socks just weren’t doing it for me. I was working on my turquoise shorties with my fancy Signature DPNs, and it was fine, but then a couple of days ago I pulled out a purple sock, a second sock on my Knitters Pride SmartStix, and it just felt so comforting! I think partly it’s color (PURPLE) and partly it’s how the yarn feels in my hand (wool/nylon vs cotton/nylon/acrylic). I can’t tell if the needles make a difference. I do feel like I grip the Signatures more tightly, but I need to test them on a wool sock yarn to make an accurate comparison.

I hope to finish the purple sock this weekend – along with some house cleaning. I’m looking forward to a house guest arriving next Friday and I want to make sure she doesn’t know how we actually live, haha! Having company is always a good incentive to clean house, isn’t it?

Happy Saturday, friends.

Local Yarn Store Day 2023

Apr30

I wasn’t planning on celebrating this year. I have no need of new yarn (though that’s always true), and my favorite LYS is half an hour away, and I do love my lazy weekends at home. But then Trish at Yarn Social kept posting fun photos, and I had a wee bit of FOMO. Plus I hadn’t been there in ages, and the husband has been out of town for a few days so I had no one to tell me I shouldn’t go. (Not that he would say that anyway. But this is the story I’m telling myself.) And so, yesterday morning I found myself at the yarn store.

It was quite busy so the little shop was full and not easy to navigate at all times, but it was fun to be part of the mix. I spotted a couple of local knitters I follow on Instagram but was too shy to say hello. (I KNOW, I KNOW – knitters are typically lovely people and I should have just done it. Whatever.) Overall I feel like I restrained myself with what I purchased. I had the cutest little pink canvas project bag in my hands and managed to put it back by reminding myself of my collection of Joji bags.

I came home with two skeins of Malabrigo Ultimate Sock. Again and again, Malabrigo proves to be my favorite. Those colors, you know? And by buying two skeins, I also got a code for the special Casapinka yarn store day pattern, Kitation. I couldn’t resist casting on almost immediately. I also got two 50g skeins of Goosey Fibers in a lovely purple/black colorway just because, plus a little sheep pin and a teeny-tiny pocket knife! It opens and everything and you can use it to cut your yarn! Trish had hers on a chain around her neck but I’m not sure yet what I’ll do with mine.

I’m glad I went, and I’m glad I went early – by the time I was driving home, the traffic heading downtown for the NFL draft was building up. Because it was sunny and warm, I decided to stop at Home Depot for potting soil and a few new pots. Several of my plants had outgrown their pots but I was waiting for good weather to repot them outside. It really was a perfect day for it – sunny and 70. I repotted probably 10 plants and they look so much better in their roomier homes.

Then, since I was already grubby, I decided to give Jack a bath out on the deck with the hose. After that, because I am truly crazy, I gave Grace one too. She doesn’t enjoy the water but we got through it, and now both dogs are so soft and fluffy. I ran out of energy to bathe Duncan – he hates water more than the other two combined and I wasn’t ready for that tussle!

By then, it was mid-afternoon and I was pooped, so I spent the rest of the day with knitting and Bridgerton. Since almost everything I’m currently watching is something the husband and I watch together, I needed something new to watch while he was gone. It’s a frothy, addictive show, isn’t it? I’m enjoying it! Alas, the husband is due to come home this evening, so my Bridgerton watching will be limited to times he’s not around, because it’s definitely not something he would enjoy.

Yesterday was also Independent Bookstore Day, which I did not celebrate in person. I kind of celebrated, though, because my copy of the new Emily Henry book arrived, which I ordered from bookshop.org, a site that supports independent bookstore! Close enough for me.

Now, I’m off to enjoy my last few hours of solitude! Happy Sunday, friends.