Tag Archive | makers making

Paddington Station Socks

The sock pattern that I test knit is now live! They’re called the Paddington Station Socks, and the designer said they’re named for the novel 4:50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie. I haven’t read it; I volunteered to test because I liked the texture of the pattern.

It’s just knits and purls in a four-row repeat, so it’s simple but still engaging enough to not be boring. I knit the large size, and I actually like the slightly bigger leg for myself! The pattern continues onto the top of the foot nicely and makes for a nice squishy sock. It was a quick enough knit, and the only reason I haven’t finished the second one is because of gift knitting. But I’m getting close!

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Just a gusset and a foot left to go and then I can add another pair to my sock drawer! My yarn is Knit Picks Stroll Hand Painted and I like it a lot. It’s soft but feels sturdy, and is a thick enough fingering to make a dense sock like I prefer.

Pattern: Paddington Station Socks by Ambrose Smith

Hogwarts Cowl

Dec2

In my quest to finish some lingering WIPs, I pulled out my Hogwarts cowl this past week. It’s very comforting because it’s all stockinette in the round, and it’s Harry Potter colors! When my brain was too tired at night to work on something with an actual pattern, I worked on this. And yesterday, the boy had his winter guitar recital (he ROCKED it!) and I had two solid hours of knitting time. By the time we got home, it was time for the ribbing and the bind off, and this morning it had a little photo shoot.

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I took the photos before I washed it and blocked it, so please ignore any dog hairs or stray ends! It looks a little more rainbow-ish than Harry Potter-ish to me, but I do love all the colors together, so I’m sure I’ll wear it quite often.

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The yarn is a Hogwarts House Pride set from Nerd Girl Yarns on her Binary Sock base, and it’s lovely yarn. I almost wish I’d made striped socks with it! The pattern is improvised, but you can see my notes on the Ravelry project page.

And while we were gone for those two hours, we left the puppers free to roam the house, rather than locking them up in the kitchen/dining room, and I’m delighted to say they didn’t destroy a thing! While I’m not confident enough to leave Duncan free all the time, I’m optimistic that he’ll grow up to be a trustworthy pup!

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Meet Me at the Station Shawl

Nov29

I have a finished shawl to show you, and the best part is that the pattern is now live and you can knit one too! This is the Meet Me at the Station Shawl by Under the Olive Tree Knits, and I loved testing it.

It’s designed to be a one-skein shawl, but as you may remember, I had issues and ran out of yarn too soon. To be fair, I did not check gauge before I started knitting, so I accept full responsibility. And in any case, I’m glad it happened because the cream lace is perfect with the dark green body.

The pattern is clear and well-written, and Jem provides plenty of photos and tutorials as well. My knitting experience was smooth and happy, and I’d love to knit this again, maybe in one color like I intended!

Pattern: Meet Me at the Station by Olive Tree Knits

Yarns: Araucania Huasco Multy Botany Lace in Hunter, Cascade Heritage in Snow

See my Ravelry project page here.

Just more knitting

Nov27

After a four-day holiday weekend, we had a snow day yesterday, so I basically had five full days to devote to yarn. I’ve shown you a couple of my projects already, but here are the rest. The first one I finished one is a cute Duality hat.

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This is one of my favorite hat patterns ever, and this is the first time I’ve added a pompom. I think it’s perfect with the stripes, which just happened to use up two partial skeins of yarn (teal and purple KnitPicks Brava Worsted). This is for a girl who’s having some health issues, and I hope it brings her a tiny bit of happiness to wear. I need to make a baby sloth for her, and then I’ll send them on their way.

After I finished my projects for other people, I had the itch to cast on new things just for fun. I started with some yarn that called my name and cast on a Zomboni shawlette for a bit of bright color.

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It’s simple enough, and pretty, but soon I realized I hadn’t scratched the itch. What I wanted was a nice quick bulky yarn pattern, so I grabbed a skein of Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande Glow in dark gray with a bit of sparkle and cast on a Darkside Cowl. Sure enough, that was just what I needed, and last night I finished it.

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I don’t know yet if it will be for me or for a gift. Maybe it will depend on whether it’s itchy for me to wear!

With those done, I’m trying to be a good girl and finish some lingering WIPs before the end of the year. I do love to start a new year with mostly empty needles!

Holiday Projects

Nov25

It’s been a busy few days around here. The girl was here for Thanksgiving, which was marvelous, but she also had to work two shifts and see a couple of friends, and then she had to leave a day early to beat today’s blizzard warning, so it was really only three days. And that’s not quite long enough for me. But I enjoyed her while she was here and I am very glad she’s back at school safe and sound. I would have gone nuts thinking about her driving through a blizzard warning! After she left yesterday, I wanted something fun to do to distract me, so I made the boys take me to a cute little nearby town for some retail therapy. I did pretty well!

I found this awesome yarn bowl at an art collective and even got a fun tote with it! Hooray for Small Business Saturday! While we were there, I did some knitting on my Hogwarts Cowl at the guitar store and at dinner. I’m halfway through now and like the size much better than my first version.

There’s actually been more crochet than knitting this weekend. One of the nephews requested a Pikachu hat and he’s three and very cute so I couldn’t say no. And since I made one nephew a scarf and another a Pikachu hat, I had to make something for the Pokemon-obsessed niece, so I used the last of my yellow yarn for a wee Pikachu for her.

They are cute, I will admit it. But that’s enough Pikachu to last me a very long time! I’m taking a break from gift projects today during the blizzard for some selfish knitting…maybe. Or maybe I’ll start a pair of gift socks. In any case, it’s windy and snowing and you will find me on the couch with yarn and dogs for the rest of the day! Everyone else in the path of the storm, stay safe and warm!

A Scarf in a Weekend?

Nov19

Okay, not quite but almost! One of my Christmas knitting projects is a scarf for a nephew. He requested pale blue and white, neither of which were colors in my acrylic stash, so Saturday morning I headed to the closest big-box craft store. Just my luck: they were having a buy-two, get one free sale! I got the yarn I need for my other Christmas project, and for this scarf I chose more of the Lion Brand Jeans yarn, this time in the faded blue color, plus some Vanna White white. (Except when I started knitting with it, the Vanna White worsted was thicker and not as soft, so I pulled out a partial skein of KnitPicks Brava worsted in white instead.) I cast on that afternoon and it’s been my only project this weekend. He’s only five so it doesn’t need to be a big scarf, which means that the 47″ I have tonight is very close to being long enough. If he’s 45″ tall, and I make the scarf 60″, that’s plenty long enough, right?

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But that’s not all I got at the store. I kind of went past this jumbo yarn on my way out and…well, buy 2 get 1 free, you know?? It’s a good deal. So this went into my cart too.

Pretty sure it’ll be a couple of cowls, but not anytime soon. I have more Christmas knitting to do!

Unusual FOs!

Nov17

I have two fun things to show you today! And they’re not even knitted! Remember how my work team went to a glass fusion studio and made mosaic tiles? I finally got mine back! It’s a little more see-through than I expected, don’t know why, but I’m happy enough with it. If I were to redo it, I’d do the letters lower and closer together and maybe use an opaque base instead of clear. But it’s hanging in my craft room and makes me smile.

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And my other FO is a SUPER CUTE crocheted baby sloth!!

I love him so much. He’s a gift for a work friend who loves sloths, but I like him so much I ordered more safety eyes so I can make many more. I want to make ones with long arms that have snaps on the end so he can hang from things too. The pattern is Zippy the Baby Sloth, and it’s free on Ravelry, and took me maybe two hours to make.

Now my focus is apparently shifting to gift knitting, as two of the young men in my life would like yarn gifts for Christmas and I am always happy to oblige! What about you, are you deep in gift knitting at this point?

WIP Progress

Nov11

I haven’t shown much off but I have been knitting and knitting over the last several days so I thought I’d share what I’m working on. My top priority is my Late Harvest shawl with the Manos del Uruguay Feliz yarn. Loving this yarn, and liking the project more now that I’ve moved on from the endless garter stitch. This is really cool:

I’ve got three more pattern repeats and then it’s done, so that’s only about 21 rows. I can do that easy this week if I work on it every night. But I’ve been distracted by my new sweater project. I’m making a Clarke Pullover with Lion Brand Jeans yarn and I’m in the newlywed phase where I want to knit on it all the time. I just made it to the join-in-the-round point.

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It would be awesome if I could do this as a NaKniSweMo project but since I need to finish Late Harvest, I’m not optimistic. We’ll see. If I can be monogamous after I finish the shawl, it’s a possibility.

During the work week, I’ve been knitting on my Goth Kitty sock, done with my favorite Vanille Latte pattern and Felici yarn.

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I don’t love the way the stripes fell–I wish I’d had a gray heel and more of the purples on the foot, but I can always do the second one that way and have fraternal twin socks instead of identical.

And this post really brings home the fact that I need to stop saying “I’ll never…”. I said I’d never get into making sweaters, and though I don’t do them often, I’m liking it more with each one. I said I’d never want to make socks, and now they’re my favorite thing to knit. I said I’d never love knitting with fingering weight yarn, and now I have more of that in my stash than anything else. I need to remember that every time I say I’ll never do brioche, or cables, or intarsia!

Before I run off to knit for the rest of the morning, I want to share something the mother included in an email yesterday. It expresses some of the darkness I’ve been feeling in my head:

“And in despair I bowed my head.

There is no peace on earth, I said

For hate is strong

and mocks the song

of peace on earth, good will to men.”

It was written in 1863 by Longfellow, and as she wrote, “The country survived then and we’ll survive this.”

Yarniversary

Nov9

Today is a special day. Six years ago today, I bought my first crochet hooks and yarn and started teaching myself to crochet! It’s been a long amazing journey since then, with plenty of frustration but so much more joy and peace. Yarn has been with me through so many hard times, allowing me to focus on something other than stress or anxiety or grief or sadness, at least for short periods at a time.

Yarn brought me many friendships I wouldn’t have otherwise, amazing friends who support me online and in person.

Yarn brought me this blog, which lets me work through things in words, a form of journaling after I’d walked away from journaling years ago.

Yarn opened up this huge source of creativity in my life, something I’d been searching for through other hobbies until discovering this one. It balances out the rest of my life so well, giving me an outlet for beauty and experimentation and art.

Yarn has given me confidence, though that one isn’t constant. The other day a woman saw me knitting a sock and told me “You’re so gifted!” And my response was, “You’re sweet, but really it’s the yarn doing the work.” I still struggle with being able to take credit for what I create, but in my heart, I really am proud of what I’ve done, what I make.

Yarn introduced me to a huge number of inspiring women who are doing what they love, being who and what they want, without apologies and with great joy. I have so many role models in the yarn world, and I’m happy and grateful to be a part of this community.

I don’t remember what I did before yarn came into my life, but I’m glad I don’t have to find out now.

This week, depression is kind of winning in my head, for a variety of reasons. Some are identifiable, but then there’s that weird inexplicable depression fug that takes over and makes you all dark and numb and twisty without explaining why. I’ve been here before and I know I’ll get past it like I have before. It just sucks in the moment, and all I want to do is enjoy the comfort of yarn in my hands, and be grateful that I have that comfort available.

So, thank you for six wonderful years, Yarn. I look forward to many more.

What would you do?

Nov2

Okay, so I’m test knitting a shawl. I like the shawl; it’s a pretty pattern and it looks very nice in the yarn I chose.

BUT. I ran out of yarn. I still have two and a half repeats of the lace pattern and I’m down to 4 grams of yarn, just enough for the bind off. I thought about binding off early, so I put the stitches on waste yarn, and I don’t think it’s long enough. I don’t want to spend $25 buying another skein of the green, so what now? I have a few options:

Continue with a contrasting color or coordinating variegated
Frog and reknit with a different size needle (But what size?? My gauge is right!)
Reknit in a different yarn that I have more of
Throw it in the corner and forget it about it

So tell me, what would you do??