My Annual Knitting Goals…almost in February

Since I'm only hours away from February, I thought I'd post my list of knitting goals for the year. I was inspired by the yearly goal setting that my family does, but also by Susan B. Anderson's group on ravelry, which challenges people to post some annual goals.

So, here goes…

1. Knit from stash for most of the year. Only buy yarn if I really, really, really love it.
2. Organize the yarn that has migrated into my bedroom closet (migrated from my stash closet in the guest room!) and sort the yarn into bags for projects.
3. Knit from the project bags that I create, rather than get sidetracked by new projects.
4. Knit one pair of socks per month this year, including socks for my kids.
5. Finish off my project pages. My yarn scale broke so I haven’t been keeping track of yarn amounts. Need to break out my new scale.
6. Finish my friend’s baby present BEFORE the baby arrives in May! :)
7. Participate in Jane Richmond’s KAL - I got to test knit the Climb socks from her most recent book and have ordered the yarn to make the Inland cardigan(pattern).
8. Keep working on my Noro Kureyon Sunny Spread. I would love to have half of it done by the end of the year.
9. Attend VKL in Seattle and take one of Susan’s classes (fingers crossed!!!) 

Although there are many goals, I think that they're do-able. I've already spent tonight going through my closet full of yarn and bagging projects, fulfilling goal #3. The number of project bags I now have ready and waiting? Nineteen. Yikes. This yarn isn't my stash; it's actually yarn that I moved into my bedroom closet from my stash (stored in my guest room closet) because I was planning on making something 'soon' with it. Time to make some headway on it before the clothing in my closet is replaced by more yarn.

I also finished off a pair of socks that I started early last year. At times, I've even worn just the one, lonely finished sock. I've been feeling inspired lately and knit the matching sock in a few days last weekend.

Did I mention how much I love self-striping yarn? My addiction will hopefully be satisfied with goal #4. I tend to hoard my self-striping yarn, but it's so beautiful to knit. This particular yarn is Zwerger Garn Opal Sweet and Spicy in the Eiswaffel colourway. The pattern is from the wonderful Susan B. Anderson, called How I Make My Socks (right to the point!), which never fails to produce the perfect pair of socks.

Testing...testing...part 2

After a long lull in my knitting, I did a few test knits this summer and fall that have inspired me to knit as much as humanly possible again.

The first test knit, which I blogged about here was the Barley Hat by tincanknits. Following that, I was able to test knit the Flax Sweater, also by tincanknits. Both patterns are from the Simple Collection by the knitting duo that was created for people who are new(ish) to knitting. Check out the patterns here. They are fun, relatively easy, and in a variety of patterns that stretch far beyond the beginning knitters scarf.

I will definitely be knitting up more of the patterns, especially since my last knit was the Flax Sweater, which I made for T, who refuses to wear it. The joke is on him - he's 2 years old and I chose the 2 to 4 year old size, so there is plenty of time for me to convince him to wear it. He usually is overheating due to his inability to sit still for more than 10 seconds, so hopefully he might be more amenable to wearing the sweater when it's a little colder.

After trying to figure out which yarn to use for the sweater, and even buying 2 skeins of Malabrigo Rios in Azul Profundo, I fell in love with Dream in Color Classy's Happy Forest and had to hunt down enough for T's sweater. Here is where ravelry.com is a double-edged sword: I would never have seen the yarn and then become obsessed with finding it if not for ravelry, but then would also not have been able to buy it off a fellow raveler. Happily, I did find it and am happy with the results. Even if the sweater is lying on the floor of T's room, unworn. I can bide my time.

I've also had a chance to test knit two patterns for Jane Richmond this fall. One has not been released yet, so I won't mention any more about it, beyond that the pattern will appear in the book that Jane Richmond and Shannon Cook are releasing shortly. And that I totally loved the pattern. I've knit the pattern once but will be knitting it again in the near future.

The other pattern has now been released. I knit a shawl that Jane designed for Knit City 2013. The shawl is named McMilne, after the two producers of Knit City. You can click here to see the pattern page on ravelry and check out Jane's beautiful version. I'm not much of a shawl person, partly because I never know how to wear them. However, this shawl is not only beautiful, but very wearable. I actually had a chance to wear it to Knit City on the Saturday that we attended. It is gorgeous! I was able to poach the two skeins of Malabrigo Rios that I had originally purchased to knit a sweater for T, so I was able to cast on right away once I received the pattern. It was easy to memorize and knit up very fast. I absolutely love the pattern and highly recommend it! Plus, it was really cool to bump into other test knitters and Knit City and see all the different versions of the shawl. Again, highly recommended!

Barley Hat Test Knit

After a long knitting hiatus, this summer I've been knitting like a madwoman. I know it's only a matter of time before I have to go back to work and my knitting time will drastically decrease. I'm trying to finish off a few projects, but decided about a week ago that I wanted to do a test knit.

I was lucky to be able to sign up to test one of the upcoming patterns from tincanknits (see their great website here). I love their patterns. As part of their new series The Simple Collection, they are currently releasing a new pattern each month right now. All of the patterns are free, are projects that a beginning could tackle and are sized come in a range of sizes. I signed up to test the Barley Hat. It's a very cute hat, it's relatively simple to knit, but the pattern also has enough detail to keep it interesting. I spent about two and a half hours knitting it, and here is the final result:

The pattern is written for all sizes, from baby to a large adult size. It's a great pattern and will be my new go-to pattern.

By the way, can you figure out who has learned to dress herself? I love it, because she's going to be starting preschool soon and it will be incredibly helpful that she can get ready on her own. It also makes for some pretty colourful outfits!

October Update

Well, I feel like I am slowly emerging from the busiest month and a half of my life. Besides being up day and night with brand new babies, I don't think I've ever worked such long hours in my life. Maybe when I was doing my Masters full time, with three jobs and a practicum. But I didn't have kids then, so I wasn't as constantly weary. Anyway, I've now done the first month and a half of my new job, which I'm very happy about. Some very rocky moments, but I escaped mostly unscathed.

I can tell that I've reached the turning point of busyness with the new job because now I actually have time to knit again. Not much, but something is better than nothing, right? I finally finished the second, bigger size of the Sadie dress for my niece.

I'm really happy with how it turned out. I thought about frogging it at the beginning because the colour seemed too dark, with few colour variations. The yarn is Sweet Georgia, Tough Love Sock (which is an awesome name) in the Ultraviolet colourway (which they don't seem to make anymore). I spent some time on ravelry and checked out other projects that were done in the same colourway. The other projects changed my mind, and I'm happy that I stuck with it because I love how it turned out.

So, on to my next projects. I know several people who are expecting babies soon, so I decided to work on a few different baby blankets at the same time, just to be prepared for boys or girls.

Baby Granny Stripe, pattern by the Purl Bee

Cerys Baby Blankie, pattern by Leah J Williams

Last but not least, I had a chance to go see my kids in their swim classes. I had to miss the first two because of work (even though they're on Saturday mornings) but was really happy to see them in action this past weekend. They both LOVE the classes.

The pictures aren't great, but I had to take them quickly since I try to avoid taking pictures of other peoples' children. Thank goodness for them, the kids seem to have inherited their dad's athleticism, rather than mine.

Now that work is starting to slow down a tiny bit, I'm realizing how much time and energy I'm spending on all the small details that need to be taken care of. Some are things that are an hour or two old, but some are a month old. My goal this week is to tackle all of them. It sounds ridiculous, to say that I'm just going to take care of everything this week, but I decided that if I can put all my energy into this week and try to take care of as many loose ends as possible, I'll be able to move forward with more time and energy. Wish me luck!

Summer Update

Hello! Once again, a long time since I've posted. Instead of lamenting how long it's been, I actually had to look at the date and be amazed at how much has happened since I last posted. I have a lot of good reasons for being busy. Some of the highlights are:

1. Finishing the school year
2. T started walking two days before his birthday...then climbing...then running. Exhausting!
2. T's first birthday

3. Two week trip back to our home town, where we helped roof my parents' house
4. Trip back home...one car, two adults, a one year old, a two year old and two cats.
5. Packed up and moved...three floors down and 200 meters away
6. Unpacked most of our house in a day and a half

'Helping' with the move

7. Started a job a couple days a week, with Z at home with the kids
8. Had friends stay with us. Our friends from Germany (two adults, a two year old and a nine month old) stayed with us for three weeks. During that time, some other friends also stayed with us for five days (two adults, a 12 year old and a three year old).

M is sad that we're saying goodbye and mad that we can't go with our friends to Germany right now.

9. While visitors were here, we were tourists in our home town. By far the busiest summer we've ever had.
10. M turned three years old and we had a big party to celebrate

11. Gearing up for my return back to counselling from maternity leave
12. Starting a new role, which will be very labour intensive

One of our busiest summers ever. We had a really busy summer last year as well, but that was mostly because we moved twice and had a baby. While that was gratifying in a different way, this has been a lot more fun. Equally tiring, but more fun.

On the beach at Jordan River, BC. Guess which one of us isn't part Japanese?

Needless to say, I haven't been knitting a lot. I knit a shawl (which is actually more of a scarf) during the Olympics as part of the Ravellenic Games on ravelry. I'll write a longer post about it, but here's a little preview of it.

I have less than a week before our school starts up and I'll be flat-out busy. I'm going to take better pictures of my shawl for a longer post, but in the meantime I'm working on a blanket for my friend's brand new baby.

Winterfresh Cardigan

In the spirit of knocking another thing off my list, I'm going to post about one of my favourite knitting projects. I started writing the post on February 16th, so I guess it's time that I actually finish it!

I am so excited that I finally finished a project for myself. I've made a couple before (out of the 100+ projects that I've made), but this is my first sweater for me (at least, that actually fits me).

I ordered the yarn a long, long time ago from ..... They were having a big going-out-of business sale and so I placed a big order. I think I ordered about 20+ skeins of yarn. Opening the box felt like Christmas. Anyway, part of my order was 4 skeins of Cascade Venezia, in the colour way Winterfresh. Blue in almost any shade is by far my favourite colour and I especially love aqua. So, with great intention I ordered the yarn. And it sat, and sat, and sat.

I finally cast on for the cardigan at the end of last summer. I wanted a project that was fairly simple, and this project has an almost unending amount of stockinette knitting. It's a really easy top down project, and once you get past the divide for the sleeves, you just keep on going with stockinette. The most challenging thing was keeping up my motivation to with the long, long rows of knitting or purling.

I also got sidelined at one point because my cable connecting the two ends of my circular knitting needle broke. I bought a new one a few weeks later, but it took me a while before I picked up the project again. I finished it off with a bright red button, since my favourite colour combination is aqua and red. I actually wore the cardigan with a red tank top this past weekend. I'm so happy that I actually finished the project because it's one of my favourite things in my wardrobe and I made it! Crazy!

My ravelry project page is here. The pattern is called Lady Kina, and it's a free pattern (in both English and French) that you can find here. There's also a pattern for a mini version of this that I'm sorely tempted to make for M.

Vintage Socks

One of my very favourite knitting pattern designers is Susan B. Anderson. She can do no wrong. I was an off-again, on-again knitter until I discovered her book Itty Bitty Hats. Now, as my husband likes to call it, I 'knitblog', which I think really says something about how she is so inspirational. Susan has a great series of Itty Bitty books as well as a very cute book called Spud and Chloe at the Farm. I don't have the last book yet but it's only a matter of time. Susan also has published many free patterns - not only is she a brilliant designer, she's very generous too.

Susan recently shared some of her latest knit socks on her blog. She had such a big response to the posting that she wrote down her personal pattern for making socks - found here (and here is the ravelry page). Although I've got a few other projects on the go or waiting in the wings, I had to cast on for this pattern right away. I dug out a skein of my precious yarntini Self Striping Sock yarn in Vintage.

Susan's sock pattern is a quick and easy knit. She has mastered the art of pattern writing. Her instructions are always crystal clear. This pattern would be perfect if you wanted to try casting on for your first pair of hand-knit socks.

The best part for me...Susan and I have the exact same size feet, so I followed the pattern exactly. Not a single change. They fit perfectly. I had planned on doing my weekly update today, but I decided instead that I had to write about my lovely new socks. Did I mention that I love them?

The Rainbow Blindingly-Bright Wallaby

Now that I'm focussing on some of my works in progress that have been languishing in my yarn stash, I'm actually making some headway. I finished Mom's Eleonora Shrug last week and have moved right along to M's Wallaby.

I was checking out yarn on KnitPicks a long, long time ago. I came across a rainbow self-striping yarn called Chroma Worsted in the colourway Lollipop. They have the same colour in a fingering weight as well but I had already picked out a few skeins of Felici Fingering weight yarn in Rainbow, so I didn't want two different sock yarns in similar colourways - apparently I have a slight addiction to self-striping yarn. I came across the Wonderful Wallaby pattern on Ravelry and decided that the yarn would be a great match for the pattern. I wanted to break up the stripes a bit so I decided to pair the Chroma with KnitPicks Wool of the Andes in Bare. Several helpful people on Ravelry said that it would pair well together because the weight was similar. I also liked that it was about a third the price of the Chroma, making my Wallaby a lot less expensive.

I ordered the yarn and waited. And waited, and waited, and waited. It turns out that it can take a long time to get a yarn shipment from the US into Canada. I think that it was almost a month before I received my box in the mail. My poor husband had to put up with me racing to the door everyday for a month. He had some good eye rolls going by the end of that month.

I originally cast on for a size 2 but decided to frog it and cast on again for a size 4. I wanted to my daughter to be able to wear the sweater for a while, and given my track record, I knew it could take a while for me to finish it. So, besides some minor mistakes I made from knitting when I was too tired, the project sped right along. I finished knitting a few nights ago, used the kitchener stitch to finish the hood and one of the underarms and held it up to admire my handiwork.

That was when I noticed that the opening for the neck (called the placket) and the pocket on the front of the sweater weren't lined up right. In fact, it was really off, by about an inch. The sweater is small and there isn't a lot of distance between the placket and the pocket, so it was really noticeable (at least to me). My husband could tell when I pointed it out, but said that I was a crazy person and should just leave it alone. The problem is that I had spent so much time and energy on the sweater that I knew that it would drive me nuts every time I saw it. I thought about how to fix it and couldn't think of a way besides ripping out the whole sweater. 

I posted on Ravelry, asking for help. Within two hours I had many different, very creative responses. Some people said it probably wasn't as noticeable as I thought and that I should just leave it. Some suggested that I embellish the sweater so that it looked intentional (this is when I realized I should post a picture - the sweater is already a little eye-searing). A few others suggested ways that I could rip out the pocket while saving the sweater, and reattach the pocket. I was not looking forward to another long slog of work on the sweater, especially when I had already thought it was finished. 

Last night I set the sweater out and looked at it. Frustrating. I tried to be creative to see if there was a way around fixing the pocket. I even looked at the placket, thinking that if it was moved a little, then the middle of both would line up. Obviously, though, you can't move the placket.

Except, I realized that I could. The placket is split in two and gapes open quite a bit. I figured out that I could take a button and attach it to the placket, so that it held the two edges together. I tried to place it a little higher up from the original split so that the front doesn't pucker so much. Not a perfect fix, but definitely better and now it's something I can live with.

The best part? She actually wants to wear the sweater. I'm still in shock.

Finally...

If you've seen my site at all in the last week, you've probably seen one of the twenty or so different incarnations of my layout. I finally chose this one, created by Green Tangerine Designs. You should check out her etsy shop. I hope you like it as much as I do.

Speaking of etsy, my lovely friend Jasmine recently opened up an etsy shop of her very own. Check out her beautiful photographs here. She's been a photographer for as long as I've known her (wow, how have 18 years flown by so fast?) and has a great eye for taking pictures.

So, I wanted to share a knitting project that I started in October 2010 and have finally finished. It was meant to be a Christmas present for my mom (again, in 2010!) but I've only recently completed it. It wasn't really a difficult project. Part of the reason it took so long was that I don't live near my mom, so I couldn't have her try it on while I was working on it. I guessed at her size and her arm length. I didn't want to make the sleeves either too short or too long. It also took me a while because I modified the pattern so that the cuffs weren't as wide as they were in the original pattern. This took some serious math because the piece is knit from cuff to cuff, so while you're figuring out different numbers for decreases on one side, you're sorting out increases on the other. I also made the cardinal sin on not writing down my modifications. Why do I do this? I continually have this problem. On this project, I figured that I spent so much time figuring out the mods for the first cuff, I'd easily be able to remember to finish off the last cuff. It turns out that one and a half years later my memory wasn't so great. Of course, it doesn't help that when I cast on I had a one year old, and when I cast off I had a two and a half year old and a seven month baby. So long sleep and bye bye memory!

So, without further ado...

The pattern is Eleonora, by Knitting Nonstop (also known as Dawn Matkovic). You can see my revelry page here. It's an elegant shrug and I decided that I needed some nice yarn to make it with. My mom liked the colour of the original sample that the pattern is based on, so I searched high and low for a purple DK weight yarn that wouldn't break my budget. I ended up choosing KnitPicks Gloss DK in Blackberry, which I think was a really good yarn to fit the pattern. The yarn is a lovely blend of 70% merino wool and 30% silk.

Well, my husband just called to tell me that he'll be back with the kids in about two minutes, so I'm typing even faster. I think I have just enough time to put the kettle on to make some tea before they get home.

ETA: Here is a preview of the next project that I'm working on. It's been another work in progress forever but I've decided that I'm going to finish it this week. 

Here's M checking out what I'm making for her. I explained what it was and she asked me to 'go knit now, please.' Why, yes thank you, I think I will.

Testing...testing...

Testing...testing...


Originally, I only created this post as a way to try and sort out the website. What a headache it's been! I've learned more about blogging templates and html coding than I ever planned. But, as I get closer and closer to the vision that I had for my website, I'm feeling like all the hard work is worth it. Perhaps it wouldn't sting so much if I could do most of it during the day, rather than late, late at night when the kids are sleeping!

While I've been sorting out my blog, I've had a chance to go through ravelry and pull off some of my favourite pictures from my projects. Here are a few of my favourites.

One of the best pleasures in life - knitting while having a cup of tea.

The Snapdragon Tam that I made for my sister-in-law. The pattern is by Ysolda Teague.

My July Heat Wave Ruffle Wrap, based on the 'November Ruffle Wrap' pattern by Kate Jackson

Lovey Dovey, made for M. Pattern by Sylvia Hager. I keep meaning to make a bigger one, but this one started off as a dress and now fits as a top.

My First Snow Mittens - well, at least one out of two. The other is still sitting on my needles. The pattern is by yellowcosmo (on Ravelry.com).

Little Pumpkins - pattern by the fabulous Susan B. Anderson. She's such a talented lady! I absolutely love all of her patterns.

M's Whirligig Shrug, pattern by Stephanie Japel.

My nephew's Roaring Dinosaur. Pattern by Zoe Mellor.

M's Baby Blanket. Pattern by Terry Kimbrough, Susan Leitzsch and Lucie Sinkler.