Practise, Practise

I didn't sew yesterday. i think it was holdover stress from the pattern drafting.  My heart wanted socks so I did socks.

My April pair is finished and I couldn't be happier.  I am wearing them right now and they are perfect.   

I was going to cast on another pair with the yarn I wound last week but I ended up pulling out one of the other pairs of socks on my needles.

I bought Operation Sock Drawer a few years ago.  It's a great book for every sock knitter.  

In a blast of new book-itis, I cast on a couple pairs from it and then never got back to working on them.  

This is the A Drawer Full pattern from it.  I am using a patterned sock yarn from Meilienweit for the colours and a plain grey Trekking yarn from Lana Grossa.  As you can see, it is a sock of socks, which makes me happy.

I picked these up because I taught myself to knit colourwork with the yarns held in one hand and it felt like a good time to practise the technique making a thing where the results are something no one ever looks at closely.  My hope is that by the time this pair of socks are done, I will be ready to put it into practise working on this vest

and on a whole host of other stranded things.  I have some beautiful things planned. Plus my blanket of blue yarn from my grandkids.

A math headache

The whole day yesterday was spent in the sewing room.  NOT SEWING.

But I was very engaged with the process of sewing.  I was drafting a skirt pattern.  From scratch.  A skirt can be made from a basic rectangle of fabric gathered and at its most simple, tied front and back at your waist with ties.  This was how most skirts for ordinary people were sewn for centuries.  Today elastic is a great closure solution for a skirt.  A casing at the waist makes it simple,  

The trouble with this sort of skirt is that there is a lot of fabric at the waist.  Whatever the bottom of your skirt is in width is bunched up, gathered or pleated at your waist.  It works but it is not optimal if your fabric is anything but the lightest.  Even a plain poplin or gingham is almost too thick for really good results.  I wanted something a bit different without quite so much weight.

Since I started knitting, I have become very daring about making comfortably fitting garments. I have no fear about trying to make a pattern for myself that fits how I want it to fit.  I have been watching some of the very talented people on youtube and I found something I could work with, a video on the math of skirt making by the very talented and wise Mariah Pattie. Yesterday was all about putting that math into practise.   

Because math, by the end of the day, I had three basic skirt patterns, and a worn out brain.  I couldn't put two thoughts together, so I retreated to my old standby, socks.

I knew I was getting close to the cuff.    

The fourth blue stripe was supposed to be the start of the ribbing.  Or not.  I just knit and knit.

I put it down and went to bed.  

Today the sun is shining bright and the air is fresh and crisp and everything is new.  I will sort out the socks today and am going to try out skirt pattern one with an old sheet to see if my pattern works. I am looking forward to the challenge.  

Still Dreaming

Sock knitting is progressing and I am approaching readiness to sew.  I am still in the thinking stage, which is nice because some other stuff is moving past the thinking stage into the how to do a thing stage.  

I have been planning of working on my miniature house again.  Not the house precisely.  The garden. I have been dreaming and thinking about a miniature garden since forever.  I have the books to prove it.  

Lots of good ideas long before I learned to knit.  The Embroidered Garden by Owen Davies.    Once I started knitting, there was lots of support.  

Hannelore Wernhard's The Knitted Farmyard and Jan Messent's Knitted Farmyard and lastly

the Mini Knitted Farmyard by Sachiyo Ishi

My mini house is in a cabinet  and it has a fairly thick base.  It is up on a table so I can work on it easily and for a long time, the table was going to be all the space I could use for a garden.  Recently, with all the moving and sorting I have been doing, I managed to find a bit more room.    

Since then I have been planning and figuring out how to get what I wanted out of the space I have and my head is full of plans.  I have been preparing by watching all sorts of youtube videos about all sorts of weird model making techniques.  So much to learn.  

Today is not the day to do though.  Today is the day to get my sewing in order.  The room is ready.  The repair pile is all done.  And it is time to put pattern and fabric together.  

Staying Strong

Its time to do some sewing again.  I have been thinking abut what my wardrobe needs and what I want to wear and am comfortable wearing for a good long while, all winter really, and it is time to get to it.  There has been a long absence of sewing here and it really is time for some.

To that end, I have been looking at my sewing fabric stash. I know pretty well what I have on hand, and most of it is very useable and desirable.  A few of the things are not quite what I would buy again though my luck buying online has been really really good.  

Still, just like knitting and yarn, even though I have some on hand, I like to play fabric store shopping.  I enjoy seeing what is out there for me to play with.  Yesterday was hard.  There is a good sale on fabrics right now at my favourite online vendor and the hard part is not buying any.  There are so many interesting things that would be lovely to wear and make.  It gets my imagination going and I am free to dream about how I would use all those lovely things.  

Just like shopping in store though, you can't take everything home, and even if you could, would you want it? When and where would I wear it all?  And when would I make it all?  I have enough trouble using all my yarn, so leaving fabric at the fabric store takes practise but I am getting better at it.  

I fill my cart online and then leave it for  the rest of the day while I think about it.  I dig in my fabric and look and dream with what I can touch and feel and I feel good.  Usually, I can leave the cart be and I empty it in the morning.

The sale (one of many) goes on for another day or two and till then I am just going to be strong and work with what I have.  But when it is mostly used, then oh then...

Linger and I are getting along quite nicely, though we did not get as far along as we hoped.  Half Fisherman's rib takes a good long time to look like progress. After a good day with heavy fabric, it seemed wise to take it easier.

I picked up socks because I am a bit behind on my loose target of a pair a month.  I wanted to catch up so that I will get a pair done this month.  It was a race weekend so I wanted something easy too.

It was time for a heel flap.  I am knitting the heel flap double stranded and that is part of the trouble with heel flaps.  It is a tightly knit fabric knit with a small needle and my heart wanted something easy and in the round.  I know I have the Musselburgh hat but I did not feel a hat in me right then.  I persevered and before you know it...

Heel!

After that success, I pulled out something I had been thinking about a lot.  It was time to decide exactly how I want the sleeves and where I want the shaping done.

I think I have it.  The markers are placed but it will take a few more rows till I have them just how I want it.  That is what I will focus on today.  

I will knit socks too, just ten rows a day.  Now that the heel is done, it becomes that thing that makes socks so much fun.  It is going to be a good day.

Moving Right Along

I knit a bit more on the body of the Linger sweater to get to the end of the grey skein but then it was time to switch over to sleeves. I will work those up and then go back to the body till the sweater is long enough.

The interesting part of sleeves is going to be the mental adjustment that I have to make between knitting the Half Fisherman's Rib fat versus knitting it in the round.  It is mentally easy flat.  There is a nice rest row and no trouble remembering just where you are.  In the round, it gets trickier.  The rest row remains but you are always on the right side and it is going to take much more work to be sure if it is a rest row or a pattern stitch row.

Still, it ought to go fast.  The rows add up fast.  Inches happen even when it seems like you have hardly knit at all.  

With a bit of luck, there will be at least one sleeve done before Monday and with a bit of effort, two.   

Cozy

I was cold yesterday.  I had on a light sweater and an Icelandic yarn shawl and I could have gone and put on another warmer sweater but chilly was just the impetus I needed to finish the rest of the details on Utkiek.  It was waiting for buttons and ends woven in making an otherwise finished sweater unwearable.  Silly as working on warm sweater might seem as a method of feeling warm, it worked.  

I was finishing up weaving in ends when I made a snap decision about the sleeves.  The last green section made them longer than I liked and rather than weaving in ends, I pulled back the whole of that last green part of the cuff.

I reknit a plain ribbed cuff on a much smaller needle.

The cuff fit the way an open sort of cuff usually does, but I  needed to shorten things a couple inches and I want it to fit close so that when the sweater is washed and in regular wear, the sleeves and cuffs will stay out of the way, even though they are full length. I rarely use a smaller needle. I don't worry about it because my usual is a three quarter length sleeve.   

And perfect.  I am really pleased with it.  That done, I slipped the sweater on.  

It was like a warm hug. And all encompassing hug.  A sigh of warm and cozy.  It put away the chill on my back and I was surrounded by warmth. 

I already love this sweater, and I only wore it for a small part of the day.  I am wearing it again today.  That wind may be les this morning but there still is a good early spring cold in the air.  And the sweater?  Still a warm kind of hug.

Linger not Lingering.

Socks done for the day.  It feels good to know that I am on track for my very generalized target.  My next up socks will not be simple plain socks, but they are not going to be my proposed Monkey socks either.  I am thinking of doing a pair of Broken Seed Stitch Socks .  I could use another pair.

As much as I am feeling spring, the weather sounds like winter. The wind howled like it wanted to be a blizzard, though it was not.  I picked up the Linger sweater yesterday.  Knitting it made me feel warmer.

Good news!  It is starting to feel like it is moving along briskly. It feels like a sweater.

It is a very simple knit and I am having a lot of fun with it even though the yarn combo I am using makes it heavy in my hands.  I have to knit only a few rows a day to take care of my hands but even so it is coming along.  

I am getting about four inches for each of the Galway Heather skeins.  

I should easily be able to get to the length I wanted.  

I am debating about knitting the sleeves at the end of this Galway skein because of this.

I have only four of the grey left and I have no idea how much each sleeve will use.  Half Fisherman's Rib, like its compatriot, brioche and patentsteek, takes more yarn than a plain rib.  I am allotting one full skein for each sleeve and I do hope that is enough.

I have tons of the blue teal.  I think I had twenty four balls of it and I have fifteen remaining.  Any ribbing I do, can easily be in the teal held double. No worry about running out of it.

The wind is howling again today and there was a skiff of snow over night.  I want to knit on Linger again but I am not sure my hands can take much.  Not sure I feel like the Noro and Silky Wool creation I am working on so I may knit on another little something today.  I do have choices.  Lots of choices in the WIPs bin.  I might surprise myself.

Getting There

I have made thee pairs of socks in 2024.  That equals the number of pairs that I completed last year. So far, it hasn't taken much of an effort to get socks going or to finish them.  I have managed to complete each pair without a lot of effort and it has been the usual sort of fun that socks are to me.

But lately, socks have not been on my radar at all.  It isn't that I am not interested in socks.  Not at all.  I remain a deeply devoted sock knitter and wearer.  It is just that there are so many other ideas and knits that are in my head it is hard to find the sock corner.

I am going to go back to the basics and knit seven and three each day till I get Aprils sock done 

and get Mays sock under way.

Just ten rows a day.  That will do it.  And then maybe some Monkey Socks.  

Mash up

 I sat down to start working on a something the other day.  I wanted to work on Linger, but did not have the feels for it.  I was feeling summery and light.  It is spring and I want to knit spring too.

I started working on the top that I made the Noro panels for.  I picked up and worked a few rows, and then...

Do you see it.  A twist.  Now this is not a circle.  It is a straight side of both panels, but it was twisted and there were yarn ends everywhere.  I wasn't feeling very positive.  I picked up my cup of tea which had been steeping for ten minutes.

And saw this.

I had forgotten to put the water in the cup.  I put the knitting down for the rest of the day.  I did not even knit on a sock because if things are going weird, it was time to walk away.

I putzed around but picked up the top Saturday morning. I untwisted the panels and set to work.  While I had put myself in the corner, I did figure out how to use my odd dyelot without really being able to see it.  

I knit four garter ridges of the teal and then knit one with the lighter dye lot.  Then I decided to do a row of the alternate Noro yarn I have and another ridge of the lighter dye lot before going back to a section of the darker teal.

I have two balls of the darker teal dyelot for each side of the top and one of the lighter.  That leaves me with one ball of the lighter dyelot for the neckband and any other finishing. By adding that Noro in, I should have lots to make a nice top.  Because the top is a winging it sort of thing, I do worry a bit as I work.  I have limited amounts of yarn and that always is a problem in my head.  

Because I have just had a good stash dive and because I have all my lovely things fresh in my head, I know that I have two other teal colour family yarns that could be used to finish this top and I have some purple that would work well too, depending how I do the sides.  There are also other colours of Noro that could be used.  If it is a colour mash top, then mashing as needed is good, right?

I am setting aside the worry about using yarns and running out of them and am just going to play.  Its garter stitch and that makes everything all right.

Nothing Much

I did sweet nothing yesterday.  I looked at the yarns.  I touched the yarns.  I wound yarns.  Beyond this, not a lot.  

The winding was sort of fun. I had one sock yarn to wind and it was time to wind the Midknit Cravings Comfort Sport Dk for a something.  It may yet be an Anyday Sweatshirt.   Winding is always fun but I kept wanting to see the Comfort Sport London Fog set beside the Tosh Dk.  

Interesting, right? Okay, maybe my fascination with both is mine alone, but it's cool.  

The sock yarn is something I picked up a few years ago on my epic adventure.  I do not remember where I found it.  I have never quite been sure about it.  It is a good sturdy tightly spun sock yarn, so that's what it will be.

 

And that was it for the day.  But there was lots of dreaming and thinking.  I just let it happen and you know what?  The usual post project slump is gone.  I am thinking I am going to focus on the Linger Cardigan again, so it is ready for cool rainy spring days and chilly summer mornings.

The Good, The Bad and the Problems

 Utkiek is finished.  

And I am thrilled and not so thrilled.  

I love it but I am a bit worried.  The back neck is wide. I may have started with too many stitches cast on so the back yoke seems too big.  The sleeves are a bit long too, but that is an easy fix.  Everything else is really great and I quite pleased.

Right now I am pondering redoing the cast off.  That would probably help to tighten up the back neck.  I could do a line of slip stitch  or single crochet across the cast on stitches just where the pickup row for the collar and button band is, to give the edge a bit more oomph.  Either way, I won't really know what will be best till after I give it a good blocking. I think that is particularly important for Lett Lopi.  This yarn loves to relax after a good water bath.

If you are interested in making a sweater like Utkiek, with its many texture stitches, do consider making a proper swatch with all the different stitches in it so you can see just how the gauges will work together.  The pattern suggests that you switch needles sizes as needed to ensure your chosen stitch designs end up being the same gauge.  I think that is part of the problem at the back of my neckline and you can see it in the bit of a wave at the seed stitch bottom.  Did I swatch them all?  Heck no and I regret it.  Enough to rip back?  Not at all.

I tried to be responsible this morning and picked up a sweater I have been avoiding.

This is round three, I think, for this yarn and I am just not enjoying it.  Because I am using four (or 5) different skeins of hand dyed yarns, I have been trying to avoid pooling by switching skeins every two rows, and I hate it.  I hate it so much that it is hard to pick it up to work on it.  I would much rather be knitting the Noro top 

or the pretty yellow sweater 

or the Anyday Sweatshirt in the Madelinetosh Tosh DK.  Or in the gorgeous London Fog colourway from Midknit Cravings. (That would be a bold move for me considering yarn quantities.) Or almost anything else in my stash.

I knit a few rows on the top this morning and made a decision.  I am not enjoying it so it is going to get ripped out.  And the yarn will be put away for a while. I made myself promise to do this.  This is a hard yarn to put back because I love the colours and I love the way it feels.  Plus it would be such a pretty top. I want it but life is too short to have a project and a yarn make me anxious.

The next time I use this yarn, it is going to be for a top where I do not care if it pools, where I will adopt the simple pleasure of letting it happen as it is.  I like that idea.

I am going to read the Anyday Sweatshirt pattern today and do a good gauge swatch.  I might think about starting it but no pressure.  I might work on socks.  I have some yarn from the stash to wind too. Plenty to keep me going till I get over this sweater hangover**.

**Sweater hangover  That hollow feeling you get after you completed a big project and know you can't knit on it any more.

Closer

Casting off the body.

It ended up taking all day between excursions to the yarn inspiration cabinet for other yarns to play with but it is done.  All that remains is to do a button band  

and weaving in ends and putting on buttons and so on, but it is done and I love it. Picking up for the button band has already begun.  

Shopping the Stash

One of the other things I did on the weekend, besides starting a new hat, was to wind up some yarn for the next sweater project.

My next sweater project is an Anyday Sweatshirt by Ysolda Teague.  I really want to see how she is shaping the top of the sleeves for a better fit.  I am intrigued by the shoulders too.  It looks like a modified saddle and I want to see if they sit and stay sitting properly on me.  

I had meant to use my newest yarn from Midknit Cravings,  my marvelous London Fog.

That is exactly the right sort of yarn for a casual sweatshirt style garment.  When I ordered it, I ordered six skeins.  It is probably enough, but in my heart of hearts, I always fear that there isn't enough and I really want this sweater without compromises to conserve yarn. With a new pattern, I just need more assurance.  When I was digging in my yarns, I was keeping the sweatshirt in mind.   Did I have an alternate yarn that I had enough of?  Time to shop the stash.  

I came across some Madeletintosh Tosh Dk that I purchased a long time ago to make a sweater for Amy.  I knew instantly that it was not going to be the right colour for her.  There wasn't enough purple or garnet in it and there was a yellow casted green and it...well was just odd in a way that is hard to describe. 

I bought a different colour for her and this yarn became stash. It was a yarn without a plan.  That is rare in my stash. Even though my stash is huge, it all had some sort of plan when I  purchased it.  This yarn no longer had a plan.

It will make a perfect Anyday Sweatshirt.  It has that same casual vibe as I get from the Midknit Cravings yarn and I have seven skeins.

Let me give you a closer look.

As I wound it, I fell in love with it. The Midknit Cravings London Fog is a cooler end of the grey/greige scale and this the warmer end of greys.  That unusual yellow green cast is perfect.

Meanwhile back at the knitting, work continues on the Utkiek.  If I get another good inch today, I can call the body done.  All that will remain is the button band.  I do have plenty of the green Lett Lopi left and could add a few more inches, but I don't think I will need it.  To be sure of that, I will try it on before I cast off that last row.

Wandering

I did cast on for a Musselburgh hat. The yarn was perilously close to jumping out of the stash bin during the big dig, so it obviously needed to be knit.

It is Merino 2/6 from Fleece Artist and is just really lovely in every way.  Lovely though it is, the skein is only 350 m and the pattern says I will need just a bit more at my gauge.  I am thinking of digging up some yarn to add some stripes because I really don't want a hat that is too short to fold up the brim properly.  That would irritate me to no end.

I didn't do a lot of knitting on Utiiek.  I have a problem and instead of dealing with it, I was hiding from it.

The addition of those three found skeins of green Lett Lopi has filled the project bag.  

I have been using these zipper top totes as sweater storage bags. They are not so pretty as some of the wonderful bags you can find online but they were cheap and sturdy and they were much faster to get than making bags from all my sewing fabric leftovers.  They work. 

They do not however hold a mostly complete sweater plus all the bits of wool that remain including those three found skeins. Yes.  I really was avoiding this sweater because of an overflowing bag.  Makes no sense to me either but there it is.   

I only realized what I was doing this morning. I put all the extra yarn in the plastic bag that held those three skeins in the stash.    

I think I was hung up on what I was going to do with the yarn leftovers.  There is no room in the leftovers bin and I really don't need more yarn for mitts and hats.  I think I was worried if there would be enough left for a simple easy vest. It seems I wanted a vest much more than I realized I did.  I can say confidently now that there is plenty of yarn for a vest.  Or an endless bevy of hats and mitts.  It makes no sense but there it is.  It is one of those silly reasons that projects end up in a virtual corner till I sort out what is going on.     

Enough wandering through my brain's empty spaces.  Suffice it to say, I knit.  And today I also laundry, which is not nearly as fun as knitting.   Utkiek and I are going to be best friends today. 

Conundrums

I looked up and it was 9 a.m.  Then I looked up and it was 10:30 a.m.  What the heck happened?  

I was knitting.  That is what happened. 

I pulled out Utkiek this morning and am as happy as a piggy in a puddle working on it.  The morning has flown by.

I have also been playing with yarn.  I finished the center panels for the Noro top.  

It is 25 inches long, when I was hoping for 24, and I have been debating taking out some of the stripes at the bottom.  It deserves some thinking about but I am otherwise very pleased with the way it looks. I have laid out the two panels so that you can see how it will go.  I want a high back neckline and a front neckline low enough for wearing alone but also good for wearing with a shirt or dress under it.  

I have been playing with my teal Silky Wool.  I have two dye lots, 

and they are quite different.  The debate about how I will make these dyelots work together is  under way.

I do have these other two blue Silky Wools, one skein of each, shown here with the two dye lots

so there may be some striping of a garter ridge.  Or not.  I also have a lovely skein of Noro Taiyo,

which coordinates well with the teal.  It is quite different than the Silk Garden colours but they will be used so differently that I think it will work to add it into the mix.

The plan is to pick up along the side of the back, add stitches for over the shoulder and then pick up along the side of the front panel. I am going to shape it by using the same short row method that Elysium uses.  I made an Elysium years ago and it was a great way to add the kind of shaping I needed. I could go with the basic square like the most of this style of tops do, but I want less bulk at my underarms and I want a longer back hem with no side split.  I think what I want will work better with a bit of shaping.    

Until I decide about yarn choices to extend my skeins of Silky Wool, I am going to keep knitting on Utkiek.  After finding the three extra skeins of green in the stash, I know I have lots to make it whatever length I want.  I only need to reserve two skeins to make a button band, though I am thinking about using an i-cord to finish off at the front. I don't seem to need the width where I want this to have buttoned.     

I love thinking about these details to put something together.  These little choices are so much fun.  Sometimes they work very well and sometimes they are complete failures and the thrill of it all is not knowing which you will get.  The joy is in the exploring.

Of course I am also planning to cast on for a Musselburgh because all that plain stockinette is a must, consolation knitting if the going gets rough.  

The Big Dig holdover.

Digging in my yarn stash is always fun.  Occasionally it is illuminating and I learn something I did not know about it.

I have one full tub of leftovers and bits and ends.  (This is different from the bin of things that are left from projects but where there is enough remaining for hats or mitts or other small projects. A full bin of that too.)  I have combined the boxes of sock yarn bits with the bits of all sorts of yarns to make that big bin happen.

  

And there is room for more before I need to decide what to do with it.

My 2 boxes full of lace remains at two full boxes. Of all my yarns, that is the stuff that I could not put down and walk out of a store without. I love knitting lace patterns.  It is like knitting music but the amount laceweight yarn I have far outstrips my ability to want lacy things.  Maybe.  I simply adore it all.  

Some is about colour.

This is just a tiny, tiny sample of the many colours or laceweight yarns I have.  

  Some is about feel.

Silks and seasilk in all their glory.  There is also a good part of linen, wool and alpaca lace in the stash.  If I need to feel better about life, I just need to go in and touch the silks.  The blue and shiny grey is from Knit Picks, their Luminance Lace.  It is simply sublime.

Some are treasured gifts from another time.

 All my stash is in a way.  I had the freedom to buy the things that I was interested in, that excited me, that still excite me. That was the best gift of all.

There are so many fine things in my stash.  Even my sock yarns are a complete joy.  And that is where I am going to leave off today.  I want to pull out just a few yarns for upcoming socks.  What to pick?

Plenty to pick from!

Thinking of my wonderful stash kept my head busy all day hours after actually playing in it and more hours will be devoted to planning what to make with it.  Refreshed.  Energised.  Excited.  It's all held over in my brain.   

The rest of my day is going to be busy with appointments and other chores so only sock knitting today most likely, but that is a wonderful thing.  My headphones are charged, the knitting is planned and I am good to go.