Boxes of Joy

It arrived!  The yarn I ordered using the gift from my lovely niece.  It is lovely.  Joyful.  Delightful.  A treat!  

  

I ordered the neon colours that Jo's Yarn Garden had in Cascade Anthem, a very nice acrylic, and one colour from Cascade's Pacific line in the neon orange.  All this will be paired with more of the Anthem in a deep Navy blue.  It's going to be a glorious blanket.  

The blanket is not a challenging one at all.  It's the Sweet Shop Blanket from Laura Penrose.  I saw it on several vlogs, most notably, the Knits from Lincolnshire vlog on youtube.  She just had so much fun knitting it.  You could see her joy with this project just shining out from her when she talked about it.   It's one of those fun, always something new projects that are just great knits.

The bright neons come from watching Jana at Finnish Knitting Stories.  She often has these wonderfully bright cheerful projects and in the dark of winter, I crave the brights.  Not necessarily  neon, but just colours.  Her soft colour choices for with the brights are lovely, but I love strong contrasts,  hence the navy.

And so my stash grows.  The whole stash brings me joy.  I feel like it is time to do a dive but I already did that since the New Year began so no dive for me.  There is knitting.  With the trouble I've been having feeling connected to a project, I was surprised to find myself here.

I'm almost at the length of the front cast off.  Since I want to have the back be a couple inches longer than the front I think I have only 4 or 5 inches to go.  Then it is only sleeves and those are always fast, right?  Right?  

Off I go.  It's sock day today.  Maybe.  The hands might stray to the Blue.  It's calling too.

I watched a bit of news today.  I don't do that much.  It usually makes me angry.    Today though, I am just filled with sorrow.  And the first question I ask myself is how did we fail this family?  How many times did we fail this young person? How much more could we have done to help the young person who did such a terrible thing.  Because of how we as a society failed that young person, so many more are lost. 

We, as a society failed and now so many innocents will bear the cost of that failure.  

Cool

I strayed from the plan.  

And it was wonderful.  

I cast on for the Hiraeth sweater by Hanna/Herbgarden Knitwear.  It's not fancy colourwork and elaborate patterns.  It's simpler looking but no less challenging and just as much fun.  

It's exactly what I needed.  The colour is the perfect mid winter knit.  This time I hope it ends in a full sweater.  I want to wear this brilliant colour this year.  

It's also the first day of testing for the F1 2026 season and I am pumped.  

I gotta go now.  Make coffee.  Watch cool stuff.  Knit cool stuff.  Cool.

Winter Doldrums

I meant to knit on the blue sweater yesterday.  Being so close to finishing the body, you would think that I'd be committed to working on it.  But no.  Not me.   I really don't feel like working on it.  I am giving myself permission to go walkabout and explore something different.  Not too different but out of my routine of late.  

I am going to work on my London Fog sweater today.  If that doesn't get me past this winter doldrums, I may have to bring out the big guns and cast on something new.  

I mentioned last week that I got a gift from one of my nieces.  I debated for many days about what to treat myself with.  My stash does not contain much acrylic yarn.  I have a strong blanket feeling this year.  There are some many neat blanket patterns out there and I feel the need.  I prefer to knit blankets in acrylic, so that's what I decided on.  But not just ordinary acrylic.  I bought a huge pile of neon acrylic with a strong navy contrast.  I am so excited even if, in one fell swoop, I added a half a giant tub of yarn to my stash.  Oh well.  It should arrive next week.  

Good times.

Sometimes when your heart wants to start something new, but your head says wait, it can be hard to settle.  I tried switching projects.  I tried tidying the WIPs bin.  I tried searching through some beautiful yarn and project photos for inspiration.  Don't try this last one if you are looking to get back to focusing on what you have in hand.  

I struggled to settle.  Friday afternoon ought to have been sock time.  I did a few rows.  

Six to be precise.

I tried the blue sweater.

A few rows happened.  4 to be precise.

That was it for Friday and Saturday.  

Sunday I settled a bit and knit on my London Fog sweater.  

That went much better.  I finally found the focus I was looking for and I spent a good part of the day just knitting.

I have made a wee bit of a decision too.  This gorgeous yarn was purchased to be a sweater where the yarn did the talking.  I am going to add one small detail.  I am going to add a double row of garter stitch every 10 or 12 rows.  I'm not sure yet what the scale ought to be.  10 is what my inspiration (the Willard sweater) uses.  12 may be more appropriate for this yarn weight.  The ridges are not meant to show off anything but to highlight, to bring attention to the yarn with the smallest bit of texture.  Ridges also help make the knitting feel faster.  It's like stripes.  There is always something to look forward to.  It will help make a simple sweater in gorgeous yarn be a stand out in my wardrobe. 

As long as it's warm.  That is always my principal goal.  

   

Sticking with the plans

It was an odd sort of day.  I found myself wanting to wind more yarn.  But no.  This is not the time to do that.  I made myself go to do some knitting.  And I did.

A Hem.  The front is complete and I am so happy with it.  It looks exactly how I saw it in my head.  On to the back.  

The split hem is not as long as my original plan.  When I was talking about Vests the other day, I was wearing my purple vest.  I love the way the split is on it but I realized the front and back were a little longer than I needed this sweater to be.  I was going to make this sweaters split front 7 inches long but ended up with about 5 and a half inches.  I did a try on and it ends right where I wanted.  The original intent was to go to 9 inches from the split on the back but I am going to shorten it a bit as well.  

And then sleeves and this sweater will be done and I can cast on one of my many new planned things.  It's going to be a bit of a challenge to keep my focus on what I have on the needles, but I will have to do it.  It is also going to be a real challenge to keep my focus on my planned next up Kauni sweater or my Staffin planned sweater rather than spending my days dreaming about other future sweaters.  Like Flea.  

Grandeur

I love winding yarn.

Look at those layers.  This is Briggs and Little Sport in Sheep's Grey.  I spent way too long simply looking at the way the layers of yarn built up in the cake and the broad range of colours within it.  

It is almost as if you can see past those individual strands down into the heart of the cake.  I want to look deep into the caverns behind and within the strands.  I could get lost in there.  Lost in the looking.  Sigh.  This is grandeur on a small scale.  

It's a Vest sort of day.

It's a vest sort of day.  

It isn't cold enough that I need to snuggle down in my sweater, drink hot cocoa and layer myself in blankets but cold enough that I want to wear a heavier wooly fabric on my back.  My arms are okay free of warm wooly layers.  I am of course wearing a long sleeve turtlenecks as an underlayer.  It's a cotton bamboo fabric so it is only marginally warm but it does the job.  

I have a few vests now and enjoy wearing them but it is one  thing I could use more of in my wardrobe.  My favourite is my Linger vest, where it became a vest only because my hands were very done with the weight of the yarns.  It is so wonderfully warm though and I adore the fisherman's rib.  It take a long time to knit but it's a great fabric.  

The other vest getting heavy wear is the rust vest which I knit so I could understand the European shoulder construction.  I like the shape of it on me.  The back neck stays high on my back neck and fits comfortably across my back.  I also needed to knit it so I could understand my problems with the Ysolda Teague's Anyday Sweatshirt and what I needed to do to make it fit my body the way I wanted it to fit.  

The last heavy weight vest getting lots of wear is my purple vest made from Briggs and Little Regal that I picked up at the mill store in New Brunswick on my Epic Adventure a few years ago.  I wear this self drafted vest a lot.  I love the texture of its mistake rib gradient colours.  Evertime I wear it I think about knitting this stitch on another garment.  The other vests are usually warmer weather wear.  

I would like a vest with a nice deep shawl collar.  What I want will be a bit like the Redhook vest from the cover of Jared Flood's book from the long gone Classic Elite days.  Simple shape, deep shawl collar.  I am also thinking a lot about making a vest with a deep turtleneck like the Vestover or Vilda.  But what yarn to use?  I have tons of yarn in my stash but until I can see a yarn or yarn combination as a vest, it just stays quiet...waiting...lurking in the corners of my mind.  

I knit only a little yesterday but the day was all about yarn.  I wound up a lot the hanks that were pulled from the last stash dive.  Everything is ready for knitting the sweaters I want from each.  I also turned the balls from the spring like yellow Arcane Fibre Works yarn from a frogged project into cakes so I don't need to deal with rolling yarn balls.  

I have two more sweater quantities to wind today.  Along with knitting that will be enough.  Lots of interesting things to do and to think about today.   

Nice Mail

I had good mail yesterday.  

First up, one of my lovely nieces sent me a Christmas gift.  Yes.  It took a month for a Christmas letter to clear the post office.   It's a gift certificate for one of my favourite yarn stores.  What a sweet woman and a lovely gift.

And the yarn I ordered last week was also in the mail.  And oh my goodness did I pick the colours right.  

The navy Cascade 220 is from my stash but the 5 colours are new.  These are going to be  Flea sweater for me.  This time I am going to watch my gauge more carefully and I am going to check closely as I knit that I am keeping that gauge.  It may not look glorious yet, but it will.

And the sock yarn.  

Again it may not feel like much, but it fills my soul with pleasure.  A green farmer sock is on the way for me.  I started on with existing yarns but the Kroy sock yarn was too heavy for some old but very nice Confetti sock yarn.  They were distinctly different weights even though they were both fingering weights.  

They don't look that different here but they sure are when you work with them.  The Kroy would be a reasonable mate to the Fiesta.  

Now I have to figure out what I want to get with my gift certificate.  Right now I am leaning to something a little special.  Noro Kureyon?  Maybe some Cascade to make a gorgeous cabled something?  Hmmmm.

Interesting.

It was a lovely quiet weekend.  Lots of time to knit and lots of time to do tasks that have long been put off.  

I cleaned and tidied my sewing room yesterday and it was really nice to have that mostly done.  I.  Can.  See.  Floor!  And tabletop.  The tabletop is the most amazing part of it.  There were boxes of mini things from November piled there as well as spare blankets and pillows that had been washed after the holidays.  Plus all of the usual fabric I was working with when last I sewed.  It was a bit of a nightmare.  There were all sorts of things that didn't belong taking up floor space.  There still is a bit so work will continue this week.  That poor room has been neglected too long.  

Today's play is going to be going through all the miniature tools and putting them into the lovely little tool box I got at Christmas.  

It's the perfect size for mini tools and will be a real help keeping ordered.  Is time to pull out the things I need to get a start on the garden.  There are a few things I want to do for inside too.  Like real houses, there are always things to do. They are never really complete.

It was a good knitting weekend too.  

I did a good bit of knitting on socks.

 One sock completed in January.  And a start on a toe for February.  I must say though that this is the very last time I do this sort of toe.  It's just too fiddly for my shaking fingers.  I love garter stitch square toes for the fit and comfort and now for the ease in making it too.  

There was other knitting too.  The socks seemed to be enough of a change that I charged ahead and kept working on the Blue sweater.  

What you see is the front of a side split knitting up nicely.  

I might set this sweater aside this week.  I feel like something else today.  It might be socks.  It might be my Musselbourgh hat.  It might be something new.  Maybe.  It might be that I will  just wind yarn today.  There is lots of that to do from the yarns for projects that I really want to do.  

The more I think of it, the more that sounds like fun.  Playing with yarn but not adding to the pile of WIPs on the go.  Interesting.