selfish knitting syndrome

sugarplum skyp sock for me

cowl for my sister

These two pictures say it all: I've been struck with selfish knitting syndrome at the most inconvenient time. With just one week before Christmas, instead of the gift knitting I should be doing, there have been too many happy hours spent working on all of my own projects. Today, reality set in and I anxiously cast on a cowl for my sister. A very long cowl using this pattern. I know she will love it but it is going to come down to the wire. Plus, I have a cute gift planned for my brother-in-law which isn't even on the needles yet. I have a feeling that I will be burning the midnight oil in order to get everything finished. Otherwise, there will be quite a few IOU's handed out on Christmas morning.

So, how is your gift knitting coming along? Is it winding down or are you just getting started? Hopefully you managed to plan better than I did. If not, these cute & free printable IOU's (plus gift tags and care instruction labels) can be found here. Happy elving and remember to have fun!

in the mood for ....

COLOR:

CLUE 1 & 2 OF THE DOODLER (WESTKNITS MKAL 2015)

COMFORT:

SKYP SOCKS

CABLES: 

REVERSIBLE BRAIDED COWL

CHRISTMAS:

MITTEN GARLAND ADVENT

  

.... in other words, all the things! I think that the more hectic life gets around here, the more new and shiny distractions are needed to cope with the stress. But it's all good and I am so grateful for the craziness of my work and home life. Also grateful for all of you who have hung in there with my sporadic blogging this year. So, what's new? Are holiday preparations and knitting/crafting/baking in full swing or are you in denial? I love this time of year and have been trying to fit in as much holiday merrymaking as possible with my two guys. The house is decorated, none of the shopping is done, and there will be cookies coming out of the oven soon. Seems like I'm right on schedule ;)

geometric cowichan-styled vest

It's done! And I love it! Huge sigh of relief....because there was a lot of trepidation going into this year's Fringe and Friends Knitalong. Although I love the pattern that Karen had chosen for many reasons, I am basically a lazy knitter at heart. The thought of tackling a stranded project knitted flat while trapping every other float and written in the Japanese style in one size using super bulky yarn....well, it kind of left me dizzy. But every once in a while, you need a project that has the potential to kick your butt, so to speak. Knitting on the edge and all that.

I went into this project with an unusual-for-me amount of planning and preparation. Here are some of the mods that I found made the process more enjoyable to knit and the finished vest more wearable:

* I down-sized the pattern to fit my petite frame by shooting for a gauge of 3 sts per inch versus the 2.5 sts per inch called for in the pattern. My row gauge was also smaller in order to make the length shorter (13.5 sts per 4 inches vs. 12.5 sts). Also knitted the bottom ribbing a little shorter.

* I knitted the body in one piece to the underarms, which kept the amount of yarn ends to a minimum and made for less fussy finishing.

* Although I knitted all of the armhole edgings, collar and front bands at the same time as the body as called for in the pattern, I took advantage of my Addi clicks & switched out the size 13 needles (used for knitting the body) for size 11 needles (used for the edgings, collar and bands) as I went along. This worked like a charm to neaten everything up.

* Believe it or not, the easiest and most enjoyable part of this project was learning how to trap floats on right & wrong sides using just my right hand. Pretty proud of this:

fun-proofing

The 2015 Fringe and Friends Knitalong is currently underway and the theme for this year is Cowichan-inspired knits. The chosen pattern is the Geometric Cowichan-styled Vest from the Japanese yarn and pattern company Pierrot. It looks to be a fun but daunting knit for many reasons, so a little pre-project planning was called for in order to make the process more enjoyable. Here's what I came up with so far:

=> Since the pattern is written in the Japanese-style, with the instructions mainly consisting of a page of schematics & several charts which outline the pattern stitch by stitch, a way to keep track of the charts is a must. Dusting off the magnetic chart-keeper that I had bought years ago and never used plus some highlighter tape.

=> The vest is knitted at a super-bulky gauge so I am using three strands of a worsted weight yarn held together. I decided to ball up the yarn ahead of time instead of pulling from three skeins while knitting. Boy, has this made a huge difference! Now the project is more portable and there are less skeins to manage at once (and less tangles).

=> Also trying my hand at catching floats every other stitch. This wouldn't be too much of a problem if the project was knitted in the round instead of flat. But since I am not very familiar with how to do this on the purl rows, I ended up making a cheat sheet of instructions after viewing these helpful series of videos by Andrea Rangel on Instagram. I had to adapt the instructions from two-handed stranded knitting to how I knit colorwork (both yarns carried in the right-hand).

Do you fun-proof your more complicated projects too? What kinds of things do you do? Oh, almost forgot the most important tip: take lots of tea/chocolate breaks :)

skyp socks

It was hard to stop myself from taking way too many pictures of these socks. Let me count all the reasons why they are making me so happy:

♡ They only took a little over a month to finish (and not three years!)
♡ The awesome yarn (knitpicks felici sport) was given to me by one of the sweet knitters from my knitting group.
♡ Colorful stripes. 'Nuff said.
♡ I love ribbed socks but they are dull as dishwater to knit. Luckily, I found this simple skyp sock pattern to be quite engaging and addictive. It says a lot about a sock pattern when the knitter wants to cast on for the second sock right after finishing the first.
♡ I couldn't help but secretly chuckle at all the odd looks I was getting from strangers whenever I happened to be knitting on these in public, especially when I started mumbling slip-knit-yarnover-pass!

♡ I was happy enough with how the first sock turned out except for two things: the cast-on was a little too tight and those darn gusset holes. After a bit of research on the internet, I was able to find easy fixes for both. On the second sock, I used the alternating long-tail/Old Norwegian cast-on that I learned from knitting the Hermaness Hat pattern. It is a nice looking and sturdy cast-on with more stretchiness than just a long-tail cast-on. As for those gusset holes, this little trick worked like a charm. Can you spot the one without the hole? Pretty nifty, huh?
♡ Lastly and most importantly, these socks will hopefully offer warmth & comfort to someone in need of both.

If you are interested in knitting a pair of socks or have some hand knitted socks in need of a home, please visit Tracey's blog post for more info on how you can help. And thank you for indulging me on my newbie sock love :)