Wibbly Wobbly yarn clubs

I have been working on finishing projects, with varying degrees of success.  The National Park project is nearly done.  It involves an old but rarely used chair that several felines decided was a scratching post.  I will post more when it is complete.

The bird sweater is taking forever.  I am only about 5 inches below the arms.  It is insane.  I measured it, knit for an hour, and measured again.  No freaking difference!  It drives me to working on little projects instead, like these Catchalls.  They cover little glass yogurt jars and are decorated with some buttons I picked up at a flea market in Paris.

I have managed to not start more socks.  The goal is no more than one pair per month.  It is an Olympics year, so I will be doing Tour de Sock.  The rule is suspended for that.

With most of the paths to fiber mischief blocked, it should not be surprising that I joined two yarn clubs.  I discovered Indie Untangled while hunting for national parks yarns.  It is doing the Where We Knit yarn club.  Designers and indie dyers are paired for each shipment.  Wobble Gobble is the dyer and the colorway is Frozen Magic.

The pattern was pretty but it was a cowl and I don’t do cowls.

The other club is (big surprise) the Doctor Who themed Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey club from The Dyeing Arts.  The colorway is The Doctor’s Wife.  There are tiny silver sparkles throughout the yarn.   It definitely wants to be used for something where it can catch the light.

First new yarn of the decade

I finished the last two pair of patchwork socks.  I am officially over my infatuation with the pattern.  I might do a simplified version of them next time I want to fool around with some of the self striping stash.

I have been mostly burned out on the Dolores kits.  The patterns have been cute but the yarn has frequently been not fun to work with.  I discovered that some of the patterns from discontinued kits are available from WEBS.  I have three of them in my Rav queue.  Don’t tell Dolores.  She really wants wear something besides her holiday sweater.

I managed to make it halfway through January before some new yarn successfully called to me.  The dyer is Yarn Baby and she lives in my old stomping grounds.  The Colorado flag made me a bit homesick.  I got over that fast by remembering the magic word Snow.  Do not like.  I bought it, though.

She had a mystery yarn sale, with odd skeins at a good price.  You could even indicate color likes or dislikes.  I was happy with my mystery skein called Sour.

Knittish New Year

I jumped right into 2020 with my Birdsong sweater.

As soon as the bird part was done, I got bored.  I zipped through a pair of Patchwork socks.  They look odd and are too thick to wear with any of my shoes.  They are also warm, fit well, and are lots of  fun to knit.  I am going to go cast on another pair.

That’s the front of both socks, by the way.  Not exactly obvious, is it?

Obsessions and whims

My latest projects and things I got myself for Christmas were all fairly whimsical.

I caught up on a couple of years of My Favorite Murder podcasts.  The result was a cross stitch picture of the podcast’s tag line.  It also included a purchase of several skeins of yarn from Colorful Eclectic’s Murderino collection.

I am watching a Doctor Who marathon.  The new season starts New Year’s Day after a ridiculously long wait.  I stitched up a TARDIS tissue box cover on plastic canvas.

I love a sock pattern called Patchwork Mix Socken.  The construction is unusual and the yarn used for the design results in a wild pattern.  I went a bit crazy  bought three balls of Opal Hundertwasser so I can make more.

I liked the Smoky Mountains National Park kit I got from Must Stash so much that I ordered the Denali one when it was offered just before Christmas.  

I got a gradient set from Miss Babs that was meant for a shawl pattern.  I have sworn off of shawls so it is a bit concerning that I can’t remember why I bought it.  It turns out that it is perfect for a hat I want to make.  More on my hat obsession later.  I need to get back to the hat:  128 stitches in an I-cord cast on.  Arrrrrgh.

A little bit every day...

...for 24 days.  I am doing two different advent KALs.

Doucet Winter socks uses little bits of leftovers and mini skeins.  The designer says that doucet is Middle English for sweet.

I started a second pattern when I found it on sale.  Walking into Winter is by Sivia Harding.  The KAL is being done by Must Stash.  They make the nicest self-striping yarns.  I am tempted into buying more all the time.  The yarn for the KAL is Hobbit Christmas which I like but I absolutely need to knit up some of what I have.  That’s why I chose Lykke, which might be Danish for happiness.  The pretty stripes do make me happy.

I am working on the second of three ghost sock patterns.  This one is Black Friday.  The KAL had some cool looking yarns from the Lucky Violet Color Co.  I managed to resist somehow and am using something from stash.

I have not been cured of giving in to yarn temptations, though.  I have been listening to podcasts lately.  I have been working my way through My Favorite Murder, a comedy true crime podcast.  I happened upon a yarn dyer who is doing a series of colorways based on some of the podcast’s catchphrases.  She is making a donation for each skein sold to an organization dedicated to reducing the backlog of untested rape kits.  Worthy charitable donation?  Connection to something fun?   It was a no brainer.  Santa is bringing me three skeins for Christmas.

Done, sort of

There are a bunch of completed but not blocked projects piling up around here.

Vacillate is a shawl made from a Doctor Who themed kit.

She Blinded Me With Science is a salute to four female scientists.  That’s DNA’s double helix below the cuff and a jellyfish near the toe.

Jingle All the Way are elf feets with little silver bells.

Barnivore didn’t need blocking, yay!  That’s a cow and a pig in the barn’s mouth/door.

The second of three ghost sock patterns is coming up this weekend.  After that is an advent pair and a 12 days of Christmas pair.  Those will have me knitting a few rows daily for six weeks.  There should  be little chance of boredom or distraction this way.

Until those start, I am working on an embroidery kit.  I stashed it in a knitting basket and forgot about it for months.  

Knit along, along, along...

Just when the works in progress pile started to shrink, I started in on a bunch of KALs.  Five days in a row had new clues appear.

Halloween in Space had two clues, which were enough to finish the socks.  I liked the yarn from Yarn Over New York.  I wasn’t fond of the pattern.  It was well written, but the textured stitches weren’t my favorite.  I would have done it in narrower stripes instead of the clue at a time blocks.  The lesson for me is to not commit to a project using advent-style mystery boxes until all boxes are open.

Griffin is one of a series of three sock patterns from J.L. Fleckenstein.  This one is Halloween theme and uses yarn from ancient stash.

The Great British Baking shawl has begun.  It is fun to see all the color variations, even among the people using the same collection of yarns.

Woolly Wormhead is doing a hat-along.  The first clue is the brim, so there’s not much to see yet.  I suspect that my yarn choice was a bit busy for what is to come.  I wanted to work from stash and there’s usually nothing solid or semisolid there.