2018 First Quarter

Crafting goals for 2018

  • Complete 15 projects in knitting or crochet
  • Complete 3 spinning projects
  • Publish a design

The year began much as it ended with crochet Imaginarium creatures flying off the hooks.

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After six of these creatures in a year, I’m done for now. There are still three small girls I could make these for, but I need a break.

The next project was inspired by a book I got for Christmas: Knit Mitts by Kate Atherley. We had some snow before Christmas and the daughter’s hands got extremely cold as all her mittens and gloves are shop-bought and made of synthetic fibres. Time for some proper wool mittens.

I’ve had to guess how much her hands will grow before next winter – they’d better last that long. We’ve already had a couple of incidents of misplaced mittens, but I’m being vigilant and they have so far been recovered safely.

Through an accident of timing, I realised that the mittens were actually eligible for a WIP medal in the Ravellenics. I had been trying to finish them beforehand, but over-ran by a day or so. This meant that my main Ravellenics project was started a little late.

I’ve had Catkin on my list of projects to make for ages. I’ve even had the yarn picked out for a couple of years and kept safely in a bag, but never got round to starting it. In terms of yarn, it’s basically 2 pairs of socks. It’s got a few cables, some slipped-stitch colourwork and some simple patterning in knit and purl. I thought this would be a suitably challenging project.

As it’s a shawl that starts with very few stitches and grows every row, measuring progress is a little bit deceptive. Towards the end of the Olympics, my diary was quite busy. There was only one thing for it: I needed a spreadsheet. I can tell you that there are 41270 stitches in a Catkin. In order to finish it within the deadline, I had a daily target of just over 2500 stitches. It was so satisfying to get to the end of the day and know exactly how much progress I had made and how far ahead I was.

I still don’t have good pictures, but here it is before and during blocking.

Thanks to the forbearance of some work colleagues who were happy for me to knit through a whole day meeting, I was finished with a couple of days to spare, winning a medal for Shawl Skating and laurels for Stash, Colourwork and Cables.  The pattern includes buttonholes. I didn’t put the buttons on initially and quite liked wearing it wrapped several times around my neck. Once the buttons were added, it became a very useful layer to wear under a coat, particularly while cycling.

WIP round-up

  • I’ve joined Ysolda’s 2018 shawl club, so I have the first shawl for that on the needles.
  • I also got a one-off shawl kit from The Knitting Goddess, because the design was inspired by the daffodils on the hill in the village I live in. This is my main focus at the moment as I’m hoping to put it in an exhibition in a couple of weeks.
  • Since the start of the year, the Fringe and Friends Log-a-long has been appearing all over my social media feeds. I’ve got a design for a sock half worked-out, made of three log-cabin squares, which are then grafted together. So far, I’ve only made one of the squares.
  • Last autumn’s Toph hat used less than half the yarn, so I have another on the needles for one of my nieces.
  • Did I ever mention the three skeins of laceweight cashmere yarn I got in a sale from The Knitting Goddess ages ago? They were used to begin a Color Affection, but frogged due to the muddiness of the colours together. I think it will work with the colour in larger blocks, so I’ve started a Brightstairs. It’s going very slowly.
  • Two pairs of socks: one from Tour de Sock last year, the other one using up some Socks that Rock Mediumweight and a Cat Bordhi pattern. Both pairs are more than half done and just need to cycle to the top of a bag every so often in order to be completed.
  • The usual old-faithful WIPS: 2011 KAL blanket and the Plankton crochet kit.
  • I also have half a sheep in carded fibre stashed around my working space. Struggling to spin the batt I started with – not sure I scoured it enough to get the grease out.

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