2019: The Final Quarter

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I’m in about the same #2019MakeNine place as I was when I last posted, except I finished my Courage Shawl. The Kelly Anorak is still waiting for me, I still haven’t brought myself to make an FBA for the Farrow Dress, I haven’t even thought about the Lou Box Dress, and I still have no further ideas for which blazer/jacket I want to make, although I have decided that I want it to be with two-sided fabric. But all that non-progress on my official Make Nine doesn’t mean I didn’t make anything in the last few months!

So, what else did I make from September — December?

Other things that happened this quarter: I got a new job, I started teaching an online class, and I took my final online class for the post-Master’s Knowledge Management certificate I’ve been working on — so it’s safe to say this was a really busy semester for me, and my making-plans went a little sideways.

I also started having trouble with my wrist, so even though I started a Seven Wonders sweater in the most amazing Farmer’s Daughter Fibers tweed that I’m super pumped about, I had to put it aside for a while because it was too much stress on my wrist. I’m still not entirely sure I can pick it back up again regularly, but I think if I take it slow I’ll be okay. So, instead of knitting the last three or so months, I’ve been sewing more and starting another new hobby — cross stitch.

A circular embroidery hoop with a cross-stitch poinsettia pattern.

Junebug and Darlin makes amazing cross stitch kits, and I picked up three of them when she was up at Urban Craft Uprising in December. This poinsettia wreath was a perfect starter and an equally perfect gift for my mom, who loves poinsettias. I’m already working on my second — Be Bold.

A white woman wearing a very cozy quilted jacket.

This fabric is absolutely amazing, and even though it frayed like anything it was really fun to work with and I love how cozy my third Wiksten Haori is. This time I made the mid-length, and I lined it with a nice toffee colored tencel. I even have a bit left over that I think I can make a top out of!

A white woman wears a spruce-colored skirt with side pockets and a brown hand-knitted sweater.

This is the only picture of my Gypsum Skirt — I’ve been trying to find ‘good’ places to take outfit photos at work, and this spot usually has a reasonable amount of natural light, though you can see I still have some work to do on angles. I pushed this up my to-make list when I found this amazing spruce-colored silk noil. I’ve been layering it with leggings and sweaters (especially my hand-knit sweaters), and it’s been perfect for our Seattle winter so far. Plus, it has extra large pockets for yarn and snacks.

I’ve been thinking about my plans for 2020, and I’ll post about those soon.

Sweaters for Days

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I’ve made sweaters before, but since November I’ve been pretty consistently on a knit-all-the-sweaters kick, and I thought I’d collect them all here.

Zweig

A white woman wearing a brown sweater with a pink lace yoke.

This one started when I bought a skein of Farmers Daughters Fibers yarn to use as a contrast color and realized I had the perfect main color from Fidalgo Artisan Yarns already in my stash. I’ve written about this one many times before, so I’ll just let the picture speak for itself.

Weekender

A white woman wearing a purple-pink speckled sweater.

This was my Christmas-vacation knit: I got the entire body done while visiting my parents, and finished up the sleeves when I got home. I love the exposed seam, the combination of reverse stockinette + regular stockinette, and the way the yarn colors knit up.

Dreyma

A white woman wearing a green cardigan with a colorwork yoke.

This has been in the works for a while — I love the pattern and bought the yarn for this in Iceland in September, but knew I couldn’t make a pullover out of Léttlopi and wear it comfortably in Seattle, so I decided to convert it to a cardigan. It is surprisingly satisfying to knit a whole thing in the round (take that, purling!) but still have it be a cardigan at the end of things. I can definitely say I’m hooked.

Rose

A white woman wearing a cardigan that fades from dark grey at the arms to light speckled grey on the buttonband.

This is the most interestingly constructed sweater that I’ve ever made, and likely the most satisfying. I am in love with everything about it — the yarn, the pattern, the fade — and I’ve worn it almost every day since I finished it.


In the works

I started knitting a Caitlin over the weekend using some amazing colors from Valkyrie Fibers’ Stone Lore series. I also have plans for Nordiska using some amazing yarn from Ocean By The Sea as soon as I swatch up some contrast colors to make a final decision, and I bought some (more) House of A La Mode yarn to make a Shifty Sweater.

All the Sweater Plans

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I spent a lot of this month knitting and sewing a lot of things for other people, which is both satisfying and extremely annoying at the same time — I love giving people presents of things I’ve made, but I don’t like having to give a thing I made away, and I also worry about them not liking it. Now that I’m done with all of those not-for-me things, I’ve been keeping a list of all the things I’m going to make next. For some reason, they’ve all turned out to be sweaters, so it looks like 2019 is going to start off with a very comfortable but slow bang.

First up is finishing my Weekender Sweater, made with Hello Stella Worsted in Lavender Latte, which I snagged from La Mercerie.

Six skeins of purple-pink yarn lay side by side.

Next, I’m going to participate in Karen Templar’s steekalong, although instead of knitting Sólbein I’m going to make a green Dreyma Cardigan, which is what I had already planned on making with my Icelandic Léttlopi haul. The steekalong coincides nicely with my existing plan to convert Dreyma from a pullover to a cardigan by learning how to steek (thanks to inspiration from Rachel Price, aka half of Spincycle Yarns), and I’m glad that my first steeking experience won’t be a solo adventure.

Then, I’m going to make a Black Heart Fade version of Andrea Mowry’s Rose Cardigan, with this amazing fade I bought from House of A La Mode. Heather is also holding a HOALM winter knitalong featuring Andrea’s patterns, so by default I’ll be participating in this one, too!

After that I might need to take a break from sweaters, but I also did just buy Dissent by Andrea Rangel, and I might be tempted to make one sooner rather than later…

2018: In Review

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I don’t always believe in arbitrary markers of time, but I do enjoy thinking about the year end around this time — it’s a good space to reflect, summarize, and make plans. A lot has happened this year: I made a Kickstarter, started natural dyeing experiments, published my first knitting pattern, bought way too much yarn, knit up a storm, and started sewing more of my own clothes. Here’s a list of my highlights for 2018.

I launched a Kickstarter to help fund my experiments in learning natural dyeing, and I had so much fun making different color combinations and seeing how different fabrics dyed up. For this whole Kickstarter rewards batch, I used liquid natural dyes from Botanical Colors.

For my last project before I learned continental-style knitting, I made a Whippet Cardigan, still one of my favorite projects ever.

My first continental knit project was La Crau by Melanie Berg, which was perfect for it - rows and rows of garter stitch and the occasional slipped stitch, no purling required! It was ridiculously slow going for the first bit, but I got speedier as I got more comfortable with the new configuration of my fingers.

I experimented with bundle dyeing, with mixed results — definitely something I’d love to practice more. I also started creating my own dyes using plants (rosemary, sage, pomegranate skins, pine cones), and am excited to see what else I can use to create new colors.

I pieced the top of a half-square-triangle quilt, dyed with my Botanical Colors dyes (indigo, madder, cutch, and pomegranate+iron).

I decided to un-stitch and then kitchener the bottom of my Tegna sweater after changing my mind about colors halfway through — another experiment that turned out really well and a new staple in my wardrobe.

I went to Iceland and bought all of the Icelandic yarn, basked in the unfathomable landscape, and soaked in as many hot springs as I could.

I took a trip to the Taos Wool and Fiber Festival, and while I was there had the rare pleasure of doing some tea-dyeing experiments with a dear friend.

I dyed a last few batches of yarn before the new year, and immediately wound up three skeins to work on while I’m on vacation.

And I knitted a Zweig Sweater, which I blocked immediately (a rarity for me) and haven’t worn yet, but which I’m sure will become another wardrobe staple.

Well, it’s certainly been a year, and that’s only the fiber side of it! I’m excited to see what next year brings, but just as excited to take a break and knit mindlessly on my Weekender Sweater for a bit.

Sleeve Island, Speedy Knitting, and Too Many Ideas

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A hanging sweater with a lacy colorworked yoke showing an unfinished sleeve with circular knitting needles attached.

I’m not often a person who has multiple projects going at once - I like to see something through from start to finish without getting distracted. Maybe it’s just this month, maybe it’s the impending holidays, maybe it’s my ideas getting carried away, but I’ve had two or three projects going at once since the beginning of November. Some of them were easy decisions - I decided to pause knitting my Zweig and start my Occhiello Sweater (unfortunately for me, it's a sample knit which means I have to send it off soon!) before my trip to Vancouver, because I knew I’d have a lot of knitting time and I didn’t want to run out of something to knit. But for that, I just switched projects entirely and didn’t go between them, so does that count? In the last couple weeks, I’ve been switching between my Zweig (where I am firmly on Sleeve Island, which for this sweater feels somehow more unbearable than for Occhiello) and two other secret projects for gifts. It feels like I’m avoiding knitting my sleeves because they’re taking forever, but with that same logic, if I just knit them instead of pretending they don’t exist then I’d be done faster!

One thing that I’ve changed this year is that I learned how to knit continental style, for a variety of reasons. I’ve always been a tight knitter — my favorite story to tell is about when I first learned how to knit and was afraid that the stitches would fall off the side of the needle, which is literally impossible — and I’m a very slow purler. After watching videos of everyone speeding along with their continental style, I figured I might as well give it a whirl. So in March, on a giant shawl that was mostly garter stitch, I re-trained my brain.

Folks, it was agonizingly slow for a while there. It took me the entire shawl to get even semi-comfortable with picking instead of throwing, and I had to stare intently at each and every stitch. But now, six months later, I managed to finish that Occhiello sweater in two and a half weeks! I still can’t knit without looking at my hands (which I used to be able to do when throwing), but I think I’ll get there eventually.

I’ll admit, I went a little crazy with the yarn buying this month, and I only have vague plans for all of them. I bought two skeins of La Bien Aimée Merino Aran at the Tolt 5-year anniversary party, I bought some Lichen and Lace and Julie Asselin when I went to Vancouver, and I bought some Bedhead Fiber and The Dye Project from pop-ups at Seattle Yarn, plus a skein of my always-favorite Malabrigo for a secret project. Add that to all the yarn I bought in October, and I think I need to take a yarn-buying break for a bit to catch up on knitting everything!

What I’m consuming lately:

I just checked out the Knitter’s Book of Wool by Clara Parkes and Yarn Works: How to Spin, Dye, and Knit Your Own Yarn by Wendy Johnson from the library, and I’m looking forward to reading through them this weekend.

I recently finished the Ancillary Justice trilogy by Ann Leckie, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Each book just keeps getting better!

And I’ve been listening to Superstition, a podcast that’s delightful and creepy and full of small desert towns and mysteries.