Down to the wire

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I completed making the pair of (secret) Flamingo socks… this afternoon! About 2 hours before the birthday dinner for my sister Silvia. I’ve never knit so close up to a deadline, let alone wet-block right before gifting, hilarious! And weirdly I was quite calm about it. The socks were handed over a little damp and on sock blockers.

My sister was thrilled, as was I. I feel as though the socks are a perfect representation of Silvia, what a design brief! The flamingos, the tropical themed self-striping yarn (by HodgePodge fibres) and the co-ordinating cuff and heel (Lang Jawoll). Thank you extensive sock yarn collection! The other yarns used included, Advent mini skeins for the Flamingos and flowers and the white is Patons Patonyle.

The Flamboyant Flamingos pattern is by Charlotte Stone. After knitting these socks, I would highly recommend her patterns. I feel other designers don’t tackle the ‘getting the colourwork over the heel’ situation very well. Just going up a needle size, is not going to cut it. Charlotte has you increase your stitch count before the colourwork section (in this case by 8 sts), and then decrease back down after the colourwork. Huzzah! I have the formula for unlocking knitting colourwork socks and can apply these principles to other colourwork sock patterns not necessarily by Charlotte.

The creative juices are flowing for the next surprise pairs. But I’ll need to keep these under wraps until after the gifting, as the recipients are readers of the blog. You know me, I don’t want to spoil a surprise.

A Blissful Weekend Escape at Tarndie Farm

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We’ve just arrived home after a wonderful weekend at Tarndie (also known as Tarndwarncoort), a working Polwarth sheep farm that also offers cosy accommodation; and is home to lots and lots of sheep. At this time of year, it’s also full of adorable baby lambs. Squee!

If you remember Damian’s surprise birthday gift to me, it was a weekend away at Tarndie where I got to name a baby lamb. It was such a blissful escape. We woke each morning to the sound of baaing sheep, and from our bedroom window all we could see were sheep grazing across the paddocks. It was peaceful, relaxing, and exactly what we needed.

I’m holding ‘Evie’, when she grows up I’m going to spin her fleece. It turns out Damian really loves sheep too…

It’s just as well we were only staying for a couple of nights, any longer and he might have tried to adopt the whole flock!

Tom and Jason are exceptional hosts who make you feel right at home. If you’re looking for a peaceful country escape, I can’t recommend staying at Tarndie highly enough.

The farm made the perfect backdrop for photographing my finished Celeste Sweater. With the Bendigo Sheep & Wool Show now less than three weeks away, I can’t wait to spend another weekend surrounded by sheep, wool, and wonderful friends.

Fibrefest 2026

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Melbourne Fibrefest, formally known as The Coburg Market or the HandKnitters Guild Market, was on this weekend!

Now you know, I don’t need anymore yarn, but the Coburg market to me is like an amuse-bouche to the Sheep Show in Bendigo! All the best Melbourne Indy dyers attend and it starts the yarn purchasing juices flowing!

I like to get there early, in case Danni has some one-off self-striping balls of yarn. I was second in the queue… and Danni aka Half-baked hand dyed did not disapoint! She did move spots this year, so I dashed right past her at the start! Picture the Myer Boxing Day Sales of the 90’s 🙂

I also did lots of chatting to friends, and stall holders, it was rather difficult to buy yarn! I got some ideas and saw lots of beautiful yarn… but I’m saving myself for Bendigo.

And then a few of us from the Knitting Group went to lunch afterwards.

The skeins of sock yarn have been photographed and added to my Ravelry stash page. The yarn itself is sitting in the overflowing baskets of sock yarn in my living room. Sock yarn is moving out of my stash (just not at the rate it is coming in).

Sheepy Gifts and Knitting Adventures

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The funnest month of the year, went by pretty fast. I received some lovely gifts from Damian and my family, all of them sheepy and knitting related.

One of Damian’s gifts made me shed tears! He’s a bugger!!

I’m looking forward to this birthday present… especially since I just watched The Sheep Detectives in an advanced screening today. Baby lambs are just so cute.

Also today, this morning, very early, I went out to the Yarra Valley yarn market. It’s the first time I’ve been to this market, but it has already been running for a few years. The bad weather did not dampen my spirits, and in the 1 hour I had to browse, I got around to most stalls twice.

I pretty much just gave all my money to Danni from Halfbaked Hand dyed. I also bought a special birthday gift for our friend’s daughter who is a crocheter (not pictured, just in case).

A little knitting was done in April, but not enough, it’s never enough!

I’m almost at the end of the colour work portion of my Celeste Sweater for Bendigo. With two and a half months to go before the Sheep show, is it too much to be able to finish this and knit another garment?! And knit another 4 pairs of socks? yeah probably!

Easter Weekend catch-up

| Sonia Knits

Yikes, it’s been a while. Things have been a little busy and distracting lately, but I’m here today to show off my recently finished Poisoned Apple Top by Lily Kate France. I managed to get some photos in yesterday before I lost the sunlight completely.

I think the top is ‘darling’ and I couldn’t be happier with how it’s turned out. I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of puff sleeves. The yarn was purchased with a gift voucher from my Melbourne siblings for last year’s birthday. It is La Bien Aimee’s DK and Kumo. The Kumo is an alpaca/silk blend. I thought the alpaca would make it less itchy than the usual mohair/silk blends going around, but I have my suspicions that it is not. It hasn’t had a proper wear test yet, I’m a little afraid.

Not a ton of knitting has been done lately, but I have started swatching for the Celeste jumper my knitting group is making for the Sheep Show this year. I wasn’t going to do a colour swatch, but my friend Nikhil inspired me.

And now I think I need to swap out one of the colours… I’ve placed another order for an alternative colour for one of the pinks. Hopefully I’ll receive the yarn by next weekend for more swatching.

Poisoned Apple top and an anniversary

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This week, progress has been good on my Poisoned Apple top. I do feel I’m playing yarn chicken though, but it’s still too close to tell.

The yarn is La Bien Aimee Merino DK. Too expensive to buy an extra skein until I’m sure. So for now, I’m going to knit faster and trust the pattern designer. But what if I want my top to be longer? … then faster I will knit!

D and I celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary this weekend. We went to Kyneton yesterday and had dinner at Midnight Starling, one of our favourite restaurants. The food was delicious as always; we love coming here.

It’s been a very navy blue week, I’ve also been spinning the singles for a sock project and the fibre is a beautiful blend of navy blues. I’ll have a photo for you next week!

January wrap

| Sonia Knits

January has been busy and focussed. I had some extra time off over the holiday period and most of the time was spent at home knitting(!) and socialising.

My first FO for the year were these ribbed socks by Summer Lee. Super simple, and great for Japanese BBQ knitting, which happened quite frequently over the break, much to Damian’s delight. The yarn is by my favourite local self-striping yarn dyer Danni of Halfbaked hand dyed. It might have been a one-of-a-kind colourway and I think it’s super cool. These socks are for me, but I think the next few pairs might be for others. The sock drawer is pretty packed.

I also dabbled in spinning and working on ‘the Queen’ in my break. I would have done more, but the Queen’s hair is going to take a while I think, so I put it aside to knit through my EXP sweater.

I finished knitting my EXP sweater and have sewn in the last ends this evening. It’s currently having a bath, I think it’s going to dry pretty quickly because it got to (or close to) 45 degrees in Melbourne today. I’ll tell you all about the EXP this weekend when hopefully it will be cool enough to take some photos of me wearing it, at least for 5 minutes.

Vintage Flannel

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Hip hip hooray! My Vintage Flannel sweater by Anna Johanna is finally finished… and I love it 🙂 It turned out just how I wanted it to, but I must admit, it was touch and go when it came to the end. Like ALL of those ends, that I had to sew in

The number of ends is all my own fault of course. When purchasing the yarn for this project, I wanted my contrast colour to be varigated. I couldn’t find any yarn at the Sheep Show that would do this in 5ply. So… I used 3 different colours to create the varigation, which meant I needed to change colours every 3 rounds or so.

But before all of that, the other hurdle I faced was, as I cast off my second sleeve, I realised I had knit my second sleeve on needles that were .25mm larger than the rest of the sweater. True story.

The completed sweater before blocking
Correct needle used for the 1st sleeve, gridlines line up with the body
2nd sleeve, gridlines are further apart with .25mm larger needle

Luckily upon wearing, I can honestly not tell the difference in the sleeve length. So this is our little secret.

With the end of the year approaching, I’m now eyeing off all of my unfinished projects to see what is going to make it into this years completed projects. Spoiler alert, I have cast on a new sweater. There’s also 2 pairs of socks and a blanket to complete. Seems unlikely doesn’t it?!

Geelong fibre Forum 2025

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The TAFTA Geelong Fibre Forum has been running for around 30 years. A very long time ago, 2007 to be exact I attended my final Fibre Forum workshop until this year. Prior to this I attended the forum for 7 consecutive years. Whilst the order of worshops undertaken are sketchy, the classes themselves have always been wonderful and worthwhile. On top of that, the experience of being at the Fibre Forum has been incredible. Last week I was reminded of that again, being surrounded by so many women (over a hundered, 150? and just a couple of men), it was so enlightening (and weird at the same time).

I have been a subscriber to the TAFTA e-newsletter since the magazine ended (yes, there used to be a magazine!). So when Jo Hamilton’s Crochet Portraiture workshop was announced, I just knew I had to return.

The Fibre Forum is hosted at Geelong Grammar School, whilst the kids are on school holidays. The Dining Hall is just like being at Hogwarts. I lived-in for the whole week, and was served breakfast, lunch and dinner (and morning tea) each day. It was Heaven.

For my workshop, I decided to do a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. I brought along an Ikea bag of yarn in colours that I thought would work for the image I was going to crochet.

For a novice, the technique is very slow going (for the experienced it would also be slow!), with lots of trial and error (learning) along the way. Jo is a fantastic teacher, with great patience. I wish I had gotten more done, but I feel as though I can continue on and complete the portrait on my own. It’s only my first portrait, and it is a bit wonky, as to be expected. Jo has been using this technique for around 20 years and her work is spectacular.

Whilst recovering and coming down from the high that was the week, I’ve picked up my hook and filled in some more areas since Friday.

Whilst working on the portrait, a lot of the time is spent looking and checking to make sure the stitches you’ve put in are correct.

Here’s a photo of my class and some of their creations, click on the first image to make them larger.

Wednesday night was Party Night! The theme this year was: Black and White with a touch of … Now in my memory of the Forum, the dress-up theme was always wild; there have been some super wacky costumes, mostly worn by the former organiser Janet De Boer. So I came dressed as Wednesday… with a touch of severed Thing.

I might have been overdressed, ha ha. I hope to attend again in the future and I hope it’s sooner than 18 years. I’ll be back to my regular schedule of knitting soon. I almost got no knitting done this week!