Month: June 2016

Rainbow love

| Sonia Knits

There’s something about a rainbow or a gradient that is pretty irresistible to knit. Rainbows in particular are probably the funnest thing you could knit for kids or adult socks.

I finally got around to knitting a rainbow ‘something’ for niece M.

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She’s getting older and bigger you know, so knitting for her now takes about a third to half the time it would take to knit for myself! I used a tried and tested pattern, the Tulips cardigan. I’ve made another one of these, when she was littler.

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Which is now currently being worn by her little sister.

I needed to make some slight adjustments to the pattern as it’s written for 10 ply, and I was using Bendigo Luxury 8ply. I kind of winged it… it’s really hard when the recipient of your hand knits are not at easy access for measuring and checking.

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I was really worried I had stuffed the sizing. But then I was relieved to see that I hadn’t, niece M really is that big, and I could have made everything longer.

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(Looking at this photo, now makes me feel guilty that niece C, didn’t get something made for her at the same time, look at that face! My knitting queue really doesn’t like me.)

Niece M loved the buttons by the way! The buttons are from my Tokyo visit. They’re only decorative in this project. I’m thrilled to have finally put to use a few of the very many gulp! novelty buttons that I purchased. I might have lost my head over the cuteness, with unconfirmed reports of spending $100 on plastic animal buttons in just one store.

I realise I haven’t shared any of these treasures with you yet. As I had to unwrap them from their custom made envelopes when deciding which ones to use for this project. There are many more animals in my button tin now, and I’ll try to remember to share them with you in the future.

460 metres completed for Stash Dash!

 

 

 

 

Pipe dream

| Sonia Knits

I’ve just signed up for Stash Dash 2016. For the uninitiated, Stash Dash is hosted by The Knit Girllls podcast. This is it’s 5th year running. It’s a sort of knit-along of crazy pants proportions. As far as I can tell, there are no prizes of the monetary kind. It’s a challenge for yourself, to achieve the impossible.

The gist of it is, you sign yourself up to knitting/spinning/crafting a certain amount of kilometres for approx. 3 months. The goal posts are, you have a choice of: 3k, 5, 7, 10 or 15k.

The rules are pretty flexible in terms of being allowed to have several WIPs near completion before the start date, as many as you like ::cheating::cough::cheating::. So long as you knit a stitch or row, then cast-off after the challenge has begun you get to count all the meterage of that 1k shawl or jumper or what have you. There are many more guidelines that you can read about on the forum.

Experienced players, plan for this all year in order to achieve the highest possible yarn count. Me? I decided to do it last week on a whim after the event began.

So, I did a little bit of planning at that point. How many km/s did I think I could possible knit in 3 months? I only have a handful of WIPs, many only just started. I wrote these down and the estimated meterage of these FO’s. I then went through my well curated queue and I wrote a few of those things down, all the while calculating the completed metres. And then the dreaming began. I kept adding more and more to my list of possible FOs. And then when I got to 10k, I thought I’ll just add a couple of extras incase I overestimate the amount of finished metres to the FO’s.

I must say, I found this planning part super enjoyable. Whilst I’m only going for the 10k, I’m honestly aware I have no chance of meeting that goal… but it’s going to be fun trying! For one thing I have 13 new WIPs to cast on weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

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