Month: December 2024

2024 knit & crochet recap

| Sonia Knits

I love a good crafty round-up, don’t you?

This year, I knit approximately 2,000 more metres than I did last year, for a grand total of 7,158 metres. I cast-on and completed 4 garments for myself, 2 pairs of socks for me, 1 pair of socks for Damian, 4 hats for other people and a few Christmas decorations to top it all off.

Had I completed my Nimue blanket this year, my project yardage would have blown out of the water! Something to look forward to 2025, I make the rules 🙂

Apart from my blanket, I’m only left with one other UFO, my Painting Honeycomb socks by Stephen West. I’ve begun the second sock, and have made the double thick cuff, so now onto the fun parts. For keen observers, I’ve put my flower socks by Summer Lee into Hibernation Zzz (a Ravelry term). I’m going to restart these in a larger size sometime in the future, so that they can get over my heels more comfortably.

I have not done a stash count of yarn for a few years. Since March of 2019 to be exact. This is where you use Ravelry to total up your stash entries. I don’t think mine is going to be 100 per cent accurate, but doing a stocktake of odd balls and left-over yarns is not my idea of a fun time.

In 2019 it was:

Today it is:

397,809 Metres

Give or take a few thousand metres. Where do I put it all?! A number is just a number, and I’m totally not freaked out by it. Wondering how long I can keep my advent yarns displayed in my living room is where my mind is at right now. I think, I’ve settled on 3 projects for the 3 advents, and that’s a relief!

My Creative Garage
Louie & Lola
Fibresmith

2024 has been an interesting year, mostly a good year for which I’m grateful. I look forward to beginning a new year with hope and exciting new (self-imposed) challenges, none of the bad ones please.

Here’s a photo of my mum and my Melbourne siblings celebrating Christmas together

Happy New Year!

Holidays!

| Sonia Knits

The wait for the holidays is finally over! Gosh, how I’ve been looking forward to this Craftcation. 3 weeks of making, yay! Mixed in with family, friends and great food.

Last weekend was the Richmond Knitters end-of-year party!

It was super fun and it just keeps getting bigger every year.

I made another mouse for this year’s ornament exchange. Alan Dart’s Furry Fairies are just so cute.

Catherine was the recipient of ‘Angelina’ and I think she is smitten.

Danni of Halfbaked Hand dyed made an exclusive self-striping colourway for us once again (selected by Susanne!). So gorgeous, I had to get it in both 4 and 8ply.

This past week, I’ve been making more fairies, one for our tree and one for my niece Maz (it’s a surprise).

With just a few days left of advent… things are getting to the pointy end of the calendars, and I’m not quite settled on what projects to make with each. Ideally I’m thinking sweaters, because I love knitting colourful sweaters!

I have a few pattern contenders in mind, but I’m still thinking on it.

These are my unfinished projects at the moment. I think it will be too ambitious to think I’ll be able to finish any one of these unless I’m working solidly on a pair of socks. It’s probably not going to happen. My goal for the end of the holidays is to have my Nimue Blanket on track for finishing (I’m probably half-way through, maybe?) I also want to cast-on Sabela (haven’t done that yet). But in all honesty, seeing some progress in my projects will be really satisfying.

A FO and Advent

| Sonia Knits

My Calm Down Cardigan is finally finished! It has been complete with buttons and all since last week, but the weather has been extremely hot or extremely humid and wet to take some photos until today. I’m very happy with the result, although I don’t feel as though it’s perfect. It’s a nice casual cardigan, but not fancy enough to wear to work, if you know what I mean.

Good buttons are now hard to find, especially since my work has relocated out of the CBD. Upon a recommendation, I went to visit the Brighton Button Shop (in Bentleigh), which I would rate as a really good experience. I was assisted by the owner of the store, and she provided me with no fewer than 4 options. These buttons stood out as the clear winner though. I’m looking forward to casting on something new very soon, I deserve it 🙂

Advent is well and truly underway. This year I am a bit spoiled with 3 yarn calendars by hand-dyers in Australia; Louie & Lola 8ply, Fibresmith 4ply and My Creative Garage 5ply. I’m so happy with how each of these are turning out, I’m going to have to start thinking about patterns to use for these in the new year.

The tree is up, for some reason it took a really long time to place all of the ornaments up this year. The sheep that my niece made for my birthday has been hanging out in my living room, decided to join hedgehog and become a festive ornament for the season.

And some of this is going on as well, fiddly Christmas ornament making. I can do it in small bursts, but I can totally see why I’m not a toy maker!

I’m looking forward to finishing a couple more projects before the end of the year, but I might be a bit too ambitious about the Nimue crochet blanket! We’ll see.