Month: February 2025

Progress on my Stripes! Sweater

| Sonia Knits

With less than a week to go until February is done and dusted, my Stripes! sweater is coming along. It won’t be cast off for the start of March. But, I hope to be at least halfway through the first sleeve. Aren’t knitting goals fun?!

To be honest, I’m not sure I’m loving this knit. This week, I have asked myself more than once, am I too old to be knitting sweaters with this much colour? Should I have knit this for a niece instead? Probably. My friends disagree. And then there’s the self-doubt over my order of colours, should I have put it in a proper colour sequence… I think once there’s sleeves, I’m going to like this more. I’ve placed barber cords on the ends of the needle and tried the sweater on a few times, and it looks to be a good fit. I’m excited to get it finished, and then I can truly decide if I’m going to like wearing this, or it has been a terrible mistake.

My other striped project, vanilla socks with yarn by Danni of Halfbaked Hand dyed, is being worked on intermittently, mostly when Damian is bbq’ing a feast for us. I’d love to have these cast off soon as well, they’re just too pretty to be on the needles for too long.

Back to knitting!

Sabela

| Sonia Knits

My Sabela sweater by Isabel Kraemer was off the needles last weekend and blocking. I’m super happy with how it turned out, there never was a doubt when it comes to an Isabel Kraemer pattern, they always fit really well.

The yarn is by Great Ocean Road Woollen Mills, Summer Fiesta in their 3/4ply. It was a pleasure to knit with this yarn which is a merino and linen blend. Whilst it is a light yarn, it has enough warmth to it, that I probably won’t wear it in the warmer months. Alas, it’s 18 degrees in Melbourne today, which is quite a change from the high 30 degree temperatures we’ve had this week. So maybe I’ll be wearing it sooner than I think.

Meanwhile I have cast on my ‘February’ sweater, Stripes! by Andrea Mowry. I’m using my advent calendar yarn from My Creative Garage.

I’m hoping to have finished the yoke and divided for the body and sleeves this weekend. It’s raining outside so this works with my plans. There’s less than 2 weeks left to February, so I’m hoping to get as much of this sweater knit as possible before the start of March.

I’ve also cast on for my Marlene socks, thanks so much for your comments on this project!

The yarn is beautiful, it has a lovely structure to it. I hope to pay more attention to this after I’ve done ‘enough’ knitting on my Stripes! sweater.

Happy weekend 🙂

Sentimental

| Sonia Knits

19 years ago I lived in San Francisco. It’s when I went from being a knitter, into being a Knitter with a capital K, which just means I became more obsessed. My husband was posted there on secondment, and I joined him obviously! I was unable to work for the first 6 months, which was great, depending on your point of view. We lived in the Marina district (right near Fishermans Wharf), with my local yarn store ‘Greenwich Yarn’, just a ten minute walk away. The whole experience is now dreamlike.

Laurie, who was the owner of Greenwich Yarn, was wonderful and so welcoming, offering help to her loyal customers. It was a small store, but it was very well curated. There was a lovely wooden table in the middle of this narrow store, that you were welcome to come and knit around during the day, even eat lunch there, which is forbidden by yarn stores these days! It almost felt like home. I spent hours there, which I had a lot of. When I made a friend at a Knit Night, separate to the yarn store, we would both hang out here together. What a time!

The oldest yarn in my stash comes from Greenwich Yarn. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, and now I think it’s time to cast on.

It’s Crystal Palace Panda Wool, it’s a sock yarn. Laurie recommended I get an extra ball, because of the bamboo content, the yardage is less than usual. Isn’t the colour dreamy.

I’ve decided to pair this with also one of the oldest patterns I own. It’s from a magazine, and it’s by my favourite sock designer Cookie A. She no longer designs patterns, but she also lived in the Bay Area at the time. I met Cookie at my very first Stitches West yarn show whilst living in SF. I bought a bundle of her patterns, that were print-outs in plastic sleeves; I still have them.

But for this yarn, I wanted to knit socks that were almost Mermaid like. This is how I selected to knit Cookie’s Marlene socks.

I haven’t cast-on yet, but I will in February. So this is a super sentimental knit for me after all these years.

I’d like to get through more of the oldest parts of my stash (as well as the new), so that I don’t have things that are 20 years old! And maybe they won’t be as precious as this project, but it’s time.

I hope to catch you up on my other projects soon, maybe this weekend.