Author: Sonia Knits

A Race to the Finish

| Sonia Knits

With just two days to the New Year, my Amina sweater is FINALLY finished. This would have to be the longest time it’s taken me to knit a single jumper, having cast on for it in June. So for someone who likes completing things on a regular basis, this was torture. Am I happy with it? Why yes, yes I am. Did I learn a lot? Yes, yes I did, would I knit it again? Definitely not!

Every single end has been woven in

Earlier this week, we celebrated Christmas in our usual way; both families on the one day, lots of fun with the kids and lots of food. On Christmas eve, we had a pre-Christmas celebration with some friends, and we had a Kit-Kat constructing competition (not my idea of fun!). Whilst I am a designer, I’ve never been great at constructing things, and one of the competing adult kids is studying architecture! Somehow, the train, Tim and I had built scored first place.

The yarn advents are over and I can’t wait to cast-on some new colour work projects in the new year. First of all I’ll be casting-on for the Paul Klee sweater with Kate Davies’ advent yarns. I spent a delightful morning on Boxing day arrranging and re-arranging colours for this. If all goes to plan, I’ll be casting on for another sweater in February with the My Creative Garage advent, but more on that another time.

My little/big hedgehog decoration is almost complete, I’m just waiting on a delivery of 6mm black beads for it’s eyes, then just a few facial embroidery details and it’s done. I’m pretty novice when it comes to Amigurumi, the arms and feet are different sizes, so don’t look too closely. It will have just a few days on the tree, before it all gets boxed up again for next year. Christmas is over too quickly.

Taking stock

| Sonia Knits

It’s been a busy time since we’ve gotten back from our trip to Japan. I’m really looking forward to taking pause over the Christmas and New Year break, catching up with life and reseting for the new year.

Last weekend, the Richmond Knitters had their Christmas Dinner Party. One of the highlights of the evening is the ornament exchange. I set out to make an amigurumi hedgehog, the pattern is super cute! It claims to only take 4 hours to make, but by the 6 hour mark and not being half done, I decided to cast on for my second ornament option: The Furry Fairies pattern by Alan Dart. It was fiddly, but well worth the effort. I appreciated other knitters’ comments on Ravelry about converting the pattern into knitting in the round, rather than flat, and knitting i-cord for the mouse’s limbs. It’s very sweet 🙂 Damian is still hoping I’ll finish the hedgehog for our tree.

It is the season for advents. After last year’s advent calendar extravaganza, I swore I would give this year a miss… but as time went on, I succumbed to temptation and ordered 2 yarny advent calendars. I’m so glad I did, both the My Creative Garage and Kate Davies’ calendars are just beautiful. The Kate Davies calendar features her Milarrochy Tweed with 6 exclusive colours (and patterns to arrive on Dec 24th!) I’ve earmarked this yarn to become a Paul Klee Sweater, and I’m hoping to cast on for this on January 1. Which brings me to my knitting goals for 2024…

I want to cast on for a new jumper every month in 2024… or at least until I become overwhelmed! I did this in 2020 and I completed 5 sweaters that year, and a further 3 were finished off in 2021. I really enjoyed casting on for something new each month, it gave me a clear goal for what I wanted to achieve and rather than my knitting plans languishing in my queue it was a thrill to bring each sweater to life.

For the remainder of this year, I’m focussing on getting all of my WIPs completed, including the Amina Sweater. All the pieces have been knit, now it’s just a case of sewing in all of the ends, blocking, sewing-up, and knitting the neck band. I also want to get cracking/finish my Shelley Husband, Nimue crochet blanket. That’s all achievable right?

Japan!

| Sonia Knits

It’s almost a week since we arrived home from Japan, and I’m taking my time to get back to everything. It’s been six years since we visited Japan, and this was our fourth visit.

We were chaperoning Damian’s mum in our first week in Tokyo. We did a couple of arts & crafts classes, Laquer-Makie painting and making Hanako stamps. Carol also undertook a master class with a Sumie master painter.

We wined and dined and had amazing food in Tokyo, we even took Carol to Karaoke! Carol has been once before to Japan many years ago, she said she saw a different side to Japan through our lens 🙂

I also visited Walnut, the Amirisu yarn store on our ‘shopping day’. I had a lovely time whilst Damian and Carol had a cool drink at a cafe around the corner.

After the week, we farewelled Carol and boarded a Shinkansen to Hokkaido. Our first stop was Sapporo for 4 days, and then we backtracked Hakodate for a further 4 days.

We visited the morning (5:50am) fish market with our hotel’s chef in Hakodate, and ate a delicious breakfast from the fish we purchased (cooked and sashimi-ed by the chef of course!). We made friends with the locals and ate delicious food. The hospitality in Hakodate was outstanding.

The thing that has stayed with me from this trip though, is the incredible kindness and helpfulness we received from complete strangers. On a rainy day in Sapporo, we alighted from our streetcar and took shelter at the tram stop, just for a moment so we could work out which direction we were meant to be going in. An older woman who had been on the streetcar with us had got off at the same stop. She had begun to go on her way, but then came back, and offered us her umbrella, the one that she was holding open over herself. Shocked, we of course couldn’t and didn’t accept her offer, she would get wet! and it was too nice an umbrella to give to complete strangers from Australia! I’ll never forget her, she wore a beautiful green hand-knitted beret with a sparkly brooch. I might have been admiring it on the tram. I profusely thanked her as she went on her way again. I don’t think I’ve said ‘thank you’ so often as I have while visiting Japan, everyone is so polite…

For the final five days of our trip we returned to Tokyo. We ate more amazing food, found our favourite Yakitori place in Shimbashi, we tried our hand at Glass-etching and Leather sandal making!

On the day before flying home, we went to the WB Harry Potter Studio Tour. I enjoyed myself thoroughly. It was my first taste of Butterbeer, and I much prefer it to real beer.

Now to start dreaming of our next overseas travel and rest.

A weekend well spent

| Sonia Knits

The weekend before last, I went away once again with some of my crafty friends, formerly known as my quilting friends. Some of these old friends have turned their hands to knitting since we gathered last (about 6 months ago), and some have become obsessed with sock knitting. Of course, as you can imagine, I was pretty excited by this predicament! Whilst there still was quite a lot of patchworking going on, there was also equal amounts of knitting, and I got to talk a lot about how I knit my socks! So much fun.

Wouldn’t you know it, I only took one project to knit and it was not a pair of socks…

This is the back all wrapped up before heading home (bobbins ready for travel!)

I managed to knit 2 full repeats of the design, by my calculations (of looking at other people’s finished sweaters), I’m going to need 6 repeats of the pattern. I’m a third of the way there. Now I just need to work out how to carve out 3 day weekends which don’t involve me doing too much to get this front finished, that’s do-able right.

Machine Knitting

| Sonia Knits

Last weekend I took a class in Machine Knitting! I’ve been a hand knitter since childhood, but I’ve never had a chance to try out knitting on a machine. Growing up, mum had a knitting machine, it was a ‘punch card’ one, I can tell she was pretty proud of it. None of the kids could get near it, for good reason!

I’ve seen this class come up now and again at the Thread Den, and last Saturday was finally my opportunity to jump straight in.

Lorena (from Loré Loré) was a wonderful teacher. The class was for absolute beginners to Machine Knitting, with the promise of being able to make a beanie by the conclusion of the all-day class. It did not disappoint… and it was kind of fun. I mean it was quite a lot of fun… if it was easier to obtain a vintage medium-gauge machine in good working order, I would be machine knitting right now. Oh dear!

As it turns out, my mum did away with her machine years ago. Who’d have thought I’d pick it up? And I still haven’t, it was a fun little foray into the dark side of knitting. I don’t think I’ll ever get into weaving (you need a lot more room for a loom), but a knitting machine, is just not that big…

Mum’s birthday is coming up this week and I had a wee little pre-celebration with her yesterday. These cakes were also shared with 2 of my siblings who did drive-bys. The little party celebration ended up being a nice little catch-up without fuss. I’ll be away next weekend when Mum gets to have a shared party with one of my sweet nieces, you can never have enough cake.

What is my life?

| Sonia Knits

That’s what I’m thinking when I look down at this! What a sight! Progress on my Amina sweater has been slow, on the front at least, the back piece is nearly done. I have been unwell this past week or so, making working on the intarsia front difficult. But I’m feeling positive and excited, I’m up to row 9 on the chart!

In the mean time, I’ve also done a bit more research and found some invaluable Intarsia tips from Rox on YouTube:

This video is just what I needed. I learned that bobbins aren’t the only way to go! I decided to make ‘butterflies’ for the small sections that have only a few stitches. Just that change, has helped a lot. I might make more sections into ‘butterflies’, but I’ll do a few more rows before deciding. Rox has a lot of technique videos on her channel and they’re well produced, so I’ve subscribed.

Despite my little progress, I’m having fun. It feels like I’m painting with my stitches, I love using colour in my knitting, even though these are the exact colours assigned in the pattern. I’m starting to think about my next projects… better press on then.

Colour Blast Socks and a New WIP

| Sonia Knits

My Color/colour Blast Socks are complete and aren’t they cool. I don’t put this down to my knitting of course, but Stephen West’s super fun design. The high contrast sections, I think are really clever and remind me of optical illusions, which I also love. Whilst I’ll never do another mystery shawl (they take too long! and you don’t get a sweater at the end of it!), I’m so glad I participated in this first Surprise Sock-along, and it won’t be my last.

I have cast on for my long awaited Amina Sweater. This is from La Bien Aimee’s first book Worsted. I cast on for the back piece first, which is non-patterned, and it’s a ‘piece’. I haven’t knitted a sweater in pieces for, I don’t know how long, so this is weird. But I’m doing it, all in the name of Intarsia! I was probably half-way through the back before my thoughts turned to the front. The back was getting super boring to knit!

I realised I was going to need some bobbins, and a lot of them… 33 or so, no kidding. I put a ‘little’ order in to Sunspun and my friend Karen who works there, brought them to knit night. They’re by Clover and I can highly recommend them.

It took me about 2 nights to wind them all up… I also wound up quite a few of the main colour on the paper bobbins you get for embroidery threads. That’s because there’s small sections of this colour that are only 1 or 2 stitches wide, and I thought it would be wise to reduce the weight of the bobbins where I could. I considered doing parts of this as stranded colour work, but I thought that would end up messy and just a big mess… compared to now, ha ha.

I’m taking it slow, I’m up to row 5, and have about 22 bobbins attached. This is what real patience is about. I wish some of the people who have knit this, wrote more notes on their Ravelry page about it. I just wanted to share the 33 bobbins note for size 4 rant with someone! Perhaps I’ll need to start writing notes on my own Ravelry projects pages.

I hope to be back soon with more progress on the front, it is definitely a stay-at-home-knit.

Bendigo 2023

| Sonia Knits

I’m just back from a wonderful break in Bendigo. The Australian Sheep and Wool Show in Bendigo was this weekend, but we headed up earlier on Wednesday to take make it more of a mini break.

We visited the Bendigo Art Gallery, which had a retrospective of 90 years of the Women’s Weekly Magazine. It was a great exhibition, which had a lot of nostalgia, especially for people whose mums made birthday cakes from the Birthday Cake book. My mum made the train for one of my older siblings, and perhaps one or 2 other cakes, perhaps the witch for my older sister? I remember looking through the book, and dreaming about my next birthday cake. I’m not sure I got one? The recorded interview with the cake maker/author of the book was interesting and priceless… just glue the pages of the tip truck cake together… hahaha. There was also a fashion display (it was impressive), and a bit of a crochet and knitting display, not to mention some great historical displays about women.

Friday, show day arrived, and I attended the Women of Wool luncheon once again. I think this year, the organisers did a great job of selecting the speakers. It was great to listen to inspiring, smart women.

I went back to the show on Saturday and I had a great time hanging out with Damian, his mum, friends, and sheep; as well as purchasing some lovely souvenirs of my time in Bendigo. I’m already planning for next year.

Surprise Sock Along

| Sonia Knits

After declaring I would not participate in another mystery shawl knit along… Stephen West announced his Surprise Sock Along! How could I not join in? Four weeks for knitting a pair of socks is more my speed, and I’m excited.

Unexpectedly, the very first clue dropped just after work on Thursday. Normally with Stephen West’s MKALs, his clues drop closer to midnight. I took this as a sign to cast-on right away.

The first clue on the right sock is done, and I’m about to cast on my left sock. I’ve decided to do the mirrored instructions for the left sock, because, of course, they’re going to look great mirrored! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Stephen West is a genius. I’ve loved knitting the first sock clue, I’m sure the rest of the sock clues will be as enjoyable.

The beauty of having a yarn stash (that would be me), is that I hadn’t decided on what yarn I was going to use until cast-on evening. The yarn I selected is Patons Patonyle, It is such a great sock yarn. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next…