Finished Object

Paul Klee Sweater

| Sonia Knits

Yippee my Paul Klee Sweater by Midori Hirose is all finished! I’m very happy with how it has turned out. The yarn is from Kate Davies’ Advent calendar of 2023 which included all the colours from her Milarrochy Tweed yarns, plus all of her new colours released in the club. It was a very happy happenstance. Whilst you can choose to limit the number of colours used in the yoke, I decided to use 22 of the possible 24 colours from the Milarrochy Tweed range, and the additional charcoal colour for the body and sleeves.

I have been busily knitting on my March Sweater, Pressed Flowers by Amy Christophers. I’ve just divided for the body and sleeves. Originally I thought I would be knitting to the second size of instructions (the pattern has a crazy amount of ease), but I found that my row gauge (or my gauge overall) was smaller than expected, it’s hard to tell with mosaic knitting. But when I placed my yoke up against another yoke I’ve knitted, I could tell there was not going to be any ease, if I’d divided at that point. So I needed to knit another repeat of flowers before dividing for the body and sleeves. I think that was the correct decision, no one has time for sweaters that are too tight to wear.

My lovely basic stripey Christmas socks are also off the needles. The yarn is by my friend Danni from Halfbaked Hand dyed. Now that I don’t have any socks on the needles, I’m feeling a little lost.

I’m casting on for my April Sweater today… or maybe just a swatch, more on this month’s Cardigan… after I get back from a Spinning retreat next weekend. So much to do, so little time.

Mid-March update

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A couple of weekends ago, we attended our very first Lost Trades Festival in Bendigo. It was very unlike our usual Bendigo Sheep Show weekends in mid-July when the weather is super cold. At 38 degrees celsius, it just didn’t feel right, it just didn’t feel like Bendigo! Unfortunately for the organisers who did a terrific job, the crazy hot weather was against them. It meant that we spent about 2 hours at the show, before returning to the house we hired for the weekend to find relief under the air-conditioner. And I got to knit on my Pressed Flowers Pullover!

Last night, I finally cast-off on my Paul Klee Sweater (the January sweater cast-on), there will be modelled photos soon, once the ends are sewn in and it has had it’s bath, oh and the zit on my face has subsided…

For the final week of March, I’m going to focus on getting as much of my Pressed Flowers Pullover knit as possible. There’s a new cast-on scheduled for April, and I’m only 2 months behind 🙂

New Year, fresh slate

| Sonia Knits

Happy New Year! I love a fresh new year, planning and goal setting are my favourite things to do as a maker; and it makes perfect sense to do that on the first day of the year.

But before I go ahead, I wanted to share the completed hedgehog ornament with CA and you all. It’s even cuter with a face!

I also completed a small spinning project this week, embarrassingly it’s the first one since I completed my Certificate of Spinning early in 2023.

I am thrilled with it. The fibre is from a Southern Cross Fibre Club, it’s organic merino and the colour name is Tokyo. It is worsted spun, in a fractal spin, it’s come out to a light fingering weight yarn. Perhaps I’ll make a hat with it.

This sudden burst of crafting before the end of the year is due to time off from work. And with just one more week to go before I return to work, I am loving this productivity during staycation, when can I give up work?

In 2024, I hope to read more, be healthier, and to make more in general, but also more specifically I hope to knit more jumpers/sweaters this year. In 2023, my Amina sweater was the only jumper I completed; my wardrobe is crying out for new knits and I intend to fulfil my knitting dreams this year. I have a rough goal of casting on for a new sweater every month, want to join me for the ride?

Starting with the Paul Klee sweater by Midori Hirose. Whilst I thought had my colour sequence sorted, yesterday when I started colouring-in my planning sheet, I discovered I needed 11 rows / 22 colours for my size. I originally had mistakenly thought I only needed 9 rows / 18 colours, because I had just referred to the pattern photograph. Luckily, I was able to come up with the additional colours and sequence from the 24 ball Kate Davies advent calendar. Although I discovered, blue might be her favourite colour, and she is missing a light purple to complete the colour spectrum.

In 2024, I also hope to spin a lot more for pleasure, and to practise the craft, because let’s face it, I don’t want to forget everything I’ve just learned. Becoming a better spinner is not just about the education, I need to do it more often. So with that, I’d love to spin for a jumper, perhaps Andrea Mowry’s Weekender? I do have a lot of beautiful fibre in my stash, so purchasing some fibre for it is not necessary. I’m interested in doing a combo spin perhaps for it, Andrea’s been talking about this on her podcast. I have lots of 100gm lots of different coloured hand-dyed top, which would be fun to combine, or if I can hack it (the boredom), I also have beautifully prepared natural coloured Polwarth top from Tarndie in a jumpers worth of fibre, purchased eons ago.

That’s about all for now, I NEED to pick back up my Nimue crochet blanket, and swatch for Paul Klee. I also have a pile of socks to darn… the list goes on.

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.

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.

Colour Blast Socks and a New WIP

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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.

RK2023 Cowl, an old WIP and a new cast on!

| Sonia Knits

This long weekend began with the kitchenering of my Richmond Knitters cowl. The colour work pattern was devised by Brent from Carla Meijsen’s Magic Motifs book. Deciphered, the motif says ‘RK2023’ i.e. Richmond Knitters 2023. Each year for the past 5 or so years my knitting group, has agreed to knit a particular pattern to wear to the Sheep and Wool show in Bendigo in July. Normally it’s a jumper, but this year Brent spearheaded the idea to use this colour work pattern and to make whatever we wanted!

The yarn I used is from some deep stash. The pink is Cleckheaton Country and the natural colour was some random yarn I picked up in Maldon (? or some other country town) from a boutique store that was selling garments which were hand-knitted for a label ‘Lorinda Grant’ (I think, this is going back 15-20 years), there was a small basket of balls in natural colours and I thought it made a nice souvenir, I selected 2 balls, the second colour was a mottled medium/dark grey. I’ve blocked the cowl now and it is lovely and soft, I’ll try to have a modelled photo for you next time.

I’m not sure which jumper/s I will be wearing to the sheep festival. But I have finally cast-on for my Amina Sweater by Sylvia Watts-Cherry (Rav link). The yarn was a Christmas gift in 2021, so it is a long awaited for cast on.

The garment is knit in pieces, which is pretty unusual to see now. The front is in Intarsia with drop sleeves. I’m really looking forward to knitting this, I’m finally back to sweater knitting!

I am slowly knocking off some old projects, so it was time to pick up my Nimue crochet blanket. It’s been about a year since I’d worked on it, and I was feeling a bit anxious about whether I still wanted to make the thing! I need not have worried.

I put this project down last year when the realisation of my Spinning Certificate work sunk in. There’s still quite a ways to go, but I’m having fun and it’s interesting without being too challenging so far.

A lonely knit-along

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I’ve been finishing up some old WIPs from last year, now that all of my Spinning ‘work’ is done. I haven’t cast-on anything new, even though I really want to…

A couple of weeks back I completed the Tulip socks for mum.

I love the yarn (Fibreworks from deep-stash) and the pattern (by Cookie A). I’m looking forward to giving these to my mum for Mother’s Day along with another pair I finished in February; but it’s cold enough now, so perhaps I should just surprise her with an Easter gift?

I’m now focussing on my Stephen West shawl from his MKAL of last year, Twists & Turns. I still want the thing, but it’s kind of sad to feel like I’m knitting on my own without the pressure of a deadline! Having a deadline is so motivating, well it is to me anyway.

I’m still just on Clue 2 (of 4). I abandoned this project at the beginning of Clue 2 whilst the actual knit-along was still going on to concentrate to my spinning work. I really appreciate all the work Stephen puts into the step-by-step videos on his YouTube channel for his mystery knit-alongs; and it kind of makes it feel like I’m still part of the knit-along, if that makes sense.

I think I might cast-on something new once this shawl is finished. I deserve it! I’ve got a couple of other WIPs: a patchwork quilt and a crochet blanket, but as they’re different disciplines I think a new knitting project or 2 are in order.