It’s finished! My super fun Stephen West sweater was finished in time to be entered into the Woolcraft competition at the 2024 Australian Sheep and Wool Show held in Bendigo. Which begins today (I’m writing this in advance).
The main colour has been hand-dyed by Danni of Half-baked Hand dyed, with the contrast colours from my 2023 Advent Calender, by Vanessa of My Creative Garage. From the one time I’ve popped the sweater on for the photoshoot, I can tell you it’s lovely to wear. The colours are just so joyful. The folded neck band is a winner, not to mention the squishy slip-stitch rows.
It was a fun knit, I would highly recommend Stephen West’s patterns for their clarity and interest.
But all of these ends, are on me! I have a bad habit of waiting to the end to sew them in, except for blankets for some reason.
I’ll be back to let you know how my Woolcraft entries went, and to show you my haul from the show!
I’m sorry I haven’t posted in such a long time. Apparently when you enter into Woolcraft competitions, you’re supposed to be a bit secretive about your makes until the judging has occurred. That’s no fun! I’m not even sure if that applies to blogs, is a judge reading my blog right now?! I highly doubt it.
I can confirm three sweaters and a pair of socks have been entered into the Woolcraft competition! My second pair of socks have missed out, because well, that was a pipe dream.
Since completing my entries, my intentions have moved to my Nimue crochet blanket by Shelley Husband, that has darkened my living room basket for 2 years, 2.5 years! If you recall, I stopped working on this when I realised I’d bitten off more than I could chew, by also working on my Hand Spinning Certificate at the same time.
I’m actually really enjoying making this once again. No deadlines, no homework, no competitions (definitely can’t be entered into any show, because it’s cotton).
I haven’t forgotten about my ‘Cast-on a sweater a month’ goal. I’m hoping to recommence those shenanigans in August. I’ve got a blanket to finish and there seems to be a few people in my life who need beanies right now. It’s very chilly in Melbourne, and sadly the forecast for Bendigo weekend is cold and wet.
I’ll be back on Friday, with my latest completed sweater (when the judging is over!)
The Australian Sheep & Wool Show in Bendigo is just 6 weeks away! I’m super excited this year as every year; it’s like Christmas for Knitters and Spinners. My husband and I go up to stay a few days beforehand to make it into a mini getaway.
The show itself seems to be getting bigger and better every year. In the last number of years my Knitting group (the Richmond knitters) have attended the Women of Wool luncheon, and we’ve hosted a special Saturday Night dinner. We also have a knit-along for a sweater/accessory and wear it to the show, see my Pressed Flowers Pullover below, squee. We hang out together and buy lots of yarn and fibre, and encourage others to do the same, it’s great!
This year though, I’m adding something to the usual repertoire that is Bendigo. I’m going to enter the Woolcraft competition! Whilst I don’t like to be be judged on something that is my hobby and obsession, I’m doing this for fun, and surely the judges won’t make horrible comments. I’ve enjoyed seeing my friends enter the competition for many years, and I think it’s time I had a go. I’ve knit a couple of things recently, that I’ve kind of thought of entering… so they haven’t been worn. But after the show I’ll be able to wear them, so I can prove I’m a product knitter over a process knitter after all. Or rather I can be both.
I’ve filled in my entry form and paid the fees… for 5 items, 5! 3 of the items are finished, but 2 of the items are WIPS. They are my stretch goal 🙂 My deadline is in 3 weeks; before everything needs to be popped in the post to get there in time.
So, I’m changing the Goal Posts I’ve set myself of casting-on a garment per month. For now anyway. I’m going to finish the 2 WIPS I need for the Show competition instead!
And here’s my Pressed Flowers Pullover on this rainy long weekend in Melbourne. I’ll be wearing it to Bendigo so if you see me there, come say hi.
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.
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 🙂
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sonia Knits 