Knitting

My EXP sweater

| Sonia Knits

As revealed this week, my EXP sweater is finished. I’m really happy with how it’s turned out. It took what felt like forever to knit, but then again everything I knit feels like that. I’d love to surprise myself one time, and say, wow that was quick knit, it only took 2 weeks… bwah ha ha, like that’s ever going to happen!

It was the half fisherman’s rib or ‘Shaker Stitch’ as Susanna describes it, that took the time. It looks like brioche, which is cool. I’ve done a little bit of brioche but not a lot, and the Shaker Stitch was actually really soothing to knit, everyone says so. That’s right, I knit this along with some of my quilting friends (turned knitters). I was really happy to have their support, because not everything in the pattern made sense. For a lot of the time, each of my friends were in front (it’s not a race!) so they had encountered the same questions I had; and were able to help. I’m looking forward to wearing my EXP with them for a photo soon.

I made only minor adjustments to the pattern. I lengthened the body and the sleeves. I omitted the decreases in the body, and I didn’t do the 2 extra rows at the raglan seam before kitchenering, I just didn’t think it was worth it for the extra ends to sew in. I also didn’t block aggressively, I didn’t need to, as I had the amount of ease. Except maybe the sleeves could do with a bit more of a block, they’re a little snug.

I’ve cast on for my next garment project, and I’m excited! It’s been in my queue for quite some time, and here we are in February already. I hope I get it done in 2 weeks 🙂

January wrap

| Sonia Knits

January has been busy and focussed. I had some extra time off over the holiday period and most of the time was spent at home knitting(!) and socialising.

My first FO for the year were these ribbed socks by Summer Lee. Super simple, and great for Japanese BBQ knitting, which happened quite frequently over the break, much to Damian’s delight. The yarn is by my favourite local self-striping yarn dyer Danni of Halfbaked hand dyed. It might have been a one-of-a-kind colourway and I think it’s super cool. These socks are for me, but I think the next few pairs might be for others. The sock drawer is pretty packed.

I also dabbled in spinning and working on ‘the Queen’ in my break. I would have done more, but the Queen’s hair is going to take a while I think, so I put it aside to knit through my EXP sweater.

I finished knitting my EXP sweater and have sewn in the last ends this evening. It’s currently having a bath, I think it’s going to dry pretty quickly because it got to (or close to) 45 degrees in Melbourne today. I’ll tell you all about the EXP this weekend when hopefully it will be cool enough to take some photos of me wearing it, at least for 5 minutes.

2025 Knitting review

| Sonia Knits

Happy New Year everyone! I’m so happy to be beginning a new year and a clean slate. Nevermind those 4 UFO’s I’m carrying across to this year!

For those following along at home, I like to keep a tally of how many metres I knit each year on Ravelry. They have some handy tools on your projects pages which allows you to include your projects yardage. Then if you tag your projects by year and set up separate tabs for each year, voila! you get your total amount of metres for the year listed at the bottom of your projects page for the year.

I’ve been doing this for about 10 years now, and it’s interesting to see the trends. (I’m Sonia on Ravelry in case you want to take a look).

This year I knit 8,820 metres approx. I’m up a little from last year (7,158 metres), but I’m still a lot less than the years when I have completed a blanket and several jumpers. I think that’s the key to high numbers, finishing a blanket! 2020 and 2021 being covid and blanket years, meant that my highest amount of meterage knit was 14,147 metres in 2021!

If only I completed my Nimue blanket in 2025! But it’s not all about the quantity! I feel really happy about the projects I’ve made this year, and the ones I’ve made for me, I wear pretty often.

This year I made 5 garments, 5 pairs of socks, 3 hats, 2 pairs of mitts and 1 hedgehog ornament. It was mostly a selfish year of knitting, with just 1 hat, 1 pair of mitts and a hedgehog gifted… Damian didn’t even get a pair of socks! oops.

Knitting plans for 2026? I thought it would be sensible to be more sock-focussed this year. My self-striping yarn stash has grown at a fast rate, so I definitely need to knit more socks. But I still want to make more garments that I could wear to work, stylish and not too colourful… my first focus though is completing my 4 wips. Wishing you all a wonderful year.

‘Tis the season of fiddly knitting

| Sonia Knits

I love adorable handmade Christmas ornaments, but I don’t like finicky knitting. Here is my predicament. I have cast-on for my Knitting group’s Christmas Ornament swap, and I’m hoping it won’t take more than a few night’s worth of knitting hours. No spoilers here 🙂

If it’s super cute, I’d like to make one for me, and maybe one for my knitting niece… but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, I might absolutely hate knitting the next part, or I might love it. We shall see.

This weekend we celebrated my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday. We took her to Kyneton and spoilt her with fancy food. She loved it, and it was great fun.

Before I cast-on for my Christmas ornament, I cast on and began knitting my EXP sweater (by Sanna & co.) with a group of friends. Now that my Vintage Flannel is finished I can focus on this and try to catch up to the others.

I purchased a Louie and Lola kit from the Bendigo Sheep show a few years ago; so I was really happy when my new knitting friends (old friends who have suddenly become knitters) decided they all wanted to knit it. The light colour will fade into 4 colours in total. I am becoming obsessed with this stitch pattern. And it’s not Brioche!

I hope December treats you well, I’m doing my best not to be overwhelmed.

Vintage Flannel

| Sonia Knits

Hip hip hooray! My Vintage Flannel sweater by Anna Johanna is finally finished… and I love it 🙂 It turned out just how I wanted it to, but I must admit, it was touch and go when it came to the end. Like ALL of those ends, that I had to sew in

The number of ends is all my own fault of course. When purchasing the yarn for this project, I wanted my contrast colour to be varigated. I couldn’t find any yarn at the Sheep Show that would do this in 5ply. So… I used 3 different colours to create the varigation, which meant I needed to change colours every 3 rounds or so.

But before all of that, the other hurdle I faced was, as I cast off my second sleeve, I realised I had knit my second sleeve on needles that were .25mm larger than the rest of the sweater. True story.

The completed sweater before blocking
Correct needle used for the 1st sleeve, gridlines line up with the body
2nd sleeve, gridlines are further apart with .25mm larger needle

Luckily upon wearing, I can honestly not tell the difference in the sleeve length. So this is our little secret.

With the end of the year approaching, I’m now eyeing off all of my unfinished projects to see what is going to make it into this years completed projects. Spoiler alert, I have cast on a new sweater. There’s also 2 pairs of socks and a blanket to complete. Seems unlikely doesn’t it?!

A very special 18th Birthday

| Sonia Knits

The Richmond Knitters, the Knitting group I began 18 years ago has celebrated it’s birthday this past weekend! Whilst there isn’t an exact ‘birthdate’ as such, it was fun to mark this milestone with a bit of a party.

There were party favours, cake/s and an enormous pass-the-parcel, the hallmarks of any good birthday party.

It was so lovely for everyone to come together to celebrate.

It all went swimmingly well I think!

It’s hard to believe the group has been going for so long, it does ‘age’ me quite a bit, haha. But I still feel like a young person (totally), and being amongst such fun people helps.

The Knitting group began, because I wanted to attend a Knitting Group that met on Monday nights, every Monday night. None exisited in Melbourne at the time, so I had to start the Richmond Knitters. I’ve learnt so much from everyone over the years and it has made me a better knitter. I love the knowledge shared and the ‘enabling’ that occurs on Monday nights. I also love having so many knitting friends, many have become life-long friends.

Just this week, I’ve done my very first Italian bind-off ::gasp:: it’s been around for years, but it seems everyone is talking about it now. So when my pattern called for an Italian bind-off, and newer knitters were already doing it; I felt as though I needed to do it as well. After a few false starts (and feeling pretty dumb(!) about it) I finally found a great video tutorial and matching written instructions that clicked for me. I highly recommend this one by Brooklyn Tweed.

How pretty is this? I’m afraid I’m going to need to do this (very time-consuming) bind-off for everything I knit in 1×1 rib from now on, it looks so good. Now onto the sleeves 🙂

Obsessed

| Sonia Knits
Anna Johanna’s Vintage Flannel

I’ve cast on for Vintage Flannel a sweater by Anna Johanna and I’m obsessed! It is bringing me so much joy, I’ve wanted to make this for such a long time and it’s now coming to fruition. The yarn is by My Creative Garage, who is well known for her beautiful pinks and I love everything she dyes. The contrast colour is actually 3 colours, a speckled yarn and 2 solid colours that I’m alternating through every few rows. This was Vanessa’s idea after I showed her my inspiration…

I was inspired by test knitter: Purlific Knitter’s project she always makes beautiful projects, I love seeing what she’s knitting over on Ravelry.

As the yarn I’m using is superwash (I will not be beaten this time!), I’m going to knit my collar by picking up stitches later, rather than first up. I’ll also keep an eye on the length of the body and sleeves, this pattern is kind of cropped so I don’t think I’ll be in danger of it being too long, but nonetheless, I’m paying attention!

I’ve also adjusted the amount of short rows at the back neck. Highlighted by a few knitters on Ravelry, there is an extreme amount of short rows in the pattern, so rather than ending up with a blob at the back of my neck, I’ve done a normal amount of short rows. But… this has meant that I’ve had to adjust where the vertical rows of the colourwork pattern landed to compensate for the increases that hadn’t occurred yet. It’s a bit hard to explain. Needless to say, this is NOT Knit Night knitting!

This is my current Knit Night knit, Colourblocked Rib socks by Summer Lee, from her book The Sock Project. Once again the yarn is by Danni of Halfbaked Hand dyed, and is a one-off colourway.

Last weekend I visited the Hand Weavers and Spinners Guild of Vic, to see an exhibition they were hosting for Annette Finton Instagram link aka Nini & Wink Facebook link. She is a Melbourne Fibre Artist and I’ve loved seeing her artwork around Melbourne (a lot of it outside!) for many years.

Pretty cool huh? If you click on one of these images, it will take you through a gallery of larger images.

Back to knitting my Dream sweater…

A couple of FO’s

| Sonia Knits

Very excitingly, my Fragmentation Cardigan is finished, with sewn on buttons and all! I’m so glad I made the amendments to this cardigan, to give me a better fit/length, the extra effort was/is worth it. I now have a cardigan I will wear and it won’t be languishing in the wardrobe. Yay!

The final clue for Stephen West’s mystery sock knit-along also dropped this week. Whilst the final clue wasn’t a lot of knitting for some. It seems my row gauge was tighter than most, so I got to do ALL of the final patterning for the foot before the toe. Which is okay, because I would have been disappointed to have missed out on the fun basket weave rows at the end!

But I am so glad it’s now done! Another bright and fun project for the books. I’ve also done a bit of swatching this week for my next sweater project, it’s been a long time since my last sweater cast-on and I can’t wait to start.

‘Free’ Knitting time

| Sonia Knits

This week’s clue, for Stephen West’s Mystery sock-along, was much shorter as it was just the heel flap and turn instructions. I completed this clue for both socks on Thursday night. Which was kind of nice after the intense knitting of the first clue.

The heel flap is made up of ‘wedges’ and after completing mine, I saw that a few people flipped the wedges on their second sock, I wish I’d thought of that!

So with all this ‘free’ knitting time until the next clue drops on Tuesday night (my time), I’ve knit a little on my Marlene sock. Which I’m starting to feel the love for again.

And then, I ripped the band-aid off on my Fragmentation cardigan surgery.

Before:

During:

I began by re-knitting the collar. As the cardigan is top-down to begin with, I had to cut the original collar off. I then picked up the stitches and knit in the opposite direction. I went down in needle size and I also knit a double collar before doing a 3 needle bind off on the inside. The smaller needle size and the structure of the bind-off has helped cinch it in quite a bit, and it sits really nicely now. Once it’s reblocked, the garter stitches around the collar should also settle down.

I’m now working on the ribbing at the bottom, after ripping out 36 body rows or 3 of the side colour tabs. I’m really excited about this now. Depending on how complex the next sock clue is, I hope to have this on the blocking mats next weekend. Oh, and I still need to get buttons.