Late last year, when I had no business casting-on for an unplanned project (I was in the middle of knitting accessories for our Christmas visit to New York)… I got an email from my sister who lives in Perth.

A bit of back story first. S and I were avid knitters as teenagers. I didn’t stop knitting since that time. S on the other hand, has returned to knitting in the last year or so with vengeance. Now many things have changed in ‘the knitting world’ since we were young. Well, we now have… Ravelry and there’s ‘Unicorn’ yarn and the crazy updates that go along with purchasing unique hand dyed yarn, indy pattern designers etc.

So back to the email, S was pretty miffed about not being able to purchase La Bien Aimée yarn for the Andrea Mowry Fluorite socks knit-along, because it had sold out when she happened to have looked at their online store. I was not surprised, I don’t even have any La Bien Aimée yarn in my stash!

Being the good sister and enabler that I am. I wanted to help her find an alternative yarn for her project so that she could participate in the knit-along during Thanksgiving. I spent more than half a day ‘researching’ and compiling skeins of yarn that could be purchased within Australia at a fraction of the cost of a La Bien Aimée kit.

And this is where I came unstuck… I decided I needed to join her for this knit along! Such is the way when you’re ‘helping’ a friend purchase yarn.

The yarn I selected is Hedgehog fibres. We only needed 7 colours for the knee high ‘faded’ sock project, but I got 2 extra colours just in case. Did you know it’s really hard buying yarn for fades on a computer screen?!

S made a start on her socks right away whilst I was finishing up a NY hat. It was a lot of fun doing this knit-along with my sister. Neither of us have finished our socks yet… at least I don’t think S has. I kind of want to finish mine before her, so I haven’t asked for an update, so as to tip her off hahaha… (but I think she might read the blog…)

I knit on my socks whilst in New York, it’s the only project I took.

The first sock is now complete and I’m past the heel on my second sock. I’m hoping to finish these up in the next week so I can begin a special new project. More on that later.

…Meanwhile, my sister has been back to the La bien Aimee website and has purchased herself a Fluorite sock kit. The force is strong with this one.

So I blogged for a little bit last year, and then I stopped. I really can’t say why. Not because it’s a secret, I just really don’t know why.

I got the notification for my blog renewal, and I wondered whether it was time to give it up, was this the year to let it go?

Then, I went back to my last posts of last year, and it surprised me that I had even stuck it out for 5 months (considering I wrote just one post in 2017). Oh yeah, I wrote about stuff and my makes and I had nice photos of things for 5 months. And then nothing. I didn’t write about the epic hat making of winter 2018 which saw me knit about 20 hats for family and friends, including these little people…

I didn’t write about anything past May. And I had a good year, with lots of makes and fun things to talk about.

I liked looking back at my posts…

I think I’ve finally found the purpose of my blog. It’s not for the traffic… trust me, it’s not that! I write for me.

So hi there future me, this is 2019. *

*friends and voyeurs of knitting are also very welcome.

 

I’ve done something extraordinarily spontaneous this week. I’ve booked to go to Vogue Knitting Live San Francisco!

I only became aware of the event about a week ago. And even then, I hadn’t considered going because I thought it would be held outside of SF, like a long way out as Stitches West is.

Then on Thursday morning, that all changed when I discovered it was being held downtown in SF. By Thursday evening I had booked in. Crazy!

It’s my first time to a Vogue Knitting Live event. I’m thrilled with my itinerary of classes with Isabell Kraemer, Mary Jane Mucklestone, Romi Hill and Nathan Taylor of the Sockmatician podcast. I’ll also be attending lectures by Clara Parkes, Ambah O’Brien and Cecelia Campochiaro. There’s a Gala dinner with Kaffe Fassett on the Saturday evening. So many exciting things to look forward to.

I didn’t think I would be traveling for a knitting event for a little while, but having one in a city that I love, was pretty hard to say no to.