Melbourne Fibrefest, formally known as The Coburg Market or the HandKnitters Guild Market, was on this weekend!
Now you know, I don’t need anymore yarn, but the Coburg market to me is like an amuse-bouche to the Sheep Show in Bendigo! All the best Melbourne Indy dyers attend and it starts the yarn purchasing juices flowing!
I like to get there early, in case Danni has some one-off self-striping balls of yarn. I was second in the queue… and Danni aka Half-baked hand dyed did not disapoint! She did move spots this year, so I dashed right past her at the start! Picture the Myer Boxing Day Sales of the 90’s 🙂
I also did lots of chatting to friends, and stall holders, it was rather difficult to buy yarn! I got some ideas and saw lots of beautiful yarn… but I’m saving myself for Bendigo.
And then a few of us from the Knitting Group went to lunch afterwards.
The skeins of sock yarn have been photographed and added to my Ravelry stash page. The yarn itself is sitting in the overflowing baskets of sock yarn in my living room. Sock yarn is moving out of my stash (just not at the rate it is coming in).
A couple of weeks ago, I signed up for the My Creative Garage Advent Calendar! I’m super excited about it, not only because it is Japanese themed (Vanessa, the hand-dyer behind My Creative Garage was inspired by the 2(!) trips she took to Japan in the last year) I’m also super excited because if you recall, I took a year off from Yarn Advent Calendars last year, and I really missed it! December 2025 was kind of sad, and then hectic and stressful (mum was in hospital).
So this December, I know is guaranteed to be great! (I know it’s not, but there’s no harm in hoping)
And then on Monday night at Knit Night, Chris mentioned the Skein Advent Calendar was launching this week. And… I guess I signed up for that one as well. What’s better than one Advent Calendar, two Advent Calendars of course. I’m just making sure I have a really happy end to 2026!
I think I already know what I’ll be knitting with both calendars as well, colourful knits are the best knits! I actually get a lot of wear out of the garments I’ve made with previous Advent Calendars. I doubt I’ll be casting on in December, but it is joyous to see the new colours each day, and dream and plan about what they may become.
The Celeste Knit-along with the Richmond Knitters is going pretty well, some people have already finished!
I’m up to the boring bit, but a bit of plain stocking stitch is quite relaxing when things have been super busy at work.
Here’s where I’m up to. I’ve been tapering the body in at the sides, so that it doesn’t end up so oversized. I think it’s looking great when I try it on. So long as I don’t make it too long, it’s going to be a good fit.
Other fun things, Damian bought a hundred Yuzus a couple of weeks ago, that is 100 Yuzus, so funny. He’s really getting into making foods at home. He made Yuzu jam, yuzu butter, yuzu brandy and yuzu salt! No yuzu went to waste! This past weekend he also made Strawberry Jam. I’m supporting him in these fruitful endeavours as much as possible.
I also purchased this very cool Sock Knitting brooch from Erstwilder, and we got Carol (my MIL) the box of pencils, she loves it!
I’ve finished some socks (more on that and pictures next time), and I’ve just cast these ones on. I really hope to finish them in a couple of weeks, as they are a little gift. It’s part of my year of making socks for others.
Yikes, it’s been a while. Things have been a little busy and distracting lately, but I’m here today to show off my recently finished Poisoned Apple Top by Lily Kate France. I managed to get some photos in yesterday before I lost the sunlight completely.
I think the top is ‘darling’ and I couldn’t be happier with how it’s turned out. I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of puff sleeves. The yarn was purchased with a gift voucher from my Melbourne siblings for last year’s birthday. It is La Bien Aimee’s DK and Kumo. The Kumo is an alpaca/silk blend. I thought the alpaca would make it less itchy than the usual mohair/silk blends going around, but I have my suspicions that it is not. It hasn’t had a proper wear test yet, I’m a little afraid.
Not a ton of knitting has been done lately, but I have started swatching for the Celeste jumper my knitting group is making for the Sheep Show this year. I wasn’t going to do a colour swatch, but my friend Nikhil inspired me.
And now I think I need to swap out one of the colours… I’ve placed another order for an alternative colour for one of the pinks. Hopefully I’ll receive the yarn by next weekend for more swatching.
Apologies for leaving you hanging with the reveal of my Christmas ornament. December has been a lot. It’s like all of the crappy things that could happen in a year jammed into a month, namely our 3 parents being in hospital for unrelated things. For the record January to November were pretty good. But some good things also happened in December.
Beginning with my Knitting group’s Christmas party. I made this little fellow for our Ornament swap:
The pattern is called Scrap yarn Hedgehog by Midori Hirose. It looks tricky, but wasn’t, my kind of knitting. I liked not having to attach things, it was pretty much a all-in-one knit. I hoped to make one for our tree and my niece, but as I mentioned December has been busy.
I went to Daylesford with friends for 2 nights. It felt like a different retreat this time, I wish I could have been more present. That’s okay we get to do it again in just a few months time.
Fast forward to Christmas eve and we were celebrating with our friends at their place. Our usual traditions are KK, 2 competitive activities and lunch. It is always very enjoyable and we look forward to it every year since it has become a tradition.
Here is Damian modelling our completed balloon wreath. We won, but only because Damian bribed the judge, outrageous!
Christmas Day this year was at one of my sister’s homes. It was a wonderful celebration to have everyone there. Except for Suzy (my eldest sister) who was missed.
With less than 5 days left for the year, I’m taking stock of my UFO’s for which there are quite a few, more than usual anyway.
3 pairs of socks, my EXP sweater, and my crochet blanket. I will be able to complete my Christmas socks (8ply), but I’m not sure about the rest! And I really wanted to finished my Nimue blanket this year, gah!
I will say, I am really enjoying knitting the EXP, but it’s quite slow with the half fisherman’s rib stitches. My 4 friends who are also making this with me are further along!
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.
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 🙂
Before I get into my happy diversion this week, I want to let you know what I’ve decided about my Fragmentation Cardigan. Thank you for your supportive comments!
I took the cardigan along to Knit Night last week, and tried it on in front of everyone. I had so many helpful suggestions. Including cinching in the neckline to stop it from ‘dragging’ so much, April even made some running stitches through the neckline to visualise this. What I found most helpful though was when I asked people to try the cardigan on. Out of the 5 people who tried it on, it looked absolutely perfect on about 3 of them. Despair! It was the right length on them and it looked great, much better than it currently looks on me. I was green with envy.
Instead of gifting my cardigan to one of these wonderful knitters, I’ve decided to go back and shorten the body to the right length, it might be a bit tricky, but it’s totally do-able. I may also shorten the sleeves, even though I like long sleeves (we’ll see). I’m going to re-knit the collar so that it is snugger. I might possibly make it a double (folded down and stitched) collar. I’m not sure if that would look weird with a single thickness buttonband? So that’s what I’m going to do. It might add 2 weeks to the making, but what is 2 more weeks or 3? Seeing it on my knitting mates, really made me want it more. Who knows, I might even consider going back and shortening my other oversized sweaters.
SPOILERS are coming!
On Monday night, I also got some opinions on my colour selection of minis for the sock along. I felt pretty happy with the choices I made on Monday night. Then came Thursday when I cast-on, and I changed my mind.
My original colour EAn old Knit Picks cord, literally snapped!
It’s a very graphic design, which I believe requires mostly solid colours. In Stephen West’s You Tube tutorial on the first clue, he suggests using your speckled or variagated yarn for colour E, which is the ‘droplet’ stitch section. I didn’t think that worked very well. I also didn’t like the contrast in my Latvian braid (and I knit it too tight). So I ripped back to the end of the cuff and switched some colour choices, and added in more colours. More is more afterall!
Here’s my Clue 1 finished. I had to scramble around to find another needle to start sock 2. I’m hoping to avoid second sock syndrome and have this done in time for Clue 2. It’s super fun so far.
It’s only 360-ish days until Bendigo 2026 as my husband cruelly tells me! What a weekend, and it was over much too fast.
As usual, we headed up early on the Wednesday. We had brunch at our favourite cafe, the one that serves tiny chocolate teddies with your coffee! I visited the Bendigo Woollen Mills, and bought a jumpers worth of yarn; Cumulo which is a limited edition NZ Perendale, non-superwash. I also bought their beautiful publication which was released last year about the history of the mill.
I thought that would be my one and only trip to the mill for the weekend, but I was very wrong. I also visited on Friday after the show, as they had just released a limited-edition Corriedale wool. I was very tempted, but walked away empty-handed. I also visited on Saturday after the show, to assist our friend Charlotte (it was manic, I’ve never been there whilst it’s that busy). Charlotte has never been to the mill, she bought a few balls and left very happy. Now I know why it’s smart to go early in the week before the hoards of crafters arrive in town.
Pictured above are the Penny gloves (mitts) by Petite Knit, that I finished knitting on Thursday afternoon. For the show, I also knitted a colour sample of a beanie for my friend Danni aka HalfBaked hand-dyed. And because this was a sample for the show, I knit another version of the Bendigo Beanie by Sanna & Co. for me. The weekend, turned out to not be too cold with lots of sunshine, which was wonderful. Which meant, I didn’t need to wear my mitts for much of the time; and when my friend Sharon (a second Sharon) turned up on Saturday wearing a store bought beanie, I immediately gifted her my Bendigo Beanie. It looked great on her!
On Friday the show began! In the morning, my knitting group took some group photos of us wearing our Wool & Honey knits and hexagon/bee hive inspired accessories. 10 of us then attended the Women of Wool luncheon, which was fabulous this year.
My excited face on Friday morning!
A little bit of shopping happened before and post lunch.
On Saturday, I did a spot of shopping and ate my first Bendigo Hot Jam Donut. Our non-crafty friends arrived (except for Charlotte, she’s a mad crocheter) plus Damian’s mum, and I spent the day looking at the sheep, shearing and sheep dog trials.
The Richmond Knitters also had a second photo shoot of Wool & Honey knits for the Saturday crew.
Saturday night was the knitting group’s Bendigo Dinner. We had some extra guests, designers & hand dyers which made for a fun and lively night.
Sunday I arrived home with quite a haul. It was an amazing weekend, with souvenirs to match.
I kind of diverted from my shopping list, purchasing sock yarn that wasn’t on the list! I’ve come home with enough for 11 pairs, gasp! And 3 sweaters worth of yarn for planned projects which were on the list, hooray for me. If you’d like to take a look at the details, check them out on Ravelry, I’m just ‘Sonia’ there.
My ‘Bendigo Sweater’ for the Richmond Knitters is finished and blocked. It has turned out even better than the first Wool & Honey sweater that I knit six years ago. I love the length of the sleeves and the electric blue colour. The benefit of doing something more than once is, you’ll always do it better the second time, you would hope! There is something I’d like to re-do… but perhaps after the Show when the pressure is off.
As it’s been so cold here in Melbourne (and Bendigo town is always colder) my mind is turning to the possible accessories I can knit to go with my sweater. I don’t normally go all in, with an entire matchy matchy Bendigo ensemble, but it’s really cold right now and I don’t want to be whilst I’m in Bendigo.
I’m hoping to knit a hat, mitts and cowl, that’s do-able within a week right? I’ll report back.
Sonia Knits 