After finishing my sister’s socks last week, my attention naturally turned to the next pair on my knitting queue: Damian’s birthday socks. Keeping this project under wraps is going to be a challenge, but if I can at least keep one key design element a secret, I’ll be happy knowing there’s still a bit of surprise left.
These socks will feature a small colourwork section, which meant I had to buy some extra yarn. “But Sonia, don’t you already have a sock yarn stash for every eventuality?” I hear you ask. Not in 8-ply, I don’t! The additional yarn is due to arrive tomorrow…
In the meantime, I’ve turned my attention back to my Marlene socks. I’m finally back in the groove with them, and I’m keen to get them finished, especially since they were cast on back in February 2025! This would also be the perfect opportunity to make some progress on my Nimue crochet blanket, but with Damian’s sock yarn arriving so soon, there isn’t much time before a new project inevitably jumps onto the needles.
I completed making the pair of (secret) Flamingo socks… this afternoon! About 2 hours before the birthday dinner for my sister Silvia. I’ve never knit so close up to a deadline, let alone wet-block right before gifting, hilarious! And weirdly I was quite calm about it. The socks were handed over a little damp and on sock blockers.
My sister was thrilled, as was I. I feel as though the socks are a perfect representation of Silvia, what a design brief! The flamingos, the tropical themed self-striping yarn (by HodgePodge fibres) and the co-ordinating cuff and heel (Lang Jawoll). Thank you extensive sock yarn collection! The other yarns used included, Advent mini skeins for the Flamingos and flowers and the white is Patons Patonyle.
The Flamboyant Flamingos pattern is by Charlotte Stone. After knitting these socks, I would highly recommend her patterns. I feel other designers don’t tackle the ‘getting the colourwork over the heel’ situation very well. Just going up a needle size, is not going to cut it. Charlotte has you increase your stitch count before the colourwork section (in this case by 8 sts), and then decrease back down after the colourwork. Huzzah! I have the formula for unlocking knitting colourwork socks and can apply these principles to other colourwork sock patterns not necessarily by Charlotte.
The creative juices are flowing for the next surprise pairs. But I’ll need to keep these under wraps until after the gifting, as the recipients are readers of the blog. You know me, I don’t want to spoil a surprise.
I may have been hinting at this a little for a couple of months. Today is the big reveal… (Because I do have one of my sister’s read my blog, hi Suzy! I kind of needed to keep it under wraps until now). I’m knitting socks for my siblings this year! Their birthdays are somewhat spaced out, so I feel as though this is an achievable goal.
My sock drawer is full, I’m drowning (in a good way) in sock yarn; and I love knitting socks. I thought this was a great solution to getting my sock yarn stash down, except I’m still buying sock yarn faster than I’m knitting socks. Nevermind that!
Today we’re catching up as a family for one of my sister’s birthdays, and also for my niece who has turned 19 this month. When I completed my sister’s socks, I thought, maybe I should do a quick pair of 8ply socks for my niece, her feet are probably not going to get any bigger!
So I knit Lily up a pair in Halfbaked hand-dyed yarn in DK rainbow. Who doesn’t love a rainbow on their feet? These are a basic pair of socks with a Partridge heel, super fancy. I hope she loves them.
I also knit 2 pairs for my youngest sister, not sure I’ll be able to knit 2 pairs for all of my siblings, but I felt that I needed to show my appreciation for all that she does.
The neon self-striping Vanilla socks are also in a 4ply yarn by Danni from Halfbaked hand dyed. The varigated socks are in a DK yarn by The Knitting Man Recommends, with the cuff and toe yarn also by Danni. These are the Hibernal Socks by Summer Lee. I think they turned out really pretty and are nice and chunky for the cold weather we’ve been having in Melbourne.
I can’t wait to cast on my next pair of socks, but that birthday is just 1 month away. The colourway I’ve selected, I think suitably matches that sister! So fun.
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).
The funnest month of the year, went by pretty fast. I received some lovely gifts from Damian and my family, all of them sheepy and knitting related.
One of Damian’s gifts made me shed tears! He’s a bugger!!
I’m looking forward to this birthday present… especially since I just watched The Sheep Detectives in an advanced screening today. Baby lambs are just so cute.
Also today, this morning, very early, I went out to the Yarra Valley yarn market. It’s the first time I’ve been to this market, but it has already been running for a few years. The bad weather did not dampen my spirits, and in the 1 hour I had to browse, I got around to most stalls twice.
I pretty much just gave all my money to Danni from Halfbaked Hand dyed. I also bought a special birthday gift for our friend’s daughter who is a crocheter (not pictured, just in case).
A little knitting was done in April, but not enough, it’s never enough!
I’m almost at the end of the colour work portion of my Celeste Sweater for Bendigo. With two and a half months to go before the Sheep show, is it too much to be able to finish this and knit another garment?! And knit another 4 pairs of socks? yeah probably!
Today, I wondered if it was time to do another ‘stash count’. It’s been a little over a year since the last count (December 2024 to be exact)
Back then it was a shocking 397,809 metres!
So you can imagine my surprise that when I downloaded my Stash excel spreadsheet from Ravelry today, and summed the total of the meterage column to find I have:
379,870 metres
Amazing! I’m amazed, that’s a reduction of 17,939 metres! Every other time I’ve done a stash count over the years, the number has always increased. I’m not exactly certain how this stash reduction has occurred. Perhaps I gifted more yarn than I thought in the past year? I have continued to purchase yarn (probably more than I’ve knit, 8,820 metres in 2025). Hopefully this is not an accounting error!
I don’t have any stash goals moving forward, except to not increase the stash count by too much! My stash storage is pretty much at capacity, so it would be good to turn the stash over, buy with intention, and knit a lot more socks (and not purchase anymore sock yarn!). Let’s make a date for 12 months time to see how I go.
This week I’ve cast on a new garment project. I’m knitting the Poisoned Apple Top by Lily Kate France. It has been in my queue for quite some time, and I even selected the yarn specially for it, with a gift voucher from my Melbourne siblings for my last birthday.
The yarn I’m using is La Bien Aimée Merino DK, and Kumo for the fluff.
I was very excited about casting on and have made fast progress. Then a couple of days ago, when looking at the pattern photo for the 1000th time, I realised I might need a new bra to be able to wear this knit, gah. Then I knit some more, and I realised that the Kumo (the translucent part) was not looking all that translucent. Kumo is an alpaca, silk blend. It looks denser than your regular silk/mohair blend.
I’m looking forward to finishing this and hopefully it will be everything I wanted, look at those puff sleeves! Even if the top section isn’t transparent, I think it will still be a lovely top, and who knows, perhaps I’ll make another one from yarn in my stash, I’m pretty sure I have options!
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.
The TAFTA Geelong Fibre Forum has been running for around 30 years. A very long time ago, 2007 to be exact I attended my final Fibre Forum workshop until this year. Prior to this I attended the forum for 7 consecutive years. Whilst the order of worshops undertaken are sketchy, the classes themselves have always been wonderful and worthwhile. On top of that, the experience of being at the Fibre Forum has been incredible. Last week I was reminded of that again, being surrounded by so many women (over a hundered, 150? and just a couple of men), it was so enlightening (and weird at the same time).
I have been a subscriber to the TAFTA e-newsletter since the magazine ended (yes, there used to be a magazine!). So when Jo Hamilton’s Crochet Portraiture workshop was announced, I just knew I had to return.
The Fibre Forum is hosted at Geelong Grammar School, whilst the kids are on school holidays. The Dining Hall is just like being at Hogwarts. I lived-in for the whole week, and was served breakfast, lunch and dinner (and morning tea) each day. It was Heaven.
For my workshop, I decided to do a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. I brought along an Ikea bag of yarn in colours that I thought would work for the image I was going to crochet.
For a novice, the technique is very slow going (for the experienced it would also be slow!), with lots of trial and error (learning) along the way. Jo is a fantastic teacher, with great patience. I wish I had gotten more done, but I feel as though I can continue on and complete the portrait on my own. It’s only my first portrait, and it is a bit wonky, as to be expected. Jo has been using this technique for around 20 years and her work is spectacular.
Whilst recovering and coming down from the high that was the week, I’ve picked up my hook and filled in some more areas since Friday.
Whilst working on the portrait, a lot of the time is spent looking and checking to make sure the stitches you’ve put in are correct.
Here’s a photo of my class and some of their creations, click on the first image to make them larger.
Wednesday night was Party Night! The theme this year was: Black and White with a touch of … Now in my memory of the Forum, the dress-up theme was always wild; there have been some super wacky costumes, mostly worn by the former organiser Janet De Boer. So I came dressed as Wednesday… with a touch of severed Thing.
I might have been overdressed, ha ha. I hope to attend again in the future and I hope it’s sooner than 18 years. I’ll be back to my regular schedule of knitting soon. I almost got no knitting done this week!
I’ve finished knitting my Fragmentation Cardigan, I think. It’s been blocked, but I still need to purchase buttons, I think. I’ve tried it on now, and it has grown a bit. I wish I made a size smaller. It looks a little oversized on me, which is not my style. It’s also a tad long. Do I buy the buttons and attached them, then judge? Or do I remove the button bands and seam up the middle, making it a sweater? For now, I’m going to mope, it’s been a mopey day. I’ve unintentionally made a couple of oversized sweaters in the past year or so, and this will be the third one. It’s starting to get to me. The three sweaters have in common: superwash yarn, garter stitch or mosaic (stretchy) stitch. 2 of them are by Stephen West. I’m feeling some rage here. Maybe I’ll sew the buttons on (and sew the buttonband down for stability), and it will be fine. Maybe. I might ask my knitting group for their advice, I wouldn’t want to be rash.
I have cast-off my Hot Jam Donut socks (a Bendigo colourway by Halfbaked Hand dyed) in 8ply and they are super cosy. I added a bit of silk mohair to the red and white sections, as I had some random fluff in my stash. They feel amazing on my feet, and they fit hooray.
Apparently I’m participating in the Stephen West mystery sock along which is launching on Tuesday, Sharon told me I had to.
The socks require 5 mini skeins of yarn. I’ve wound up some minis from a My Creative Garage mini skein set that I bought at last year’s Bendigo Show (go me!), and I’ve also gathered some speckled minis from a Little Woollie advent calendar. I’ll only need 5 of these minis, but I’m keeping my options open for now.
When I posted my Bendigo haul online this year, my sister who came to the show last year, commented that she hadn’t used any of the yarn she purchased from last year yet. I then begain to wonder if I had?!
Last year’s Bendigo haul
Turns out, I hadn’t either! I’ve used the bags, sure! And now I’ve wound up the mini skein set for the mystery sock along. I’m also finally going to cast on for my long desired sweater Vintage Flannel by Anna Johanna from her book Strands of Joy II. It’s going to be in yarn purchased specifically for this from last year’s Bendigo. Vanessa from My Creative Garage, also dyed up some extra skeins for me especially for this. Today I wound them all up. The pattern is not going to be released as an individual pattern until next year (I thought it would be released this year, so I delayed casting on) but not anymore, as my sister bought the book for my birthday, thanks Suzy!
Just realised Vanessa named this colour after me!I hate winding yarn!
Sonia Knits 