crafts

Stash Count and my new cast on

| Sonia Knits

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!

December catch up

| Sonia Knits

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!

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 🙂