Bendigo 2025!

July 21, 2025 | Sonia Knits

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.

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.

I’ve got lots of knitting to do.

Intermission

May 25, 2025 | Sonia Knits

It’s been an interesting week. I’ve got a cold, it began as a regular (not too bad, garden-variety cold) and slowly turned into a horrible coughing-green-slime-kind-of-a-cold. At this point I threw in the towel and called my doctor. Aren’t antibiotics wonderful? I try to avoid taking them if I can, I think it’s been years. I am on the mend, but I’m not there yet.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my sisters whose birthday is coming up, asked if I could knit her a pair of fingerless mitts. Wow, I don’t often get requests from family members to knit them anything. It doesn’t take a birthday for me to make for anyone, especially family. So I went to my stash. I gave her some yarn options, from which she made a selection, then I gave her a few more options (based on her first choice) but she still stuck with her original choice. The yarn is deep stash, Colinette Jitterbug. Gosh, it’s such a good yarn which sadly has been discontinued for many years now. The colourway is Forest.

I’m knitting up a pair of Penny Gloves by Petite Knit. It is a super simple pattern, but it fits well. There is only one size in the pattern, so I hope it fits my sister as well as they fit me. I should have time to finish the second mitt and give them a good soak and block in time for next weekend.

I’ve also finished plying the singles (Cat & Sparrow, 100% merino) that have been on my wheel for an embarrassingly long time. I look forward to winding it off and giving it a bath to measure the yarn weight and meterage. I have a loose idea of a Sophie shawl by Petite Knit but we’ll see.

May is for catching up

May 18, 2025 | Sonia Knits

My knitting progress has felt slow this month, probably because there has been much less time to knit. Because of this, and the fact that I have 2 sweater projects already on the needles, I’ve decided not to cast on a new sweater this month, but to try to ‘catch-up’ instead. I haven’t touched my Wool & Honey sweater, but I’ve made good progress on my Fragmentation Cardigan by Stephen West.

I’m on the ribbing now, then the sleeves, then the button bands, then the matching hood… still so much more to do. I have really enjoyed knitting this though. The modular aspect is so fun. Interestingly, looking ahead to the sleeves, the pattern calls for it to be in stocking stitch. But I think I’m going to do, what a few other knitters on Ravelry have done, and do the sleeves in garter stitch to match the rest of the garment. It’s weird that Stephen West made them in stocking stitch, it kind of bloats the top of the sleeve.

This month we took a quick trip to Kyneton, we haven’t been in more than a year. We’d been missing our favourite French rural restaurant, and there was a yarn show the following day. Of course this weekend was orchestrated by me.

Danni of Half-baked Hand dyed was at the market, and I visited her first! I might have gone a bit bananas at her stall. She does great self-striping sock yarn, and I’ve grown quite fond of 8ply socks, so I purchased both 4 & 8ply gobstopper balls.

I’ve also done a little spinning, and cast-on some DK socks since last time. I just need to ply up this gorgeous pink fibre from Cat & Sparrow, perhaps tonight. The sock yarn is also by Danni, in her special Bendigo Show colourway, Hot Jam Donuts! I’m holding a strand of fluff in the white and red sections, for some extra coziness. Only 2 months to Bendigo, squee!

Birthday Month!

April 23, 2025 | Sonia Knits

The happiest month of the year, should be your birthday month am I right? Or at least equal with July (for the Bendigo Sheep & Wool Show) or December for Christmas of course. Thankfully these months are well-spaced, so there’s always something to look forward to.

How are my monthly sweaters getting on?

I’ve put a good dent in my ‘March’ sweater, Wool & Honey by Andrea Mowry. The yarn is named Vivacious by Fyberspates. It is a really gorgeous colour and much deeper in real life. I’m hoping and expecting the slipped stitches which make up the hexagons to settle down a bit after blocking. They look a little springy and spider web like at the moment.

When April came around, I wasn’t mentally ready to cast on my ‘April’ sweater until I got to dividing the sleeves from the body. But now that’s done and it’s easy knitting from here on in… I’ve cast on for Stephen West’s Fragmentation Cardigan. I’m using my Louie & Lola Advent calendar from 2024. I selected the DK weight version, and it is my most favourite yarn calendar yet. I spent a few joyous days arranging and rearranging my colour sequence for the modular panels in the yoke.

I love knitting with colour so much! I will get back to knitting a one colour project in June perhaps! Spoiler alert, the ‘May’ sweater is also going to be super fun.

Louie & Lola have just released their pre-order for this years calendar; but sadly it’s a 12 days of Christmas calendar, 4ply 50gm mini skeins. I really enjoy opening an advent everyday in December, not to mention working with lots of colour, so I’m passing on this calendar this year. Who knows, maybe I won’t purchase a calendar, but make up my own from stash? I won’t make any rash decisions just yet.

At this rate (and because I’ve taken this week off work), I should be finished with the yoke colourwork part today. 8ply is so much faster than 4ply. And because it’s a cardigan, it’s just knitting all the way.

I’ve just picked up a copy of Laine’s newest book 52 Weeks of Scrap Yarn from Sunspun (as well as some delicious Birthday yarn). It’s like this book was made for me, seriously! There’s some really great projects in here, and I know it will be a great source of inspiration for future scrappy projects.

A colourful weekend

March 10, 2025 | Sonia Knits

I’m still going on my Stripes! sweater by Andrea Mowry. For some reason I thought I would be done by now, but a week for a sleeve is probably fair. Thank you for your kind suggestions, about knitting the sleeves 2 at a time. I just really detest knitting anything 2 at a time! I also got fed up with having to grab the next colour. So, I wound all of the yarn (in the correct order) into a gobstopper ball for fun.

The long weekend has been a good time to get a few things done. I’ve been dyeing, or rather over-dyeing some yarn and a sweater! I’ve wanted to correct some dye jobs (that I did) for a while now. Every time I looked at my yarn set aside for sweaters in my stash. I haven’t wanted to use the ones I dyed… so it was either fix it, or donate it.

These are the ‘Before’ skeins. I no longer like variegated yarn for sweaters, my tastes have changed…

This is the ‘After’

I’m much happier with these… but some of the skeins are still not quite right. The tarragon skeins look pretty good (phew!), but the ‘night’ ones have a few light patches in them. The bloodwood skeins were all good, except for one with a shocking flash of red. This was due to it being missed in the dye pot.

And here’s the Dragonfly sweater I knit, originally dyed in dusk.

Whilst I love the sweater, I never really liked all the white bits. So I attempted to over dyed in fuchsia. I kind of messed up the dyeing on this one too. I put in 50gms of dye for the 500gms of the sweater into the dye pot. Ten minutes in, I began thinking the colour was not deep enough to cover up the dusk colour. So what did I do? I dissolved the rest of the dye in my glass jar and threw it into the dye pot. Amateur! The result is uneven dyeing, there’s some really dark bits, and some not as dark bits. Dyeing is hard work! I have so much more appreciation for hand-dyers after this weekends escapades. The sweater may have gotten smaller as well…

Not to worry, I’ve ordered more dye, and the touch-ups will continue next weekend. Then I may never dye again.

Here’s my cast-on for March, I’ve casted on today. I’m knitting Wool and Honey by Andrea Mowry for my knitting group’s Bendigo sweater. If you’re not from here, The Australian Sheep and Wool show is in Bendigo, a large regional town in Victoria. It takes place every July. This is the 5 or 6th year my knitting group has made this tradition. I absolutely love this colour. This will be the second time I’ve made this, it was super fun the first time 6 years ago.

I think I may lengthen the sleeves on both versions. It’s been a week of improvements.

Sentimental

February 7, 2025 | Sonia Knits

19 years ago I lived in San Francisco. It’s when I went from being a knitter, into being a Knitter with a capital K, which just means I became more obsessed. My husband was posted there on secondment, and I joined him obviously! I was unable to work for the first 6 months, which was great, depending on your point of view. We lived in the Marina district (right near Fishermans Wharf), with my local yarn store ‘Greenwich Yarn’, just a ten minute walk away. The whole experience is now dreamlike.

Laurie, who was the owner of Greenwich Yarn, was wonderful and so welcoming, offering help to her loyal customers. It was a small store, but it was very well curated. There was a lovely wooden table in the middle of this narrow store, that you were welcome to come and knit around during the day, even eat lunch there, which is forbidden by yarn stores these days! It almost felt like home. I spent hours there, which I had a lot of. When I made a friend at a Knit Night, separate to the yarn store, we would both hang out here together. What a time!

The oldest yarn in my stash comes from Greenwich Yarn. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, and now I think it’s time to cast on.

It’s Crystal Palace Panda Wool, it’s a sock yarn. Laurie recommended I get an extra ball, because of the bamboo content, the yardage is less than usual. Isn’t the colour dreamy.

I’ve decided to pair this with also one of the oldest patterns I own. It’s from a magazine, and it’s by my favourite sock designer Cookie A. She no longer designs patterns, but she also lived in the Bay Area at the time. I met Cookie at my very first Stitches West yarn show whilst living in SF. I bought a bundle of her patterns, that were print-outs in plastic sleeves; I still have them.

But for this yarn, I wanted to knit socks that were almost Mermaid like. This is how I selected to knit Cookie’s Marlene socks.

I haven’t cast-on yet, but I will in February. So this is a super sentimental knit for me after all these years.

I’d like to get through more of the oldest parts of my stash (as well as the new), so that I don’t have things that are 20 years old! And maybe they won’t be as precious as this project, but it’s time.

I hope to catch you up on my other projects soon, maybe this weekend.

Last day of Craftcation

January 12, 2025 | Sonia Knits

As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end…

I’ve had a good break, and I’ve done lots of things in between crocheting, knitting and (a little) spinning. It’s been great!

I am so pleased with the progress I’ve made on my Sabela top. I’m past the sleeve divide, and I’ve tried it on, and I think it’s looking great. I’ve decided it’s going to have long sleeves, it’s going to be an in-between seasons garment. Whilst it’s light, 4 ply weight (closer to 3ply), the merino/linen blend is quite warm, so short sleeves (my original intention), doesn’t make sense. The yarn is Summer Fiesta by GORWM in case you want some for yourself.

I’ve also cast on a pair of Vanilla socks on January 1 (see above). So now, I’m thinking of attempting to knit a pair of socks and a garment per month again, how fun is that? I’ve made such great progress on this holiday of mine! I’m now contemplating my February cast-ons, whilst knitting my last stitches before work tomorrow. Do you have any knitting plans for the year?

Thanks Maureen for your comment on my last post about my mum and me looking alike 🙂 I’ll write more soon about my intentions for my Advent yarn… I think I’m changing my mind about one of the calendars!

2024 knit & crochet recap

December 31, 2024 | Sonia Knits

I love a good crafty round-up, don’t you?

This year, I knit approximately 2,000 more metres than I did last year, for a grand total of 7,158 metres. I cast-on and completed 4 garments for myself, 2 pairs of socks for me, 1 pair of socks for Damian, 4 hats for other people and a few Christmas decorations to top it all off.

Had I completed my Nimue blanket this year, my project yardage would have blown out of the water! Something to look forward to 2025, I make the rules 🙂

Apart from my blanket, I’m only left with one other UFO, my Painting Honeycomb socks by Stephen West. I’ve begun the second sock, and have made the double thick cuff, so now onto the fun parts. For keen observers, I’ve put my flower socks by Summer Lee into Hibernation Zzz (a Ravelry term). I’m going to restart these in a larger size sometime in the future, so that they can get over my heels more comfortably.

I have not done a stash count of yarn for a few years. Since March of 2019 to be exact. This is where you use Ravelry to total up your stash entries. I don’t think mine is going to be 100 per cent accurate, but doing a stocktake of odd balls and left-over yarns is not my idea of a fun time.

In 2019 it was:

Today it is:

397,809 Metres

Give or take a few thousand metres. Where do I put it all?! A number is just a number, and I’m totally not freaked out by it. Wondering how long I can keep my advent yarns displayed in my living room is where my mind is at right now. I think, I’ve settled on 3 projects for the 3 advents, and that’s a relief!

2024 has been an interesting year, mostly a good year for which I’m grateful. I look forward to beginning a new year with hope and exciting new (self-imposed) challenges, none of the bad ones please.

Here’s a photo of my mum and my Melbourne siblings celebrating Christmas together

Happy New Year!

Alpaca Road Trip, Crafty Weekend & Sock Knitting

October 20, 2024 | Sonia Knits

A couple of weeks ago, I took a Tuesday off from work and joined a ‘Road Trip’ organised by my local yarn store Sunspun to go to my favourite Alpaca Farm and Woollen Mill, Great Ocean Road Woollen Mill! Do not be fooled by the name, they are now known as GORWM since relocating inland to Burrumbeet (near Ballarat).

It was a lovely way to spend a day. Virginia, the owner of Sunspun had it all very well organised, and chatting to Nick and Isabel (from GORWM) is always a fun time, they’re so cool.

The highlight for me was meeting some of the Alpacas, they had just been shorn not too long ago. They are so cute. I bought some yarn, of course I bought some yarn! For a summer knit, hopefully once my Calm Down cardigan is finished.

Then last weekend, I headed to Rye for a crafty retreat with girlfriends, it was such a lovely relaxing time. None of us quite know how long we’ve been going away together for, but we might work it out one day!

I’ve just finished these ‘Canberra’ socks, in Halfbaked Hand-dyed’s DK sock. These are my favourite socks yet.

Now back to knitting my Calm Down cardigan before my weekend is over.