My EXP sweater

February 1, 2026 | Sonia Knits

As revealed this week, my EXP sweater is finished. I’m really happy with how it’s turned out. It took what felt like forever to knit, but then again everything I knit feels like that. I’d love to surprise myself one time, and say, wow that was quick knit, it only took 2 weeks… bwah ha ha, like that’s ever going to happen!

It was the half fisherman’s rib or ‘Shaker Stitch’ as Susanna describes it, that took the time. It looks like brioche, which is cool. I’ve done a little bit of brioche but not a lot, and the Shaker Stitch was actually really soothing to knit, everyone says so. That’s right, I knit this along with some of my quilting friends (turned knitters). I was really happy to have their support, because not everything in the pattern made sense. For a lot of the time, each of my friends were in front (it’s not a race!) so they had encountered the same questions I had; and were able to help. I’m looking forward to wearing my EXP with them for a photo soon.

I made only minor adjustments to the pattern. I lengthened the body and the sleeves. I omitted the decreases in the body, and I didn’t do the 2 extra rows at the raglan seam before kitchenering, I just didn’t think it was worth it for the extra ends to sew in. I also didn’t block aggressively, I didn’t need to, as I had the amount of ease. Except maybe the sleeves could do with a bit more of a block, they’re a little snug.

I’ve cast on for my next garment project, and I’m excited! It’s been in my queue for quite some time, and here we are in February already. I hope I get it done in 2 weeks 🙂

2025 Knitting review

December 31, 2025 | Sonia Knits

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.

December catch up

December 26, 2025 | 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

October 19, 2025 | 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 🙂

Geelong fibre Forum 2025

October 6, 2025 | Sonia Knits

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!

Obsessed

September 9, 2025 | Sonia Knits

I’ve cast on for Vintage Flannel a sweater by Anna Johanna and I’m obsessed! It is bringing me so much joy, I’ve wanted to make this for such a long time and it’s now coming to fruition. The yarn is by My Creative Garage, who is well known for her beautiful pinks and I love everything she dyes. The contrast colour is actually 3 colours, a speckled yarn and 2 solid colours that I’m alternating through every few rows. This was Vanessa’s idea after I showed her my inspiration…

I was inspired by test knitter: Purlific Knitter’s project she always makes beautiful projects, I love seeing what she’s knitting over on Ravelry.

As the yarn I’m using is superwash (I will not be beaten this time!), I’m going to knit my collar by picking up stitches later, rather than first up. I’ll also keep an eye on the length of the body and sleeves, this pattern is kind of cropped so I don’t think I’ll be in danger of it being too long, but nonetheless, I’m paying attention!

I’ve also adjusted the amount of short rows at the back neck. Highlighted by a few knitters on Ravelry, there is an extreme amount of short rows in the pattern, so rather than ending up with a blob at the back of my neck, I’ve done a normal amount of short rows. But… this has meant that I’ve had to adjust where the vertical rows of the colourwork pattern landed to compensate for the increases that hadn’t occurred yet. It’s a bit hard to explain. Needless to say, this is NOT Knit Night knitting!

This is my current Knit Night knit, Colourblocked Rib socks by Summer Lee, from her book The Sock Project. Once again the yarn is by Danni of Halfbaked Hand dyed, and is a one-off colourway.

Last weekend I visited the Hand Weavers and Spinners Guild of Vic, to see an exhibition they were hosting for Annette Finton Instagram link aka Nini & Wink Facebook link. She is a Melbourne Fibre Artist and I’ve loved seeing her artwork around Melbourne (a lot of it outside!) for many years.

Pretty cool huh? If you click on one of these images, it will take you through a gallery of larger images.

Back to knitting my Dream sweater…

Surprise Sock Along 2025

August 2, 2025 | Sonia Knits

SPOILERS ahead for Clue 1!

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.

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.

Finishing My Fragmentation Cardigan: Decisions Ahead

July 27, 2025 | Sonia Knits

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?!

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 hope you have a great week!

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.