Garden Variety

Hello and Happy New Year! I can't believe we're almost to the end of January already!  Things have been a little bit bananas lately including the weather!  We seem to be on a bit of a yo-yo string with Mother Nature these days - bitterly cold then a drastic upswing to just below freezing then plummeting once again into a deep freeze.  The boys have had a total of five weather related school closures already this month (I've had four).  And we have another storm expected to roll through early this week, so that ought to be interesting!

Despite the weather, I'm still getting out and going for my daily walks that I started doing January 1st, 2021.  I'm pretty impressed with myself that I haven't missed a single day in over a year as of yet!  On those bitterly cold days though I need to make sure I'm dressed properly, which for me is wearing ALL the wool!  I'm pretty excited to have a new source of wooly warmth to show you today!

I started the Garden Variety Wrap during a mystery knit along with Paper Daisy Creations back in the fall of 2020.  I thought it would be an easy one to finish given there was only to be four clues to knit.  I was so certain about my ability to get it done I even bought brand new wool for the project instead of digging through my stash.  

I was really eager to start when clue one came out in September of 2020.  I had a bit of a false start and had to rip out my beginning,  but not to be deterred I cast on again and forged on finishing clue one a week into October.  Then I worked through clue two and started into clue three.  Then I lost all will to knit, put it aside and didn't pick it up again until after Christmas this year, when I decided I really did feel like knitting again, but couldn't really decide on what to start.  Not to mention I was starting to feel a little bit guilty about having bought all the wool and then just let it go to the wayside.

When I picked it up on December 29th I was about a third of the way through clue three.  It took me a bit to figure out where I was exactly and what I was doing but by New Years Eve I was finishing up the last rows and started out the next day with the fourth and final clue! I finished all the knitting by January 25th and was ready to weave in the few ends I hadn't woven in as I went and then block it.

I'm so happy that I picked it up again and finished it!  I absolutely love how it turned out - I had some misgivings as I was knitting that I might not like that the design wasn't symmetrical - sometimes I can be a bit funny about that sort of thing - but in the end it doesn't bother me at all.  I actually am quite fond of it!

My wrap is huge and snuggly warm!  It's perfect as a scarf for keeping the wind off my face when I'm going for my walk, which is how I normally wear it, but it is also big enough to throw over my shoulders if I'm a bit chilly and need a little bit of an extra layer.

This is my second wrap/shawl pattern from Paper Daisy Creations and I have to say I'm really impressed with the way she writes her patterns.  Both this one and the Midwestern Afternoon shawl were easy to follow and fun to knit! They're both certainly easy to wear too!  I've been using my Garden Variety constantly since it finished drying and up until wearing this one, I've been wearing my Midwestern Afternoon on endless repeat this winter!

I'm tempted to knit another Paper Daisy Creations wrap - I've had Flickering Light queued for a few years now - but seeing how pleased I was to finish one work in progress, I decided before starting something new I'd pull out another wip and finish it first.  

Now I'm plugging away at Polarity by Elena Nodel.  I started this one way, way back in February of 2017 using some black alpaca fingering weight that N and A had brought back for me from their trip to Peru and a skein of brightly coloured Colinette Jitterbug in the Red Parrot colourway that a friend had gifted me a few years earlier.  I don't even have much left to do on my Polarity.  A few more "teeth" and it'll be done and I'll have a fiesta of a scarf ready to be an antidote to any grey and gloomy weather!  

After that I have two sweaters also in my WIP basket - both are Untangling Knots patterns in various states of done-ness.  My Mary Mead from the December of 2018 needs the a couple more inches on the body and the sleeves and my Populuxe from earlier in the fall of 2018 only needs sleeves.  I'm not sure if I'll finish them up first or start something totally new once I'm done with Polarity though.  We'll see... I'm just so happy to be enjoying knitting again after such a long hiatus of not doing anything but the occasional gnome.  

Until next time, I hope you're staying safe and well throughout these crazy times and finding lots of things to bring you joy and happiness!

Picking Up the Needles

Knitting content has been few and far between over the last few years.  I still do pick up the needles every now and again, but not like I used to when I'd spend hours sitting in a comfy spot working on my latest project.  Now it's a bit hit or miss although  I am enjoying knitting much more than I did the previous couple of years when I didn't pick it up at all and had no desire to do so because every time I did it felt forced and like a chore.  Who needs a hobby that feels like a chore?  Certainly not me!

I'm a lot slower at knitting now then I used to be - I'm so out of practice, it doesn't seem as intuitive as it once did - but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.  Unless, let's say, you decide on a whim that you should knit something for your kids for Christmas and then you find out that whereas you used to be able to knit a hat in an evening or two it now takes you the better part of a week (or longer) and you run out of time to knit one kid something and you take until January to finally get it delivered to said kid and feel like a terrible mom...

Sorry.  I digress.

I won't show you all those projects.  I didn't take great photos of them.  Although I did a photo of the gnome ornaments I knit for each of them. 

Gnomes are magical and I can still knit those pretty quickly!  I even knit the "ADVENTure Gnome KAL" from Imagined Landscapes during December (Huh.  Maybe the gnomes were what was slowing my progress on hats and mitts... )

What I really want to show off is two projects I did for myself!  I'm so completely in love with both of them!

The first is the Midwestern Afternoon Shawl by Paper Daisy Creations.  I started knitting this way back in the summer - working on it through the boys' swimming lessons, then draping it across my lap (hello warmth! LOL) and working on it in the stands while they were on the ice during two weeks of hockey camp in August, then sporadically throughout the fall until it was done.  

It's knit from Indigo Dragonfly Fibres Filament o' Squid that I won in a knitalong years ago and a Little House in the Big Woods themed mini skein set, also from several years ago from Bluebird Yarns on Etsy.  I wear this shawl at least once a week!  It's my current favourite of all my shawls.  It's the perfect size and weight!

My other new selfish (uggh.  No.  Not selfish! *more on that in a moment*) selfcare knit is a brand new Myra hat from Knox Mountain Knitting Co. I knit their Laurel shawl for my mama for Christmas this year (unfortunately no great photos of that one either.) as well as other patterns in the past and have really enjoyed their pattern writing.   Part of what sold me on Myra is how darn good it looks with a big fluffy fur pompom.  

I fell down a rabbit hole of faux fur pompoms earlier in the fall, when I discovered Canadian Peony Lane Poms.  As a result I now have a healthy stash of poms at my disposal.  (Clearly I have no restraint.)  But, let's circle back to my Myra hat.  I do have a point to this meandering, I promise.  A few years ago I bought a skein of Malabrigo Rios in the Arco Iris colourway and tucked it away in my stash.  When I discovered Peony Lane Poms, I chose a pom in the peacock colourway and the rosehip colourway specifically to go with  my Arco Iris Rios.  Of course then I needed to find a pattern that would go with my pom purchases and as I said Myra looked amazing with a furry pom in the pattern photos, so that was that.

I couldn't actually decide which pom I liked best with Myra at first, but then decided that since the Peony Lane Poms attach with a snap, I could sew the snap on and interchange my pompoms whenever I wanted.  Some days felt like a peacock pom kind of day and others felt like a rosehip pom day.  Lately though I'm pretty much solidly in favour of the peacock pom.   Who knew pompoms could be a whole "thing" LOL!

I've worn my Myra hat so much since finishing it.  It's warm and just the right length that I can wear it slouchy on warmer days and on the freezing cold days I folded the brim up so that it gave me a little more warmth on my ears. (something that was definitely necessary walking in -40C windchills!!) 

Currently I'm working away slowly on my Garden Variety - it's another pattern from Paper Daisy Creations that I initially started during the KAL that Lisa was hosting for it back in the fall.  I fell behind pretty quickly and then put it aside to do my Christmas knitting and Adventure Gnome KAL.  Since picking it up again after finishing my Myra hat, I've finished Clue Two and have started Clue Three and I'm starting to feel excited about finishing it up!  It may take me a bit though given last night it took me an entire two hours to do one single row.  I kept knitting it, tinking it back, knitting it, tinking it back over and over.  I couldn't get past the center stitch because something kept not working out.  Eventually it dawned on me that I might not be knitting this particular row wrong, perhaps my stitch count was off.  Spoiler alert:  my stitch count was off.  Sigh...

It may be a little while before I'm showing off this particular project!  Along with knitting my Garden Variety, I've also been busily sewing - a few projects just for fun, a few for Minerva and most recently a test for Itch to Stitch*  I've also been bit by the "embroidery bug" and have been thoroughly enjoying that as a new crafty venture!  Needless to say, there's not enough hours in my day!

So all that being said, I'm off to go sit in front of the TV and watch a bit of Netflix and try valiantly to knit at least one more row on my Garden Variety!  I hope you are all staying healthy and happy and finding ways to get through these crazy days we're living in.

*PS: I just remembered I was going to revisit the selfish/selfcare thing.  I used to have no problem with the term "selfish" when talking about knitting and/or sewing for myself.  In fact, I took part in several knitalongs and sewalongs over the years called selfish{whatever} without batting an eyelash.  However, recently I started thinking about the term selfish and the connotations it evokes and I realized I didn't really like it being attached to my crafting. The idea that what I was doing as a means of a meditative and often healing process and other times just for the shear sake of the joy of doing it could be perceived as being selfish (and all that entails) could easily become a slippery slope leading to feelings akin to guilt that I was doing only for myself and not for others and therefore should be considered wrong or at the very least frowned upon.  By using the term selfish it devalued what was and continues to be, in reality, a very valuable process in taking care of myself.  In a time that I am trying to be mindful of being kinder and gentler to myself, clearly this was not going to work anymore. By using the term selfcare instead of selfish I'm choosing to reframe, if no where else that my own mind, what this process of crafting means for me.