Well That Escalated Quickly!

After knitting six pairs of socks over the course of the last year for other people I felt the urge to knit a pair for me so towards mid March I succumbed to that urge, grabbed the skein of sparkly stripey sock yarn (Plymouth Stiletto) and finally cast on a pair of Zigzagular socks, which is a free pattern on Ravelry and I highly recommend!  These socks, between the stripes and the simple, but interesting pattern, pretty much knit themselves!  Only change I made was to do an afterthought heel to accommodate the continuity of the stripes!

The whole time I was knitting my sparkly socks, Baby Boy was having serious sock envy.  He desperately wanted a pair of stripey socks of his own.  If he could've had sparkles it would've been even more perfect.  I knew I didn't have enough left over yarn from my socks though and he didn't want to wait for new yarn, so I let him pick out of my stash.  He chose an ancient ball of Fortissima Colori Socka for his and I used Joeli's Tiny Treads Basic Top Down pattern.  I should have knit up a size.  They will probably fit him for all of five minutes.  But he wears them all the time so at least he's getting use out of them while he can.

Once his socks were on the needles of course Little Man had a need for stripey socks too.  Unfortunately there was nothing to his liking in the sock yarn bin, so I logged onto Webs and let him pick out some yarn for himself. He chose Sirdar's Sole to Sole in the Jungle Fever colourway.  Bonus for me, it was super inexpensive!  I didn't really follow a pattern this time so much as cast on in between Baby Boy's size and my size and then knit until it fit.  Although darn his little hide, I think his feet are bigger than I assumed, because they seem a touch snug.  Again I used an afterthought heel to keep those stripes going nicely.

I'm not sure how me wanting a pair of stripey socks escalated so quickly to everyone needing a pair of stripey socks, but that's just how things roll sometimes and that's how I ended up knitting three pairs of socks in a total of eight weeks.  Not bad if I do say so myself!

Speaking of hand knit socks, I've decided to partake in Me Made May once again this year.  Last year I took the year off because I couldn't think of a challenge given that I pretty much wear me made every day all year round at this point.  But after listening to Zoe of the So, Zo blog (and the mastermind behind Me Made May) on the Love to Sew Podcast last week I thought that maybe I could find a challenge for myself after all.  I have well over a dozen pairs of hand knit socks that have been languishing in my drawer since I went back to work.  I wasn't wearing them during the week because I didn't want to "ruin" them in my work boots, and on weekends I'm usually barefoot around the house or would just grab my sport socks if I was headed out anywhere.  I decided that it's high time I enjoy those hand knit socks once again, so my challenge for Me Made May is to wear hand knit socks five days a week at work.  (I'm not wearing them on the weekends because there's no snow on the ground anymore, which means no socks thanks!)  I'm not committing myself to documenting them daily - I'm just going to go with the flow on this one, but I'll let you know at some point how my challenge is going or went.   How about you?  Are you Me Made May-ing this year?  What is your own challenge?
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A Little Bit of This and A Little Bit of That

I don't even remember when I was here last.  I'm not even going to look. It leads to all sorts of misplaced feeling of guilt and disappointment in myself.  Life has been soundly kicking my butt lately with everything going on, the sloth has become my spirit animal.  It's hard to accept given I normally like to be busy, getting things done, and more importantly used to relish in my night owl tendencies.  What was that meme going around Facebook awhile back?  "I'm not an early bird or a night owl. I'm some form of permanently exhausted pigeon."  That pretty much sums me up right now.

Despite all, I have been getting a few things done here and there.  I've actually even finished a few things!  I often listen to podcasts on my drive to work and one I really enjoy is The Knitmore Girls.  They have an ongoing instagram contest in the works called "Operation Sock Drawer" and Gigi often talks about the socks she's working on or has already knit.  Listening to all her talk of socks inspired me to pick up a long standing work in progress and get them done.  I actually started the Tin Can Knits SeaWall socks on March 11th last year.  (Bear in mind it normally it takes me a few weeks at most to knit a pair of socks.)  I finally cast off these babies on March 8th of this year.  What happened????  It's an interesting enough pattern.  The yarn wasn't horrible.  How did it take me just shy of a year to knit them?  It wasn't even a case of second sock syndrome holding me up.  Sock number one took until mid-February this year.  Ridiculous!  I'm super happy to have them off the needles and out of my knitting bag!

Seawall Socks by Tin Can Knits

I also finished my Andi Satterlund cardi, Henriette for the Selfish Sweater KAL in the Untangling Knots Ravelry group.  This one thankfully went quicker than the socks and I finished knitting it in exactly a month!  I'll show you some modelled pics of it at some point - I want to make a dress to actually go with it first, and quite frankly it's still sitting on top of my dresser waiting to get blocked.  But here's a sneaky peek at it, taken while I was doing the finishing!

Henriette by Andi Satterlund

And you know, since I have so little time for knitting, I've decided to cast on ALL the things in the last few weeks.  This is so weird for me.  I'm usually such a monogamous knitter that I have no hot clue how I'll ever manage to finish any of it. Really.  No clue.  How do you decide which project to work on when you have more than one on the go?  At first I justified it.  Sock knitting for portable knitting (hockey practices, car knitting, waiting rooms, lunch breaks etc.).

Lumberjack by Tin Can Knits

Shawl knitting for at home.

Polarity by Elena Nodel

Seemed reasonable.  Except I keep picking up the sock at home, and the shawl has been languishing. And then I decided that I should cast on a Greyson for Little Man on Thursday night.

Greyson by Julia Stanfield

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME????  We won't even discuss that even though I have three projects already on the needles, it hasn't stopped me from downloading patterns and picking yarn out (from my stash at least) for other projects.  Someone needs to intervene and put a stop to this madness of multiple works in progress!

I've finished very few things at the sewing machine, but do have two of my 2017 Make Nine projects finished.  I just haven't taken photos of them yet, although I've been wearing them loads since sewing them.  Also.  I've been collecting WIP sewing projects in a similar fashion to what I've been doing in knitting.  I'm like a magpie -  Ooooh!  Must have all the shiny new things!!!!  Seriously. Someone send help!!!

So that's at least a bit of an update on my crafty doings as of late.   I'm going to try to get my sewing projects up here on the blog in the near future (no promises though - who knows when I'll actually get back to blogging again it seems to be so hit or miss for me lately).