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.

New Mittens and A Hat

Baby it's cold out there.  Seriously cold.  What the heck, mother nature?!?!  You confound us all with your weird (freakishly) warm weather for a few weeks, then suddenly you remember what a prairie winter is supposed to be like?  How about a happy medium because, really, a 30 degree shift in temp in a matter of days is a pretty big ol' shock to the system!

But.  That's ok.  I'm well prepared.  I laugh in the face of -40C.  Well ok, it's more like teeth chattering than laughter, but close enough.  At least I'm a little more prepared than I was.

I have new mittens and a new hat.  And they're thick, cozy worsted weight wool, so a heck of a lot warmer than the sport weight hat and mitts I had been using previously.  Don't get me wrong.  My colour work mitts are still one of my favourite things, but they just don't cut it in the cold. They were my first pair of adult sized colour work mittens (I'd done a baby pair when baby boy was tiny), so my gauge is pretty loose and the wind whistles through them on a cold, brisk day.

I really want to knit a pair of thrummed mittens, but didn't feel like taking the time to sit down and actually muddle through the thrum part, so chose to knit a pair of traditional Newfoundland Mittens instead.  These may look tricky to the non-knitter, but they are the fastest thing going.  I knit them two at a time (thereby avoiding any second mitt syndrome nonsense) and had them done in three short days.  They are pretty cozy.  A lot more so than the loosey goosey Lilac Mittens, but still not quite what I want.  I wore them to go tobogganing the other day and definitely could have used some sort of liner in them because my hands were pretty chilly.  (although I think my fingers would've fallen off from the cold in the other mitts, so it's at least a start in the right direction!).  I definitely think it's going to be time to tackle thrums soon though.  The Yarn Harlot has a pretty good post about it that I think I'll need to study a bit first.  In the meantime my Newfie Mitts will do.  They're pretty in Plum and Fundy Fog Briggs & Little Regal.

I have a purple hat that matches the colour of the mitts to a tee.  It's a hat I knit as a test knit last year, and it's alright, but it's sport weight and not terribly warm (plus it makes me look like I have a gigantic pumpkin head so not a terribly flattering look).  So I knit a new one.  This time in the same Plum Regal as my mittens and using Alicia Plummer's Snow Squall pattern. It's reversible, which is kind of neat, and cozy. Also being a bit looser means there's less chance of crazy hat hair, although I still think I look like I have a gigantic pumpkin head in it.  Which makes me wonder if it's the hats or if it's actually me… Yikes!  I am considering trying a different sort of style in the near future.  Maybe something along the lines of a brimmed hat.  There's a few I really like on Ravelry.  There's the Lucy Hat or the Magnolia Hat or maybe the Honeysuckle Hat.  Of course by the time I ever decide spring will be on it's way and I won't actually need a new hat...