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).

First Finished Project for the New Year

My first finished project for 2016 was inspired by an "incident" last Monday.  Some of you may have already heard of the incident, but for those of you that haven't, let me just leave this Facebook status of mine here for your amusement...

Well, it's clear I won't win any style awards this morning... After cheerily chatting away to loads of people this morning I got back in the truck and noticed my toque perched crazily on my head making me look either drunk or deranged. Fabulous. Note to self: check mirror before leaving privacy of own vehicle. Also make self a new hat that has less potential for weirdness. Lol

Oh yes.  I'm a style maven I tell you! ha ha! I'm sorry there isn't photographic evidence of the incident - I was far to mortified to do much more than immediately slink drive away from the school as quickly as possible.

So to that end I set to work choosing a new hat pattern.  Being that I'm well on my way to becoming  Dr. Seuss's Bartholomew Cubbins with his 500 hats (according to my Ravelry project pages I've knit 46 hats since joining the site in 2008 - only mine are different, haven't all been for myself and no royalty is being offended by them so far as I know), I had a hard time choosing a pattern.  I narrowed down the list and put it to a poll in two of my Ravelry groups and the clear forerunner ended up being Tin Can Knit's Sitka Spruce.  Fair enough.  It is a lovely pattern, I had it in my library from their 12 Days of Christmas pattern freebies in December, and I certainly had enough choices in worsted weight in my stash to easily make it.  Also, I really like how Tin Can Knits patterns are written. So a new hat, in a new style for a new year.

Getting started!  I do love twisted rib!

All was good.  I selected my yarn, a unknown colour way of Cascade 220 that I don't even remember now why I bought or what I might have used some of it for in the past.  Then I printed off the pattern, grabbed some needles and was merrily on my way.  The twisted rib brim took no time at all and I was eager to start the chart.

Car knitting - never leave home without it!

The chart however might as well have been microscopic for these aging eyeballs.  Panic, disappointment, annoyance and a temptation to give up right there and then ensued.  But then (BF)G calmly suggested I enlarge the chart.  (Why didn't I think of that?!?) So I did by about eleventy billion percent.  Then I colour coded all the stitches in the chart,  grabbed a handful of stitch markers to mark each pattern repeat and I was off to the races.  It was a very soothing knit, truth be told.  The twisted stitches were simple and the chart itself was pretty intuitive for me.  I relaxed into it and had my new hat off the needles and blocking within three days.

Blocking on a dinner plate 

This morning I decided to brave the -35C windchill and I put my hat on to head outside for a  few modelled shots of it.  Apparently, it was not dry.  Within a minute of being out the door there was frost clinging to the fuzzy fibres of the hat.

Frosty morning

I have decided that this colour is impossible to photograph.  It's closest to the colour of the first photo in real life.  Whatever the colour, I'm pretty happy with it and hope that it behaves itself well in public unlike it's predecessor, my purple Snow Squall that was my first project last new years.