Stashdown and the Stash

I suffered some Stashdown Sabotage in the last month - not that I'm really complaining.

First, I won 10 skeins of AMAZING yarn dyed by Julie Asselin and it arrived in the mail at the beginning of March.  It is gorgeous and squishy and everything good in yarn.

Maelstrom (blue) and Elephant (grey). But - it's not pre-2015 stash. This will be Jan 1 knitting.

It seems I was on a winning streak, because I also won this fabulous large project bag from Boho Knits for sharing a Wooly Wednesday retweet.

 It's large enough to stuff two large projects! That's a cardi and a t-shirt on the needles.

Next I helped out Waterloo Wools with her stock destash. I took some lace yarns off her hands.

Why yes, that is 2 skeins of Montague yarn in greens you see. On the right is a mohair lace mega skein - for some crazy fun.

Fortunately, for me, our illustrious Stashdown dictators issued a decree that recent destash purchases from Waterloo Wools and Trunk Sale purchases from Indigo Dragonfly were exempt if we CO this week and finished by the end of August.

There has also been spinning on the wheel. I finished up an old spinning project (started many years ago) of cable-plied alpaca that is now a light fingering weight yarn.

So many bobbins - more than I usually work with. More twist, more plying, more plying.

Twins helped me as I was making a hank to soak.

Already on the needles for cabled gloves.

Abi is helping me to spin the fibre stash too. It didn't take much for her to learn how to spin at the wheel after working her first ounce on a Turkish spindle.

Wheel-spun and spindle-spun to be plied together.

Stashdown - March Challenge

The Stashdown challenge in March was to finish old WIPs. I have a few. I still have a few, but I managed to get 3 of the oldest ones off the needles.

One of those old projects was a Freya shawl [Rav project] that I started in 2011 in a Mary Maxim acrylic I inherited. Abi love the shape of it and would like one of her own.  This shawl had been sitting around, not on needles, for so long that I was afraid I wouldn't be able to figure out where I was in the pattern and that stitches would have dropped.  I have a lot more experience knitting now, so I carefully got all the stitches back on the circs (it's a fluffy yarn; few stitches needed fixing) and simply 'read' the pattern elements to continue.  I did find a mistake several rows below that had affected the size of one of the pattern repeats, but I just maintained the pattern set in that section and I'm the only one who'll ever know to even look for the error.  It still needs blocking.

Incidentally, I dug out this project on Pi Day to finish because of its shaping.

There was also this Takenoko stole [Rav project] that I purchased at Shall We Knit? in New Hamburg as a kit - before the LYS moved to Waterloo, ON. Repetitive scarf patterns bore me quickly, but the colour changes of the Noro did help and the pattern [pattern link] is lovely. It was my "I should grab something for the car and everything else right now is too big/beaded/complicated" project for a long time.

My greatest Old WIP accomplishment this month, however, was to finish my Sabbatical cardi.   This started life as a "pre-twins Sabbatical" but soon became the "not-pre-twins Sabbatical" [Rav project]. There are more than enough notes in my Ravelry project page discussing the story of this knit, but suffice to say there was a lot of frogging/reknitting involved and a lot of time passed with this stuffed in a bag in frustration.

A beautiful lace design.
I love my finished sweater and in time I'll forget the great frustrations of knitting it.

I have become increasingly focused on knitting myself garments. I went for many years thinking garments were beyond me - which in retrospect is silly given the complexity of lace I was knitting.

After finishing February's lace top (which is now blocked and looks fantastic, if I may say so myself), I started a cotton top for myself.  This is a Cumulus Tee. It was a fun and quick knit. I'm learning to appreciate the simplicity of large sections of stockinette.

As comfy as PJ pants!

Evidence that I blocked the lace top. Now we need warm weather.

Speaking of the lace top I knit in Cuba, I also finished the lace shawl I was knitting there. This Seeds to Flowers is amazing! I love this design and the luxury yarn is divine.

What else? I whipped up this doll dress on St. Patty's Day. It was intended for twins' babies, but was a little too big. It fits on Abi's larger doll nicely.

I also finished a pair of Angularities Armwarmers for myself - to coordinate with Abi's.  Technically I still need to seam them - today? - but for the purposes of the stashdown, only the knitting counts.

In total, I completed 5130yds of project knitting (not all of that knitting was this month!).
What I failed to complete was my sister's blanket. I did manage to put edges on most of the squares. The blanket is my nemesis. Every time I try to work on it, something goes wrong.

Birthday Sale!

This afternoon (after the trickery hours) I decided to have a pre-birthday sale in honour of my 35th birthday.
Folks can save 35% on all my patterns from now until the end of April 10th with code 35Years.

Winter Meets Spring

This also serves as a reminder to myself to finish up some of those other designs in progress.  Mostly, however, I've been working on tops for myself. Custom fit; not really for sharing.

All The Fleeces - Warming Weather

Spring has come early to Winterpeg - a welcome relief from our usual.  I will grant, there's still a chance of a rogue snow storm, but I'm considering it to be very unlikely given how little precipitation we had all winter.  So little that, with the exception of some shady areas where snow was piled high from shoveling, there is little evidence that winter was here a short while ago.  Kids were disappointed by how few snow-building days there were, but adults were quite happy with the very minimal shoveling required.  Most of the light snowfalls would melt away in the sun.

Warming weather has me thinking about ALL THE FLEECES awaiting cleaning at my sister's farm.  I started my research, have my notes on my intended methods of cleaning, bought the large wash basins... and maybe, just maybe, I'll have a look at the fleeces this weekend. (Except the weathernetwork says it will be below zero again this weekend, so maybe not.)  I'd like to at least pull out a sample - one fleece - to skirt, wash, and evaluate.

Fingers crossed it's decent...

I fear opening it, however, because I don't want to leave it unsealed and dirty for long.  I should really be considering storage of the washed fleeces too.  Pillowcases perhaps.

Stashdown - February

February was not as 'productive' yardage wise as January was. However, that is understandable given that I finished some large items that had been in the works for a while.

You'd think that, given I spent a week on a beach in Cuba knitting (and reading, while knitting) that I'd have more to show for it, but no.  I'd brought along this Seeds to Flowers shawl in camel-silk lace (for the luxury yarn challenge of February), which was perfect on short cable needles for knitting on the flight, but I found myself working on the stockinette and then the bottom of my leaf lace top instead [below].

What I did knit included this tea pot cozy for a friend's play. It was made to her request for something in "virgin mary blue with stripes of whore red".  I also went to see her perform with it at the end of the month in Mother A La Carte.

And I whipped up this filter for the large mason jar in which I brew the first stage of my kefir water.

For the luxury-yarn challenge, I was delighted to knit this alpaca-silk lace yarn from Waterloo Wools. I'd knit up most of the yoke at home before my vacation in Cuba and it turned out to be my favourite project while there because it was a) knit in the round, b) mostly stockinette and c) something I could work on while reading.

It won't be blocked for a while... it will be some time before the weather is warm enough to wear this beauty. This top I sort of made up, sort of reverse engineered and added my own bits...


Oh, and while it does not count towards the stashdown challenge, I did finish grafting together Lucy's orange squisha cowl that was knit in December.

Also, I was distracted from my stashdown by this cotton that was growing beside me on the beach.

I happened to have my mini spindle with me - just in case (along with a teeny bag of silk hankies to spin, but that didn't work so well on the beach with an ocean breeze)

March's challenge is WIPs. I have a few.

Tread Softly

3.5 years.
Technically, 3 years and 5 months.
That is how long it took me to finish knitting my Tread Softly shawl.
I designed Tread Softly [design link] in 2011 and hosted a mystery Knit-A-Long (MKAL) starting in September.  The lovely Lindsay of (former) Waterloo Wools custom dyed my favourite yarn base (Montague - a merino-silk lace) in a 'forest green' colourway for me.  I was excited to knit this circular shawl. 
I loved the design, not simply because it's mine and has many of my favourite stitch patterns in it, but because there are no eyelet increase rows! That's the one thing I dislike about pi-shaping increases in most designs. All the necessary increases in Tread Softly are hidden in the design.

The MKAL ran from Sept-Dec 2011.  I was able to keep ahead of the other knitters to double-check the pattern (I'd finished designing and charting in advance), but only barely.  Normally it would have been simple for me, but I developed a terrible, horrible, pregnancy-side-effect. Yes, in September 2011 I became pregnant. With twins. I experienced bad implantation pains - which I only know the cause of after the fact. At the time I was being tested and scanned for other possible problems - all of which came back negative. But that wasn't my knitting problem. I experienced an aversion to knitting. It made me feel physically ill.  WORST AVERSION EVER! (for a knitter).  This was a time I should have been cranking out baby stuff. Or, at the very least, Yule gifts. Instead it was all I could do to force myself to knit this shawl.  Fortunately, the yarn and design made me happy and that mostly balanced out feeling ick while knitting.
When it came time to knit on the lace edging - which is about 30% of the shawl in yardage - I was done.  I tested to make sure it was all going to work out for my MKALers, but I did not knit on my edging.
Instead I watched as many other amazing knitters finished my design and shared their beautiful photos.
Then we started planning our move back to Winnipeg before the twins were born.
Then we moved. Soon after the twins were born.
At some point I slowly started knitting on the edging.
Put it down.
Knit some more.
Etc.
In January 2015 I was thinking of all the UFOs I want to finish for this year's Stashdown and I didn't look at the shawl. Nope. The edging just seemed to never end and because I had worked the final rounds of the penultimate chart in a larger needle, I was having to use a second set of needles to work the edging. It was cumbersome to me.
At the end of January I wanted to start a new project in lace.
I wanted the needles I was using for the Tread Softly edging.  Nice short 3.25mm wood needles on a short cable. I wanted them for knitting on my trip to Cuba.

I sat down and I started knitting again. If I could knit an entire cabled jacket in a couple weeks for the January Stashdown challenge, I could finish this edging!  Once I was able to squish all the remaining stitches on my shorter cable, the knitting went smoother and it wasn't long until I could see the end in sight - even though that end was many lace rows away. It was there, on my needles.

And now, it is off my needles and carefully grafted together using the method I learned from Knit Like a Pirate.

before blocking

ready to wear

 At some point - perhaps in Cuba - I will get some nicer photographs. Ones that do not involve the self-timer on my PnS.

Stashdown - January

Stashdown 2015 is my focus this year.
All projects must comply - including my spinning.

January's challenge, as decreed by the UPTOSDOWN dictators, was to knit with one of your oldest yarns.  At long last, I knit the Briggs & Little Anniversary Twist (aran) wool that has been in my stash since around the time that Cloth and Clay in Waterloo, ON closed.  That is, right around when I started knitting.

According to my Ravelry stash notes I had 6 skeins of this.  So I started knitting the Drops Chocolate Passion jacket expecting to have enough and, well, if I ran a little short I could stripe in some dark brown Philosopher's Wool that I picked up years ago at their home/shop.

 Everything was going well until I realized I couldn't find 3 skeins. They've disappeared. It seems I only have the 3 and a bit skeins that I had frogged years ago.
But I was not to be deterred from my goal of knitting this project and using up the Anniversary Twist.  Instead, I frogged the entire cabled back piece so that I could use that yarn to finish the other front and I reknit the back using the brown yarn.

 One skein of brown was not enough, however, with 3 skeins missing, so I started striping the sleeves in leftover Briggs & Little in a darker blue.
I do like the result.

Unfortunately, I feel that the shoulders are too wide for me.
Fortunately, I know some deserving folks who average out to my size with wider shoulders. I can't name names yet.

While this may have been my largest knit, it was most certainly not my only project for January.

First, I finished knitting this beautiful design by Kate Atherly - Wavedeck from the most recent Knitty.   I used some handspun BFL yarn I purchased that has been waiting for an appropriate project. When I saw this design I knew it was meant to be.
I started it as soon as the pattern was released - in December.  I had to refrain from knitting the final rows and binding off until January 1 to include it in the stashdown.  It is my Tequila Sunrise shawl.

To keep me from finishing this shawl in December, I knit up this Trafalgar True [rav link] vest using my own handspun - making it up as I went and inspired by the story of Trafalgar True and the sunstone.

I did bind it off before January - under pressure from hubby who insisted it was cheating to start so many projects just before the Stashdown and finish them on Jan1.  This is my pre-stashdown / last of 2014 knits project.

Returning to January, hubby suggested I make my dad a good warm scarf because he overheard my dad, taking the kids outside, saying how he now appreciates why some folks have warm scarves. He's only lived in Winterpeg... for many, many, many years.

It's simply a squishy double basket stitch.

And mom had asked me to knit a shawl for her friend. Mom paid for the baby llama yarn. I'll be asking her to 'pay me' for my work by helping clean fleeces. Seems fair, non?

 This Earthy Lights shawl started as a Chandelier Shawl designed by Anna Dalvi, but my needles were smaller and it wasn't coming out as big as I'd hoped, so I made up my own edging (in the dark yarn).  Mom already wanted a two-toned shawl like this.  The Eco-Llama yarn is FABULOUSLY soft.

There was one more FO at the end of January, but it is deserving of its own post. It has the longest history so far.