Category: Crochet

2019 Good Intentions and Plans/2018 Review

I am not attempting any grand goals or setting many resolutions for 2019. 2018 was a bit of a hectic year, what with buying my first house and moving into it. But I do like to review and contemplate, so a brief look back at the year that was and a look forward into the year we’re edging into.

When I restarted this blog, I had quite a few WiPs skulking about. I am very pleased to say that they are all FOs now, partially helped by the house move as I was galvanised into finishing so that I wouldn’t have to pack them.

So, in 2018, I made: [* denoting where a WiP was completed]

I also completed two small embroideries and started a few more WiPs! Mostly relating to English Paper Piercing.

So, that was a whistle-stop tour of 2018.

What does 2019 hold? Certainly a fair amount of DIY (some of which may appear on the blog; I have yet to decide on that, some of which is going to be boring home-ownership related, like replacing parts of roofs and adding more insulation.) and a focus on stash usage across my crafty pursuits ( which should be easier now that all my craft crap can live in a room of its own), so I can afford such exciting things as…more insulation and a roof that isn’t likely to leak unexpectedly.

Handily, Louise from Knit British has brought the Good Intentions Club back again (Rav thread with 2019’s dates), which focuses on matching the patterns in your library with the stash you have, so I’ll be drawing on that as my main inspiration for 2019. So far, I have only picked two Good Intentions and they are for Quarter 1, Oliver’s Hat, for which I have the yarn bought specifically for it in the stash and Quarter 2 will be a Carbeth Cardigan, the yarn for which I got as birthday present.

And on the crochet side of things, I got the yarn pack for the latest Attic24 CAL, the Sweetpea blanket for Christmas, so while I am not going to be racing to keep up with the CAL, I am going to be doing a gentle CAL with my knitting workmate J over 2019.

I’m also test knitting for fellow OUaSer Kat – yarn from the stash is ready to go! – over the next few weeks as well as doing very well with my current sock WiP of the Beaufort Socks, which I bought as a kit and so had in the stash. (5-ply yarn on 2.5mm needles is whizzy!). There will continue to be sock projects that are as of yet undecided because I am not short of sock yarn in the stash.

Related to my stashbusting; I am not going on a yarn ban but I am going to try not buy skeins that I don’t need. I have a couple gift vouchers that can come into play (one of them is tentatively earmarked for a project that may turn up later in the year.) but really, I have enough to be getting on with and enough other WiPs to complete that 2019 should be going along fine.

Got any grand plans for 2019?

FO: A bounty of blankets

You know how I mentioned that I had two large blanket WiPs? Well, I currently have no large blanket WiPs!

Behold! One completed Pick ‘n’ Mix blanket, by Lucy Croft, which was a year long CAL with Simply Crochet and had been sitting, half joined up in a bag for *mumblemumble*. That one is single bed sized and made up of 12 squares in two different colourways. I used Stylecraft Special Aran and really enjoyed working through the squares as they came out.

The other is the Hydrangea blanket by Lucy at Attic24 but using the Stylecraft Special DK colour pack for the Moorland blanket. This was a request from my mother and it has come out slightly smaller than double bed sized. I basically picked the colours at random but tried not to repeat any very close to the previous stripe. Also one that got fitfully worked on but the combination of not wanting to pack it up in a WiP state and seeing my mother earlier this month meant it became my At Home project.  And then once I finished that, I had to apply the same moving logic to the Pick ‘n’ Mix and suddenly they were both pretty much done.

I have also finished my Keith Moon sweater (oh the icord, the endless, endless icord) but it is still blocking at the moment. Endlessly blocking.

But now that I have finished all the big pre-packing WiPs, I have to start the packing, I guess!

 

Yarnalong – September

It’s Yarnalong time, which, argh, argh, means it is September. I work in academia so this means not long until the students return, noooarrghhh.

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Knitting wise, I have completed my helical bee socks and cast on for a new pair but I shall leave that for for tomorrow’s OuaS post. What I have been doing is continuing on with my English Paper Piercing and I finished one of the two Crochet blankets I had in the WiP pile. Motivated by a) seeing my mother this coming weekend b) the thought of not having to pack and move* it. 😉

It is a Attic24 Hydrangea stripe blanket but using the colour pack from her Moorland blanket, at the request of my mother. I plan to take proper photos once I’ve handed it over.

Reading wise, I have been quite productive. I read the following:

And I’m in the middle of Handywoman by knitwear designer Kate Davies, which I would already recommend picking up.

Other than that, last Saturday saw me tromping around London as part of Team Knightsbridge as part of the Great London Yarn Crawl. I may have bought a few things but when visiting such lovely shops, how could one resist? We went to Tribe, RayStitch, Fabrications and Stag and Bow on our route and crisscrossed London in the process.

*Thoughts about house-buying process in England currently mostly unfit to print but slowly, slowly getting there.

 

 

Yarn Along – July 2018

It is Yarnalong time!  From sweltering (who knew?) Brighton, where, I must admit knitting has been limited as I am trying not to cast on any new projects and all my other projects are either not for public consumption yet or too bloody hot to sit under/near in this heat.

IMG_3210Knitting wise, I have completed my Byatt shawl, with the kind help of my work knitting friend and a little bit of a shawl-to-shawl transplant, after I lost my game of Yarn Chicken with three and half rows/6 increases to go. Luckily, J was knitting a shawl in a very similar grey and let me steal a bit from the other end of the ball to finish the MC/CC slip-stitch section off successfully. It is blocking at the moment and then I hope to briefly take photos before I have to fling it off me again.

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I have started one WiP though, for all my bluster above, which is a Silene Shawl in some seriously ancient Stash Yarn (this being from the Des Res in West Kensington era of the Stash Archaeology so, ooooh, late 2000s. )  in the hopes that I will have a completed shawl in time for my brother’s wedding at the end of July. It’s um, possible but we shall see. It’s always good to have a goal, right?

 

Bookwise, I’ve been rereading the Anne of Green Gables series and I am making a concentrated effort to finish  Ron Chernow’s Hamilton biography. It’s not that it’s not really interesting; it’s just very dense and I have reached the Reynolds’ Pamphlet part, which if you are into Hamilton, is where I spend a lot of time clutching at my face and yelping “Yooooou fooooool, Alexander!’