My training is going well. The ravens have me putting out food every morning, though usually not until they’ve been by once (to shout at me). They’re usually out and about before the sun is over the horizon! And you’ll notice in the clip above that we have crows now, too. They’re much more suspicious about the food pile than the ravens are, but they come by usually in a group of four and seem a little braver when they’re all together. I call them my “baby crows” because they look so small and delicate compared to the cat-sized ravens.
And a blue jay quickly dips into frame — triple corvids!
I swear I didn’t intend for this to be a knitting-only blog, but I’ve been living a(n almost) knitting-only life lately, so that’s what you get. I’ve been wanting to try making some self-striping sock yarn, and I finally gave it a try:
I started by knitting a few 64st rows (since I tend to make 64st socks) with the original yarn — Lana Grossa Meilenweit in pale gray — and then unraveled it and measured the length of yarn needed to make 4-5rows. That length was roughly twelve feet, so I wound a forty-eight foot hank and tied off twelve-foot sections. It was very unwieldy! I dyed each section a different color, and I can’t believe I didn’t tangle the yarn any more than I did. The cake above kinda just looks like variegated yarn, but when you start knitting:
Stripes! I’m doing a basic sock with heel flap and gusset, though I did eye-of-the-partridge stitch on the heel flap because I think it looks so cool. I also did a longer flap (I think forty rows instead of thirty-two?) and gusset. I’m knitting the entire sock on US1 needles, which gives me the fit I like on the leg and foot, but if I make the flap the standard length, the sock winds up too tight over my arches. But I think these ones will be perfect! I’ve finished the gusset decreases and knit maybe an inch of the body of the foot since I took the photo, so I’m past the fun part.
It’s also worth noting (I mean, only to other knitting peeps) that I got a US1 ChiaoGoo cable needle for these socks — I like using DPNs, but they start to hurt my hands if I’m doing too much knitting. I prefer bamboo needles, but the cable on these is NICE!
Is everybody mostly watching YouTube these days? I have shows I watch on other streamers, but they feel like drops in a sea that is mostly YouTube. People doing things, making things, fixing things. That’s the good stuff!
Anyway, knitting YouTubers love to call a particular format of video a “podcast” — if you know why they do this, please let me know, because a podcast is a thing, and that thing is… not a video on YT? In these videos they talk about what they’ve finished (FOs), what they’re working on (WIPs), and what they’re planning or yarn they’ve acquired. I like that format, so here we go:
Finished Objects
I wound up being a liar when I said in my 2025 recap that I wouldn’t be finishing anything else before the end of the year. I had two WIPs that had been lying dormant for a while, and I decided not to bring them into the new year that way.
This was the third Felix cardigan I’ve knit, although you’ll notice it’s NOT a cardigan. The first one I made is one of my most-worn knits, and then I made a second and hardly wore it, so Kid 1 has taken it over. I bought the yarn for this one in Scotland — a wool/bamboo (viscose) blend that I held with mohair. I thought the colors I’d chosen were cream and taupe, but when I saw them in better light, I realized they were actually off-white and gray. So step one was that I knit a Felix cardigan, and step two was that I dyed it to the colors you see above. It’s actually a little warmer than the photo.
When I blocked the cardigan, it dried a lot bigger than I expected, which made it really awkward to wear. And the collar and button band felt clunky. So I threw it to the side and got on with knitting other things. Until I pulled it out last week and decided to work with what I had. I took out the collar and button band, seamed it up the front to create a pullover, and then reknit the collar on much smaller needles. The seam is not invisible, but I’ve decided it’s like a shirt with a flat-felled seam down the front. That’s a thing, so mine is too. I don’t think this will wind up being a favorite sweater, but it’s very soft and comfortable, so it’ll get worn, and I’m glad I could rescue it from being a disappointing cardigan.
My other FO was a project for Kid 2 and… not my usual color palette!
I actually used the Felix pullover as a base for this, but I should have just used standard raglan increases. This yarn is Knitpicks Wool of the Andes that I dyed with Kool-aid and food coloring when the kids were little. Even that variegated black (which I love)! Kid 2 loves insects, so she got a little moth motif. This was just a project to use up some scraps of yarn, not something I’ll treasure forever. If Kid 2 gets sick of it, I’ll overdye it with beige to make everything more neutral and wear it myself as a cropped top.
Works in Progress
I knocked out both the FOs in the last week of the year, but most of the month was spent working on my Easy V.
It’s been a very quick knit, but I finished that first sleeve, realized it was too long, and now I’ve been hit with decision paralysis about how I want to proceed. I have to try it on again. I COULD leave the sleeve this length, and it would be more or less fine. What I SHOULD do is take out an inch or more from the middle of the sleeve and graft the two ends together. It wouldn’t be that difficult, but I don’t wanna. So I’m stuck while the two lazy wolves inside of me battle it out.
I will say that I love the colors I picked out. It’s estate sale yarn, of course, and I only had a couple of options for the main body color but loads for the colorwork. I really wasn’t convinced about the gray until I started knitting — now I love it all together. I’m very neutral about the motif itself, but the colors are great.
While I grumped about what to do re: sleeves on that sweater, I caked up some Aran-weight yarn and started a Good Grandpa cardigan. It’s in its ugly duckling phase:
I started this last Saturday and did the entire body in one week. I was craving boring knitting, and this sure delivered! I’m really excited to wear this, so I’ve been knitting like the dickens.
The yarn is one of the colors my mom brought back from the estate sale, and for a long time I wasn’t even sure I’d wind up using it. The first several times I looked at it, I thought it was a strand of navy plied with a strand of forest green (a very 90s combo, imo), but the “navy” is actual charcoal. And knitted up, it’s a black-green that I’m really liking. When I blocked my gauge swatch, the yarn bloomed in a lovely way, so I’m very eager to finish this and block it and see the yarn “come to life”.
I almost forgot, but I also worked on some DK socks, using the free Biscuit sock pattern:
Aren’t they cute? I really like the textured heel flap, even though it’s such a small detail. I used 100% sYnThEtIc yarn on these. I am a natural fiber brat, but I found several skeins of this super-soft acrylic/nylon blend at the thrift store over the summer and bought them all, thinking I’d made a sweater for one of the kids. But the yarn is this cream color and a very pale purple-gray. Not very kid friendly. How this yarn holds up to being worn as a sock is still TBD, but it’s comfy! I’m almost to the heel of the second sock but got distracted by starting that cardigan at the end of the month.
Plans
Obviously no new acquisitions, since I’m not allowed. But I do have plans! Unless I’m struck by a blast of knitting ennui, I should be easily able to finish up my two WIPs in January. Next up is Teti Lutsak’s Forest Keys vest.
I also have some sock yarn that I want to try dyeing. Specifically, I’d like to make my own self-striping yarn. So that’ll be something to figure out, and hopefully I’ll have some results to show by next month!
I’m ready for a new year! (The photo is from last spring — we do NOT have open water right now!)
My main goal for the year is to not bring anything into the house that we don’t NEED. We have so much stuff. Every time something new comes in, it seems to float around with nowhere to go.
I have no desire to move, but sometimes I daydream about what we’d bring with us if we had to. And then I think about what the house would be like if we got rid of everything we wouldn’t deign to bring with us on a move.
So the second part of my plan is offloading a lot of the boxes that are basically just in storage (downstairs). The kids are getting older and are now able to admit that, yeah, maybe they WON’T ever play with dolls again. We can save a few precious ones and donate the rest. And I have so much stuff like that, things I need to admit to myself I’m never going to use.
Craft-wise, I have all that estate sale yarn to use up, and I have a decent selection of fabric. I’ve been seeing a lot of people posting about their “Make Nine”, which I think is basically just picking nine items to knit — being intentional and having a cohesive plan instead of knitting things willy-nilly. I don’t feel an urge to do that, really. When I plan my knitting out too far ahead, I get bored of the projects before I even start them! And I only know what I feel like knitting right now, not what I’ll be in the mood for in the second half of the year. So I probably won’t plan out my crafting for the year, but I do recognize that I need to use what I’ve got instead of chasing the dopamine of acquiring more.
Maybe the theme for the year is whittling down — getting rid of the clutter and figuring out what we really need in our lives. And then being able to enjoy those things!
Socks continued to be the theme in the middle part of the year, although I did cast on my Halibut pullover in August.
These socks were from estate sale yarn, and they’re the ones that I forgot to switch away from the US1 ribbing needles when I got to the stockinette part. I really like how these fit! This isn’t a colorway I’d normally choose, but I love a stripe-y yarn, and I feel like anything goes, color-wise, with socks.
The last pair of socks I finished this year were something a little different:
They’re Stardew Valley socks, one autumn and one spring. Not blocked in the photo, so don’t judge my colorwork! These were fun but also super tedious to knit, not to mention weaving in all those different ends! Yuck. Kid 1 wanted to see the Stardew Valley Symphony of Seasons concert for her birthday, so I made these for her to wear to it. I’m going to say that someday I’ll make the matching sock to the two seasons — I’d like the autumn ones for myself — but I really don’t know if that true. I’ve been doing a lot of colorwork lately and can’t quite stomach the thought of another of these!
This next one was a joy to knit:
The yarn makes such a difference to the experience of knitting any given project! This was done with a strand of lace-weight baby alpaca held with silk-mohair. Both were from the estate sale, and I only had the one skein of the baby alpaca.
The pattern is the Fancy Camp Bandana, and there are some issues with the pattern. The pattern doesn’t match the photos of the bandana the creator used. Instead of there being 1/5/9 of the little eyelet flowers in each row, there are 3/7/11. I wanted to use more of my skein of baby alpaca and figured out how many stitches to cast on to add an extra row to the wide end, as well. So mine is more of a mini scarf, and it’s so soft and delicate.
And I guess the last FO of the year will be my Halibut:
Now. I have issues with this sweater, and I’ll own up to my part by saying that the issues could have been mitigated if I’d gone for a size with more positive ease (ie, made it bigger). It’s not actually as narrow as it looks in the photo — that’s just because I had my hand on my hip. I think my finished sweater has about 6″ positive ease, which should be plenty! I’ll also say that I love how the colorwork looks, even though I hated working on it.
The biggest issue is the yoke depth, which is a known problem with this pattern. The top of the sweater is just too long (to accommodate the colorwork), meaning the armpit of the garment falls much lower than one’s actual armpit. With a very oversized top, this mostly just makes it difficult to wear anything over it. With the one I made, it’s annoying to lift my arms up — not hard, but it feels like the entire sweater shifts around and rides up when I move. You can also see in the photo how unnaturally it sits around the collar and top of the yoke. It feels like there’s too much fabric in that area. I think that’s again from the riding up — the top can’t settle down to where it would actually fit.
I’ve still been wearing the sweater but nowhere near as much as I would if I loved the fit of it. It’s a shame, given how long the yoke took me. The yarn is from the estate sale, but I know nothing about it except that it’s DK weight and wool and very NOT next-to-skin soft. It’s really warm, though!
I’ll be back in a few days with a shorter post to talk about what I’ve been working on in December. But I don’t think I’ll be finishing anything else before 2025 wraps up!
In the future, I’d like to make monthly posts about what I’m knitting — FOs and WIPs. For now, I’ll recap my finished objects for 2025. After digging through my photos, I’m realizing I need to do a better job of taking GOOD photos of knitting. I usually just take a quick snap to share with my crafty friends.
Anyway, the first finish of the year was Teti Lutsak’s Mama Bear Pullover:
This is one that I really wish I had a more flattering photo of! It took a while to knit, as it’s quite oversized and knit with DK yarn. I cast on the last day of August 2024 and had finished the yoke in time to bring it with on our Scotland trip in September. I started this immediately after finishing another of Teti’s patterns (Javelin pullover), and I would happily knit any of her patterns!
My next finish was a Good Grandpa cardigan that I had started AGES before and set aside:
This yarn has had quite a life! It’s from Quince & Co., and I don’t remember which yarn it is specifically and won’t look it up because I wouldn’t use it again. It’s not terrible, just not lovely. It was originally a very flat gray, and I knit a cabled cardigan with it when Kid 1 was a baby (she’s twelve now). I didn’t really like it, so I frogged it to reclaim the yarn and dyed it a variegated purple. Then I knit this cardigan and decided I didn’t want it to be purple, so I gave it a yellow dye bath to turn it brown.
I was very “meh” on the whole thing when I finished it (though I do like the color). I’m not sure why I made the body so short! But it’s wound up being one my most frequently-worn items this cold season. It’s bulky-weight wool and very warm, so if the temperature is right around freezing outside, I don’t need anything more than this. So I guess that’s a lesson to always keep everything forever — because You Never Know.
This was a fast little project that I made with thrifted DK yarn (I want to say some sort of Rowan wool and another brand’s BFL). I’m in love with vests and think they look… fairly terrible on me? I’ve hardly worn this, but I like looking at it, lol.
The next project was super silly:
Kid 2 had a “creepy crawlies” theme for her ninth birthday. We have a cheap (toy) knitting machine, and I don’t know why I had pulled it out to play with it, but I realized one could make a very long worm if they just… didn’t stop. This was an entire skein of cheap acrylic yarn and is known as Party Worm. He was hung up as a decoration for the party and had his own little party hat. I don’t have a good photo of the finished object, but I used DPNs to taper and close up his tail.
I seem to have then entered sock mode:
This was yarn from my local yarn store, and I wear these all the time, BUT they’re a bit too big. I like to use TinCanKnit’s Rye pattern (omitting the garter panel on the top of the foot), but I’m somewhere between their adult small and medium. Small winds up being too tight around the start of the gusset, but medium is too big overall. I did knit a pair of socks (that will be in my Part 2 post) where I made medium but forgot to switch from my ribbing needles after the ribbing, and those fit almost perfectly. So mediums on small needles is the way, I guess.
And the last FO for this post is this:
I swear there are two of them, but I wound up making them for Kid 1 and never took a photo when I finished! This is the same pattern as the other pair but in worsted-weight yarn. I made small, and they were a little tight for me. This was the start of knitting with the estate sale yarn. This stuff (which was wool and a little bit of nylon — perfect for socks) looked so pretty and interesting in the ball and so… ugly? when knitted up. I don’t NOT like it, but it’s very scrappy and random looking!
Like every other emotionally intelligent person, I’m desperate to have some corvid friends. We almost never see crows in our immediate neck of the woods, but we have a family of ravens that fly past now and then. I feed the smaller birds in the winter, and while I love the blue jays, I’m not sure they’re as friendship/vengeance minded as the bigger guys.
Well, a couple of weeks ago, I cleaned out our pantry and filled a bowl with all the stale ends of boxes of crackers, etc, etc. I tossed it all under the bird feeders, since there’s a chipmunk that lives under (possibly in) the big oak tree out front. Imagine my delight when the ravens came to steal it all! Who knew that they were just waiting for junk food?
Now I’m feeling a lot of pressure to keep putting out offerings, and they do seem to be keeping an eye on the area, because they show up whenever I toss out something new. They’re so skittish, though! I have to be very sneaky to get a photo or video; somehow they’re always watching the windows of the house for a me-shaped shadow, and they fly away when they spot me.
Watch this space to see whether I start getting raven offerings or get my eyes pecked out. An honor either way!
I’d rather just hit the ground running and (re)start the blog from right now, but there’s one thing worth going back and telling you about. The greatest estate sale of all time…
This summer, there was a woman (I think I have this right…) who was moving out of her late mother’s house, and the mother had owned a YARN SHOP behind the garage, so the estate sale covered everything in the house and the shop. My mom sent me the sale listing a few weeks ahead of time, and I was like… intriguing, but no. There was so much yarn, but you know it was priced for the shop, so the estate sale folks weren’t going to be letting it go for a steal.
But then it was the “last” day, and it switched to being by-the-bag. So I loaded up the kids and dragged them over an hour into Wisconsin, and it was amazing. I loved this woman’s style and her hobbies and all the amazing items she’d collected. I think we filled three big shopping totes and the big basket:
I got what felt like quite a lot of yarn, some hand-knitted items (I like a shawl / big scarf and have no desire to knit one), textiles, and all sorts of odds and ends. We got ice cream on the way home and stopped at a butterfly… tent? thing. Success!
Then the estate sale did a sneaky last-last day because there was SO MUCH YARN (and other stuff) still there. Now it was free-will donation. Take what you want, just please get rid of everything. My kids wouldn’t let me go back (they’re bossy and no fun), but my mom can’t let a Deal go by ungotten! So she went out there and filled literal giant black garbage bags with yarn. This is what she got for me:
It’s so funny to look at the amount of yarn in the first picture and think that it felt like a lot. THIS is a lot! And it doesn’t even look like as much as it really is. I had to get four new plastic storage totes to hold it all.
It’s all natural fibers, mostly wool. A lot of quite rustic, worsted-weight wool, like Briggs and Little. But there’s a little bit of everything. I’d say it’s hard to know what to do with this much yarn, but, duh, you KNIT it! I’ve spent so much time looking for patterns for specific skeins or finding patterns and then digging through the boxes to see which yarns will work with it.
Long story short, I’m not allowed to buy yarn anymore, lol! I’ve used estate sale yarn to make a couple of pairs of socks, a Halibut pullover, a bandana-scarf, and I’m working on the sleeves of an Easy-V pullover right now. I’ve prepped yarn for a Forest Keys vest and a Good Grandpa cardigan. (I also started a Mastiha cardigan, but I think that’ll be a slow burn because I need to pay attention to the stitch pattern chart, and I tend to pick up my more mindless projects first.)
A knitting friend said that I’ve achieved SABLE — stash acquired beyond life expectancy — but I say that’s only if I become a QUITTER!
