Christmas is over. Food has been eaten, things have been baked, baked things have been eaten, the scale has been avoided. Lovely time altogether. And now 2015 is just around the corner and is time to reflect on a great year.

I didn’t plan any knitting goals for 2014, the only thing I promised myself was that I would continue to challenge myself and try and learn new things, and that I certainly did. I completed a total of 19 projects, which seems a bit meagre, but I think I can live with that number (especially knowing there are still several WIPs in various stages of completeness). 8 of those projects were socks, 2 lace shawls, 3 hats, one pair of mittens, one skirt, and 4 projects involving toy knitting. The thing that surprised me most is that although I see myself as a selfish knitter, 7 out of 19 projects were gifts! That’s over 35% of projects that are gifts, which isn’t bad for a self proclaimed selfish knitter..

Top row L to R: Caramel Brulee hat (of which I also made a duplicate as a last minute Christmas gift for my grandmother), a birthday cake made for a friend’s birthday and the Prairie Spring socks.
Middle row L to R: Lakeside knee socks made for my sister, the slightly silly but immensely fun to make Breaking Cat project and a pair of plain ribbing knee socks (where did I find the patience for this?!).
Bottom row L to R: Sir Knights Helmet (another gift), Rainbow Wanderer socks and Chu and Chibi Totoros as last minute Christmas gifts.

Top row L to R: Lakeside kneesocks, New Girl skirt and the Stormborn Shawl.
Middle row L to R: Tintern Abbey socks, Wilshire shawl (birthday gift) and Plants vs. Zombies (birthday gift).
Bottom row L to R: Cold as Fuck mittens,  Thunderstorm socks, and Herringbone socks.

Of course I didn’t enjoy making every one of these to the same degree. One of my favourites to knit is probably the lakeside knee socks, otherwise I’d never have made two pairs! The lace shawls were without a doubt a labour of love, and the Breaking Cat was a joy to make, because it was so silly and funny to come up with the different scenes. The obvious thing that is missing are sweaters and cardigans! I only started one sweater, which is yet to be finished. So I’ll try to shift my focus in 2015 a little towards sweaters and cardigans.

My favourite project of 2014, however, has to be starting this blog! I didn’t know what to expect and whether it’d be something I would actually like. And I LOVE doing this. I love the connections it has brought me, the inspiration and how it makes me think about knitting in a different way. So for 2014 I want to give a big THANK YOU to everyone who has visited this blog, happy new year everyone!

Only recently did I discover that there is such a thing as faux fur pompoms, you can buy to put on your handknits. I don’t know what kind of rock I’ve been hiding under, but as soon as I learned of their existence I had to buy all the faux fur pompoms. And I didn’t just buy any fake fur pompom, I bought the BIGGEST fake fur pompom I could find. This is me opening the mail the day of its arrival.

Who am I kidding, this is still me just thinking about it. I didn’t have anything in the works I could attach this huge pompom to. Socks? Seems a bit random.. A sweater in progress? Probably not. Mittens? Maybe a bit inconvenient. So a hat I should make.

I found a hat pattern I liked and the pattern instructions literally state “Find the biggest pom you can and attach it firmly by seaming.” Bingo! So I was off to make the Caramel Brulee pattern, with some softsoftsoft Lana Grossa Cool Wool Alpaca yarn in brown. In brown?! I don’t even like brown. I swear, sometimes my alter ego takes over and does my yarn ordering for me. Never mind, I can live with a brown hat.

I haven’t knit a hat in ages and I forget that these things practically knit themselves. I cast on and then POOF, a hat was born. It’s soft, it’s warm, it’s comfy and it has the biggest pompom ever. Bike helmets are from now on redundant, because that huge pompom will break my fall (just kidding of course). I’m a very happy knitter right now.

In other news, remember how I said I didn’t plan to do any Christmas knitting this year? Well I guess I say a lot of things, because I’m doing last minute Christmas knitting. Not my fault though!! I ordered some books for my sister as a present, none of the local book stores seem to have them. And last week I started panicking that they might not arrive on time, eek! I at least wanted to have something for her to unpack, so I wanted to make something small. I picked the Chibi and Chu Totoro toy patterns and thought I’d just make these in a couple of hours with some leftover sock yarn. But I always forget how much I hate to make these kind of small fiddly things, with tiny needles and tiny yarn. And then there’s also embroidery, not my strongest skill, and the Chu Totoro involves intarsia. I hate intarsia, and I hate it even more in tiny projects. Making this on a deadline it looked like a complete mess yesterday. My last resort was wet blocking, otherwise I’d forget about the entire thing. I guess they say that the water settles the stitches or whatever, but we all know that in reality the knitting elves come at night to fix it. And they did, because the Chu Totoro body looks halfway decent. Now I just quickly need to knit a tail, close it up and embroider the face on it.

And that’s not all! Bear with me, this is one of my longest posts ever I think. As you can see I’m done with monogamous knitting. I started a pair of mittens. I have only one pair of handknit mittens, which I love to death. But they’re quite thin and aren’t warm enough to keep my hands warm on the bike anymore. So these Northman mittens are knit with thicker yak merino yarn and will be lined with alpaca. My hands are warm just thinking about it. Very happy with this project so far.

And lastly, some knitting unhappiness. I started a pair of Broken Seed Stitch socks, which have been in my queue for ages. The yarn (mini mochi) was bought specifically with this pattern in mind, but it’s not working out as I wanted. It seems way too messy, the yarn is super soft, which makes me doubt whether it should be made into socks. I’ve done several ravelry searches to see if I could find another pattern that I’d like for the yarn, but I cannot really find anything. Not sure whether I should soldier on, or just frog it already and let the right pattern find me.

 

Phew, that’s it! What are you knitting? Did you finish all your Christmas knitting?

This is what monogamous knitting will apparently get you, a relatively fast FO! Although it still took me 3 weeks, which isn’t exactly a sock knitting record.

Pattern: Prairie Spring
Yarn: Spun Right Round Superwash Sock 80/20 in Graffiti Overlay (you can find my pictures of the yarn here)

I don’t think I have enough words to express how happy I am with this yarn, there’s not a single negative thing I could say about it. For me it has the perfect trade off between being sturdy and bouncy, and feeling like it can take the wear and tear of a sock, but still feeling very soft. Of course it remains to be seen how the yarn will last in the future of course. And again, I couldn’t be more pleased with the vibrant specks of colour. I do fear that variegated yarns become to busy for my taste, but in this case it adds something interesting without looking like clown vomit (maybe just a little). I’ve definitely added this yarn to my christmas wishlist!

And I can recommend the pattern for any sort of variegated yarn. I didn’t make any interesting mods, just some tiny things you can find on my project page. I didn’t really get bored during the knitting, there’s just enough going on to keep it interesting. The only thing that I didn’t particularly like was that the sock was instructed to be knit on 3 needles, which I assumed would have some sort of reason. I’m still not quite sure if it had a purpose or was just a personal preference of the designer, but I’m a 4 DPNs kind of girl.

Although in some ways I did appreciate the monogamous knitting, I think I used up all of my self restraint for the rest of the year. So I’ll probably be casting on all the things this weekend.