Pattern: Threshold by Melanie Berg
Yarn: Phileas Yarns Explorer in Wat colourway

I’m still pleased as punch with the yarn, the semi-solid gold is exactly what I was looking for. I didn’t do any major mods to the pattern, except for one extra round of waist shaping to get a more fitted sweater. The biggest love I have for this design has to be the neckline with the twisted ribbing running off the shoulder. It gives it a unique and elegant feel.

And with that I have finished 17 projects in 2016. I think one of my goals was to knit more sweaters, which didn’t really work out unfortunately. I did learn a whole bunch (like steeking and how not to do it). Most of the knitting was socks (yay!) and 5 were gifts, which is a very good ratio.

I don’t want to set any goals for 2017, as this is the year in which I’m supposed to finish my PhD unless I get an extension. So I guess my goal is to use knitting for what has first drawn me to it, namely to relax me and help deal with stressful periods (and I know I’ll be having plenty of those when finishing my thesis).

How about you, did you set any knitting goals for the New Year?

These were part of my OMG AUTUMN IS HERE cast on frenzy back in September. And because cast on frenzies don’t exactly make for quick FOs they’ve only been finished now.

I think I’ve loved every Cookie A pattern I’ve knit so far (which are Striation and Golden Leaves) and erm.. is it just me or am I going for a colour theme here?

The other thing I’m desperately trying to finish, and I think this might delight some of you (including myself of course) is my threshold sweater. Look how far it is!!! Only a little over 1 sleeve to go so I’m hoping to be able to finally give this a beautiful FO post in a couple of days 🙂

See this here? This is a hat. A hat I knit as a Christmas gift for a friend. A hat I’d normally be tempted to keep for myself. A hat I knew would be very loved by my friend (I think the pattern and colour are right up her alley, which is why I picked this project for her of course), if only she could make her head grow maybe twice its regular size within the next week. Not because she has an unusually tiny head and I knit a regular sized hat. No, this is actually a ginormous hat.

I’m not a newbie knitter, but I manage to make all kinds of newbie mistakes all the time. Nothing wrong with that I guess. Whilst knitting this hat it already appeared way too big, but thinking I wouldn’t have time to finish the ONE Christmas knit I was working on if I didn’t just continue I ignored my gut feeling. Of course washing the hat made it even bigger. And there you have it, a pretty project ready to be ripped out and surely not to be gifted for Christmas. (if you know anyone in need of the world’s biggest hat get in touch)

So what do I do when I mess up knitting? I go back to knitting socks. Knitting socks is like crawling into my safe space. I never mess up socks! Ok that statement is a bit too strongly formulated, but I don’t think I’ve ever had to rip and restart a sock more than once. I guess there are multiple factors contributing to this..

One thing must simply be practice. Socks are so familiar! I know how many stitches I need, which heel to make, what toe I love to get to a perfect sock for my feet. It’s not like I don’t know my own head size or am baffled by the proportions of my torso (I do buy clothes for myself after all), but I simply make projects for my other body parts less frequently. I know socks. In fact, I bet if I leave a sock WIP on my night stand I would wake up in the morning to see a little bit of progress was made during my sleep (unfortunately for the boyfriend I’m a fanatic sleep talker, how much more difficult can sleep knitting be?).

So after messing up with the hat I crawled into my sock knitting safe space. I got some Regia sock yarn for my birthday that I’m making a pair of fraternal vanilla socks out of, plus the Drogon socks that have had WIP status for a longer time already now. And to end this ode to sock knitting, here’s a current picture of my sock drawer (I never tire of this view). I love knitting gifts but I always find giving away socks difficult, because adding a new pair to this collection is always such a joy.

Bonus: here are some pics of Sibbe & Iva taking turns thinking ‘if I fits I’ll sits’ (spoiler, they don’t fits, so they left disappointed).

Finally I can share the news that the little Saffran cardigan has been saved and gifted! You might have read my traumatising first experience with steeking which required me to do some serious sweater surgery. But I’m so happy to say the cardigan didn’t unravel and is wearable.

Pattern: Saffran cardigan
Yarn: Drops Karisma

After it turned out the yarn was too slippery for steeking and it looked as if everything would unravel, I decided that asking my grandmother to run the sewing machine over the loose stitches might be the safest option. She helped me out and indeed the stitches couldn’t move at all anymore, which was a big relief. After the sewing it left the edges a bit wobbly and my mom was kind enough to help with sewing the stitches into the cardigan (what a family effort it was). In the end all of this sewing didn’t exactly leave the inside with a neat finish though. I’ll show you a picture because I love you guys and I’m an honest knitter. But there’s nothing inspiring about it.

The thing is though that;
1) in knitting it’s actually the outside that matters, and these edges don’t mean the cardigan has a horrible personality.
2) I totally ran out of time to do this (the buttons were sewn on only shortly before I left to my friend who this was meant for) but simply sewing a ribbon over it will cover all of the Frankenstein-ish appearance.
3) as I say with all the knitting mistakes I make: it’s a design feature that makes it unique!!

So there you have it. And what matters most is that my friend loved the things I knit for her baby (this cardi + the Teddy sweater) and that the baby is super adorable and I finally got to meet the sweet girl.

Speaking of sweet girls, my own family has also grown a little, meet Sibbe, the cross eyed Siberian who is the new friend of Iva. Isn’t she cute?