2019 Year End Totals

I think this is all of it! My tracking for 2019 wasn't great. I've gone through the blog and the photos on my computer and done my best to include everything. 

It doesn't look like I did as much knitting as usual. 

Maybe that's because stitching takes so much longer than knitting? In the time that  I spent on Little Girl with Cosmos or the Hedgehogs, I could've knit four or five shawls. That's a total guess, but I don't think I'm that far off.

Crocuses on the Windowsill needs a little more back stitching and the upper edge of the window filled in, but I'm counting it as a 2019 finish because it's SO close to done. 

I'm ending the year with a lot of unfinished cross stitch projects, which I'm totally fine about. My productivity was definitely off, but I couldn't explain how or why. 

2020 will be whatever it's going to be. The last thing I'm going to stress about is how many shawls I might or might not knit. 

Yan at the Dollar Tree?

The two Dollar Trees in my area with Crafter's Square aisles have both been stocking worsted weight acrylic. I was curious enough to buy a skein to knit up. I'm not sure why, because I have worsted weight acrylic for  small projects already, but new yarn is a tempting thing. 

It's not bad! One 130 yard skein was enough to knit myself a pair of pocketbook slippers. Its texture is  comparable to the softer skeins of Red Heart Super Saver. For big projects, it would make more sense to buy your acrylic at Michaels or Joanns or Walmart, especially with a coupon. But for a little project or a craft for the kids, this stuff could make sense.

Hedgehogs in Lingonberries

I guess we can hang it on the wall while I search for the perfect frame. I'm still loving the idea of a round one. 

Kit: Hedgehogs in Lingonberries, by Riolis 

The back stitching was tedious (and I was tempted to skip most of it) but it definitely paid off. My prickly little hedgehogs are actually prickly looking. And their little noses look like actual hedgehog noses! In most of the patterns I've seen, they don't. 

Restful Rainbow Shawl

Lion Brand's Shawl in a Ball is exactly the kind of yarn that appeals to me when I'm standing there in the craft store. The promise that I can make a  whole shawl with one skein of yarn? Yes, please!  

When Hobby Lobby had it on clearance, I grabbed all of the different colorways. This one is Restful Rainbow and it's the least subdued of my choices. 

Whether or not you can get a full shawl out of one five hundred yard skein is open to interpretation. This is definitely a shawl and if I'd used a lacy stitch pattern it would have come out bigger. Two skeins would open up a lot more options.

I like the effect of gradient yarn but if there's been knots in the skein (there weren't!) this could have ended completely differently. 

Procrastiknitting

The plan was to knit a couple of ballband dishcloths for my sister's new kitchen. Three seemed like a good number, but they were quick and fun and it made sense to make a fourth one so that there was one of each color combination. 

I also wanted to add something to make it more obvious that it was for the kitchen. That was going to be a little bottle of dish soap or a store bought scrubbie, then I remembered the little rounds ones I'd knitted back when I was making ballband dishcloths a few years ago. It took some searching because I couldn't remember the name of the  pattern  and there wasn't a trace of it in my blog posts from back then. (It's like this Welted Spiral Scrubbie but I was using a different pattern when I made the first ones.)

I can't believe that it was way back in 2006 when I first made some of these from the pattern in Mason Dixon Knitting. How does time pass so quickly?

Things to Love About a Troublesome Shawl

There are things to like about this shawl. I love the colors and the combination of stockinette and garter stitch ridges, which are the same thing I did on the previous Wildstreak Shawl but look better on this one.

I absolutely love the combination of k2p2 ribbing and garter stitch ridges that keep it from flipping up at the bottom like the last one did.

What I don't love is that there were so many knots in the skeins that I now have eighteen ends to weave in. I also don't love that the loosely spun yarn was looking worn while I was still knitting.

I will not buy more loosely spun yarn no matter how cheap it is.

Our Coastal Sewing Room

Take a look at what we had for our sewing room last week! I got my sewing machine all set up and plugged in and....nothing. The foot pedal didn't work at all. I fought with it for a while before stomping angrily on it and thinking some bad words finally did the trick. 

I'll admit that I spent more time on my cross stitching than at my sewing machine, but I did get three bags done. One was a total flop, which sometimes happens when you're making things up as you go along. 

This one is my favorite...

It started out as a flour sack dishtowel I found at the dollar tree and with some fusible interfacing and a thrifted zipper I think I turned it into a pretty little knitting bag.

Slow Blue Lace Socks

It took me almost two months to slog my way through this pair of socks, despite the fact that I was actively knitting on them. I'd understand if I'd shoved them into a project bag while I was working on something else, but I was actually trying - and failing - to get these done.

I can't explain how or why they were such a hassle. I had good needles. I've knit probably a dozen pairs in this same super easy lace pattern. I've used this brand of yarn before and even though I don't like the placement of those dark stripes, that ugly detail shouldn't have messed with the physical act of knitting them.

I made mistakes. I dropped stitches. My hands got tired more quickly than they should have (a problem that I didn't have once I switched to that garter stitch shawl I posted last week.)

I think I'll tuck these into a drawer until I forget how much I dislike them. 

Caramel Me Away Shawl

I needed something mindless on my needles so a few days ago I cast on with a cake of self striping acrylic from my Hobby Lobby clearance stash. The plan was to knit a garter stitch triangle until I ran out of yarn and just look at how well that plan worked out for me!

I like this one a lot more than I thought I would. It took the tiniest bit of fiddling to keep the stripe pattern consistent because when I bought the yarn I didn't know there was a trick to selecting the cakes to ensure that the colors would end at the same point. To fix my mistake, I wound up using yarn from the outside of  the second skein to make the narrow reddish band wide enough, then going back to the inside of the skein to continue with the dark brown.

This was just what I needed as an antidote to those blue lace socks.

I used two skeins of Yarn Bee Sugarwheel in the "caramel me away" colorway, not quite 700 yards of worsted weight acrylic. Now I'm torn between using my other two cakes to make the exact same shawl in a different colorway or doing something different, like basketweave.

Magnetic Cross Stitch Bookmarks

A few months back, I bought a pack of magnet bookmarks from Hobby Lobby. They were cute and had a sewing theme and it didn't take me long at all to realize that I wanted more of them. I found tutorials for making them out of washi tape and old maps and a dozen other things...then I started to wonder if I could make a cross stitched version. 

Turns out I could -- and I did!

The patterns I stitched are from a book I've had in my stash for years, called A Little Country by Kount on Kappie. It's got fifty little old fashioned still life scenes that I've been dying to stitch but didn't know what I'd do with if I did stitch them. I used 18 count aida to keep the size down.

For the complete finishing instructions, click on the video below.



I'm linking up to What I Made

Welcome to Camp Crystal Lake

My goal was  to finish stitching the Camp Crystal Lake sign before summer was over and I put in the last few splattery red stitches on Tuesday morning before checking to see if it would fit into that frame Mom found at that rummage sale where she found the dollar sets of china. 

I have other plans for finishing the sign and the frame is probably going to wind up with a sampler in it, but for what's left of summer, this works just fine. I'll leave it like that until I either find the wood I need for my plan or need the frame for something else.

Pattern: Camp Crystal Lake by Witchy Stitcher 

Borealis Socks

My sock blockers are hiding from me today and that might not be a bad thing. I didn't care for this combination of stripes while the socks were on the needles but on my feet it's much less obvious. 

The yarn is Deborah Norville Serenity Sock in the Borealis colorway. 

They kept my hands busy and  now they'll keep my toes warm.

Pink Fair Isle Shawl

This was more yarn from the Hobby Lobby 2019 clearance sale. I cast on eight-five stitches and knit it up in stockinette with a garter stitch border. Happily, that guess at the stitch count was enough to make the self-patterning yarn do its thing.

Yarn: Yarn Bee Fair Isle 

Despite a knot in one of my skeins, I kept the pattern more or less consistent. That required losing some yarn from middle of the skein so I didn't have two stripes of the grey and white pattern right next to each other.

It's a shawl.  Hopefully after a trip through the washer and dryer the edges won't curl quite so much.

Splashing Fun Bookmark

I finished the bookmark and the point, while it isn't perfect, wasn't as tricky as I feared it might be. 

I just love the shading on her dress and hair! 

Another Calendar Towel Project Bag

I made myself another zippered project bag from a calendar towel. This one was in a box of red cotton scraps from an estate sale  and the fabric isn't nearly as worn or faded as  the first one...which might not be a good thing because the colors are almost painfully bright. Would it be completely ridiculous to just throw a towel through the laundry every load until it fades? 

This bag isn't lined with fusible interfacing because I've only got a yard left at the house and I have plans for using it up and no plans to drive into town soon. Compared to the first bag, it has much less structure...but does a pair of socks in progress really need a bag that isn't floppy?

The proportions are also a bit off, but someone had cut the bottom of the towel...maybe to remove the year? It's always interesting to wonder what happened to my things before I owned  them. I left it wide to keep the trees and to keep as much of the stream as possible I cropped off the top of the church steeple. It seems like there's always some give and take with projects like this one. But I'm not complaining -- this is made from a fat quarter I got for a quarter at the thrift shop, a tea towel I found in a bag of scraps, and a ten cent zipper from an estate sale haul.

The Goblins Will Get You

I absolutely love the way Goblins came out! 

Pattern: Goblins (Cross Stitch & Country Crafts September/October 1995)

This one has been kitted up in my stash since before Quinn and Leif were born and I probably wouldn't have started it if I wasn't randomly grabbing projects for Stitch Maynia. I put in ten or so stitches on the bottom border, then set it aside to go deal with something outside and twisted my ankle.

It was a while before I picked it up again and started over and I'm so glad I did. From the magazine picture, I had no idea how great the colors and details would actually look. There are blended threads and the border isn't symmetrical and I complained about both, but the effort was totally worth it.

Montavilla Socks

They don't look the same color at all in this picture, but they're from the same skein of yarn. I'm pretty sure it's just contrast against the color of the porch boards or a trick of the light. 

Yarn: Knitpicks Hawthorne, Montavilla 

These have been on my needles for weeks. I know I had them on the coast trip back in March. Or maybe I just had the skein of yarn with me. At any rate, they're done now and I love the colors and I'm glad I added that simple bit of lace.

So I remember what I did...

Round 1 -- knit three, purl two
Round 2 -- knit two together, yarn over, knit one
Round 3 -- knit three, purl two
Round 4 -- knit one, yarn over, slip slip knit

It's not unique to me, but I couldn't find it when I needed it and couldn't remember it when it was time to start the pattern across the instep. The socks themselves are 64 stitches on dpns, increased to 65 stitches to make the lace pattern work.

I Don't Like This Shawl

I made another shawl and I'm not at all happy with it. Except for the colors, which are gorgeous. And the pattern, which I'll definitely be following again.

This is going to be more of a yarn review than a post about a finished project.  Yarn Bee Wildstreak comes in gorgeous colors, but it's loosely spun and I had to focus on every stitch to keep the tips of my needles from going through the yarn. The second of three skeins had multiple knots and stretches where the fiber wasn't twisted at all.

I need to learn that it's okay to give up on yarn that just isn't working, especially when it was 75% off in the first place. I spent a whole lot of hours on a project that's probably going to wind up at the thrift shop because I don't feel like it turned out well enough to donate and it's not quite bad enough to throw in the garbage. (I'll make the final decision after seeing how it holds up in the wash.)

So much for trying new yarns...at least this particular new yarn. 

I Stitched a Thing...

I'd been carrying around the pattern and fabric and floss in my project bag since January. Sometimes it seemed like the most appropriate thing I could possibly stitch. Some days things were going smoothly and I was happy with hedgehogs and snowy scenery. 

A week or so ago, I really needed to work on something that was simple and one color and didn't requite much concentration. So it got stitched. 

Pattern: Swearing Helps, a free download from Glowfall Love & Craft

There should have been a swag of flowers across the bottom, but leaving those off meant that it would fit the hoop that I'd recently used as a prop for something else so I left them off. They would have been pretty, but this piece represents a particular moment in time and on that morning flowers weren't a priority. 

I've got mixed feelings about what I've seen described as snarky stitching. Some captures me feelings almost perfectly, but I wouldn't hang it on my wall. This one is iffy, but it's going in the sewing room and I'm the only one who should be in the sewing room and I honestly don't worry about the entire world seeing it. It's tame enough. 

Halfway Home, a Second Time

I could honestly see myself knitting this Halfway Home shawl over and over. The first one I knit was supposed to be for the prayer shawl ministry at my late Aunt's church, but I fell in love with it and kept it for myself. 

I hate to say it, but I love this second attempt even more. I am not keeping it for myself, no matter how much squishier and denser and warmer the slightly thicker yarn (Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn) made it. What I do wish is that I'd bought more of this yarn when they had that amazing clearance sale last year. It was dirt cheap and I really enjoyed knitting with it.

There are at least a dozen shawls with similar construction in my Ravelry queue, so I'm not making much of a sacrifice by giving this shawl up.