One of the last things I expected when I started learning how to knit was how much it would bring me closer to people. I should have expected it, maybe – after all, I chose to start knitting as a grief coping mechanism. Apparently, I’m not the only one! Walking through a store with my knitting basket on my arm, I had a saleslady help me grab a yarn ball that had fallen out when I bent to look at a low shelf, and we ended up talking for twenty minutes about how she’d learned to knit while a loved one was dying, just to have something to do, and how knitting had served as a comfort for us both. Not every...
Like most knitters, I started out with small projects: hats, scarves, and so on. But I could only scroll past sweaters on Ravelry for so long before giving in! A while back, I started working on Thomas Connor’s An Eskevien pattern. It is wonderful. An oversized sweater in worsted weight on 14-inch-long needles is a very different experience from tiny detailed handwarmers! Fortunately, cables are fun either way. Yes, that is literally an entire pound of acrylic yarn. This cardigan is going to use two of these skeins. I’ve never knitted anything this big before! Soon it was obvious that this project was too big to carry with me. Since I cast on the cardigan before finishing my simpler knits, this became the one I left at...
Don’t you love the joy of finishing a project? I certainly do! This week, the finished object I’m celebrating is a (belated) gift for my (very patient) sister-in-law, Kaitlyn. Her office can be a bit chilly, but wearing winter gloves at her desk was too much. A pair of low-profile fingerless mitts were a perfect fit. Searching Ravelry led me to Cynthia Levy’s Resonator pattern in all its intricately cabled glory. I had never done cabling in a fingering-weight gauge before. Fortunately, the entire pattern is charted quite clearly, so I decided to go for it. I am so glad I did. Any wool soft enough to wear on the wrists for a full shift at work was too much to risk...
Way back in time, before I’d begun my own knitting journey, my sister knitted me a hat. The hat is so fuzzy it bends reality to be soft and fuzzy around it! It was, and is, the perfect hat. Just slouchy enough to hold all of my hair, super cozy, chunky yarn, hugs my head just enough but not too tight, and manages to look fantastic with just about anything. So of course, once I started knitting, I wanted to make one. When I told Em this, I got quite a bit of a confused look. Apparently, this gift hat was finished in a burst of inspiration, sleep deprivation, and absolutely no pattern. Thus, my great journey into trying to...
This project has been quite some time in the making! I bought the yarn back in early March – a St. Patrick’s Day sale on green yarns timed with a bit of extra spending money encouraged me to impulsively throw a single skein of the first fingering-weight yarn I’ve bought for myself into the cart along with the workhorse worsted weight I was buying for other projects. It looked so pretty, and I’d only just started my love affair with lace. Buying the yarn, of course, led to a long search for the perfect pattern to knit it with, which eventually led me to the designer Nim Teasdale, found here on Ravelry and here on WordPress. She makes some truly amazing adjustable shawls, and I’ve been...