Category Archives: Knitting

All my knitting adventures

Finished: 2025 Fall Hat

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The 2025 Fall Hat is complete and ready to into the hat bin.

Pattern: My own basic beanie recipe with 112 stitches

Needles: US 5s

Yarn: Yarns Northwest Silk and Merino

The finished hat used 1.5 of the 50 gram skeins of the yarn. That’s about 185 yards of yarn With the silk, this will be a warm hat and I will likely never use this yarn for hats again. It shows EVERY mistake and it a little fuzzy being a single.

The hat came out blocked to an adult medium size or large child. I think I will let my teal loving PB have this hat for school use. I won’t be sad if this one gets lost along the way. It will have served its purpose 🙂

Happy Knitting!!

Snow Washing Shawls and Hats

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Today is the snow wash day for all the shawls and cowls. It continues to stay very cold here so that is key to the success of this process.

This is a thing I did with my sweaters and blankets when it was actively snowing. For this round I had to kind of sprinkle and kick snow over the knits. I let these lay out for 4-5 ours and then dried in my basement. I did spritz them with some soak scented spray for extra goodness.

I am finding that the finished objects did relax (a little) like they do with a bloc. And they smelled better even before the spray. For more benefits and better explanation, I like this article by County Living. Basically is it’s like ancient dry cleaning.

Happy Winter!

Coffee And Decreases

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I am fully caffeinated and ready to knit. I really want to finish this dang 2025 Fall Hat.

This singles yarn really shows ALL my mistakes or poor stitches. It is also really easy to split with the needles I chose. This will for sure be for the “school” pile or keep at home pile as it’s not the most polished piece of work.

I need like three more row and then I can start the decreases. I have 112 stitches total so I am thinking eight star decreases with 14 stitches each. And another cup of coffee….

Happy Knitting!!

Snow Washing

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I’m channeling my inner Yarn Harlot or Norwegian ancestor. We had some SUPER cold temps and very dry fine snow. So I decided at 6 pm to snow wash some of my woolens.

I started with all the wool hand knit sweaters I could lay hands on. There is my Autumn Gold, Love Note, Round Yoke pullover, and Rainbow Radiate. And a few more not pictured 🙂

And with the kids (and dog) using the knit blankets more, I decided to snow wash the blankets as well. I left everything out for about 3 or 3.5 hours before I shook out and took inside. I splurged a little and pulled out that woolen spray from yesterday and gave everything a spritz of yummy scent.

I think next up will be my shawls…..they could use a wash.

Happy Winter!!

2025 Fall Hat Progress

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I am really trying to finish this hat this month. And the Fall Conference Hat is still slow going. I got a decent inch added during a long work meeting.

I think I need another solid inch and I can start the decreases. This yarn is single and can get splitty. I am interested to see how well I can work the decreases without driving myself insane.

I am fully into the second ball of yarn. So there will be leftovers for my leftover pile. That pile got bigger when I did the annual stash toss and container consolidation. I need to come up with more ideas than worsted weight hats.

Happy Knitting!!

Zebra Heels

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I think I am getting close to where I need to start the heels on Rhiannon’s socks.

She is a US 7 women’s foot so I am using the internet to help me gauge how long the foot needs to be based on averages. Negative ease can help me here along with the fact that wool stretches out. It should all be fine.

I need to dust off my turned heel instructions…..

Happy Knitting!!

A Couple of Toes

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Rhiannon’s socks are coming along nicely. I think working socks in tandem is just how to trick my brain to work better.

This yarn is working up at least semi consistently across the two socks. One side is micro striping and the other side has some thicker black stripes. I haven’t decided which “side” is going to be the bottom of the foot and which will be the top.

I am also very torn about the kind of heel. I feel like a turned heel is the right choice but I feel nervous about knitting that kind for a person I have never met before. I just need to put my big kid pants on and just knuckle under I guess. They will fit someone if they don’t fit my intended recipient.

Happy Knitting!!

Finished: 2025 Advent Socks 2

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The 2025 Advent Socks #2 are done and blocked even!

Pattern: My own toe up vanilla sock “recipe” with 64 stitches and an afterthought heel

Needles: US 1s

Yarn: The Cozy Knitter Bliss Sock for the 2025 advent with contrasting white mini and an extra KFI Collection Teenie Weenie mini in grey.

This combination of yarns used accounted for 282 yards of yarn. Not bad for a women’s medium is sock. And I used up all of three yarns without adding scraps. I do realize now that one white toe is longer than the other. And I cut the heels in by where the colors changed and not by measuring both socks. In hindsight, I should have measured both. So one foot is definitely slightly different than the other. I don’t think by more than a couple rows. It should all work out fine for my friend. She wears these insider her Birkenstock sandals or just has house slippers.

Now on to focus on the black and white socks! Happy Knitting!!

Found The Lost Tub

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I did a DEEP purge in my storage and laundry area this week. I took several bags of kids clothes to the local Boys and Girl Club as well some household stuff to the thrift shop. It felt really good to have more space!

And I did in fact find the tub of knitting items that I knew I was missing. Some of this yarn I had forgotten about. It was a lot of Caron Simply Soft and some chenille for blankets. And weirdly a ton of knit picks back from my craft fair days.

I kept some of the knit picks and put a lot of the rest into my donate pile. And reclaimed an entire storage tub!

Now on to the knitting part!

Now For The Heels

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The tubes for my 2025 Advent Socks 2 are fully completed and I’m ready to start the afterthought heels.

This recipient has slightly smaller feet than me. She is the one who gets my shrunk or slightly felted socks when they are too small for me. I usually make a 7 inch leg for my foot so I decided to cut in the heel at 6.5 inches to not knit quite as deep. This could be a disaster? But I was hoping to get something to fit her more custom than my hand me downs, lol.

I am using some contrast grey to make the heels as I used up all the white in the toes. The good news is that knitting stretches and some negative ease helps with fit and sliding down in your shoe. I’ll have to find out after I deliver her gift box!

Happy Knitting!!