Yarn update

[cahn]

I am still crocheting away, I haven't stopped!

And knitting, actually. I... actually... really like knitting. As long as I don't make any mistakes (that I don't immediately catch) because what I really don't like is fixing knitting mistakes. (Fixing crochet mistakes that happened in the last round is tedious but fine, which is good because I make a lot of them.) I'm in it for the miles of knit stitch, not doing anything actually hard! I am working on a sweater. It is... pretty clearly a first sweater? It's been my go-to during work meetings and I've been working on it off and on during meetings for about six months now and am halfway through the first sleeve, which I guess is good insomuch as it means I can't have been spending that much time in meetings, right?

A large part of what I have been doing is making baby blankets for various church friends (people at my church keep having babies, just found out about another one due in Feb I'd like to make a blanket for) and baby-sized blankets for my niece and nephew, not super interesting (eventually I found my One True Baby Blanket pattern, the lemon peel stitch and just keep repeating that one) but also satisfying because they are small and take relatively little time, so my short attention span is kept happy.

But also! I have fiiiinally managed to finish those two blankets I have been working on for ages! Well, the Coral Story blanket I actually did a lot of work on very quickly because I loved it so much, and then I got stuck on the joining the hexes together thing and let it sit for about a year before doing the joining. The Hue Shift blanket was a slog and I kept leaving it to work on baby blankets and so on, but I got faster at it which helped a lot, and I got a lot done in the double whammy of travel and covid this summer. Anyway it has taken me a little less than two years to get both of these done! (Ssh don't tell anyone, the Coral story still has some ends that need to be woven in, but I did weave in all the ends for the Hue Shift because A. and E. were eager to use it.)

Now that I have finished these blankets, I... have plans to make another one! (No, we do not need another blanket. Yes, I'm going to make another one anyway.) Using the pattern thistleingrey talks about here. (This one will be scrappy -- I am planning on using a lot of the odds and ends of yarn that I bought when I first learned to crochet thinking "that looks pretty!" but, uh, didn't know what to do with after that.)

Pics!

Avena:


Coral story:


Hue shift:

Comments

[thistleingrey]

Ooh, those look great! Coral Story is amazing.

[cahn]

Thank you, and it really is amazing, still my favorite pattern ever! I love all of her patterns.

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yay, that's awesome!

Also, lol, this all sounds extremely familiar, from the making and giving away of baby things, to the tail ends that still need to be tied in, to walking through your house and seeing something being blocked out. Our foam squares are pastel and don't have the alphabet, but otherwise it is the same. ;)

I'm glad you're having fun!

[cahn]

Haha, I was so excited to learn that the foam alphabet blocks the kids grew out of a couple of years ago could have another purpose!

Tail ends, aaaargh!

[luzula]

Wow, very impressive! *admires*

[cahn]

Thank you! :D

[el_staplador]

Oh, those are so pretty!

[cahn]

Thank you! I am happy with how they came out (and you can't see all the mistakes from that far away, haha)

[sophia_sol]

wow, those are SO gorgeous and I love them all so much! I particularly love the dynamics of the interplay between the colours in the hue shift blanket

[cahn]

Thank you! The hue Shift blanket color interplay is so cool. antisoppist made it a few years ago and I was like, wow, I want to make that!! (She made the knit version, but there was no way I was going to be able to knit that much.)

[mildred_of_midgard]

Update: My wife says these are lovely! She actually had the sweater pattern saved on Ravelry, and says she's thinking of making it. She also says you're clearly doing quite well with the knitting. :D

She agrees with you about undoing knitting mistakes, but says it was a gamechanger when she realized that if she needs to pick up a dropped stich or redo a wrong stitch several rows ago, she doesn't have to undo all the rows in between. She can just wait until she gets to that stitch on the current row, purposely drop that stitch through all the rows down to the mistake, then use a crochet hook to fix it and redo all the stitches back up to the current row.

She said it took her forever to figure this out, so I mention this in case you haven't yet discovered this trick!

ETA: I also mentioned the lemon peel stitch to her, and she said, "Oh, yeah, I made a whole blanket out of that once." You really are following in her footsteps, the deja vu is quite funny from my perspective. :D

Daughter of ETA: I also read "No, we do not need another blanket. Yes, I'm going to make another one anyway," aloud to her, because it was SO FAMILIAR, and she laughed ad said, "No, I do not need another sweater. Yes, I'm going to make another one anyway."

[cahn]

Avena is a cool knitting pattern! Tell your wife I modified it so that the yoke pattern isn't as long (the canon pattern is long!), and if she wants that modification I can try to find the graph paper where I plotted it out.

Oh WAIT I don't think I realized that about knitting mistakes, that... sounds SO much easier, thank you! (I should have figured that out, as I have definitely had to use a crochet hook to fix a stitch that slipped several rows, and now that I think about it other people, like thistleingrey, have made remarks like that before.)

HAHA, I also do not need more sweaters but I am making them anyway! (I'm also working on a crochet cardigan.)

[thistleingrey]

Ah, modifying Avena makes sense--its colorwork goes quite far down otherwise. I kind of squinted at your photo but it didn't click at first, visually.

[cahn]

Yeah, the colorwork does go really far down! Although it's funny, some of the sweaters I see on Ravelry look like it goes down a reasonable amount and some really don't. Maybe a body type thing? In any case I was reasonably sure I would not be one of the people that it went down a reasonable amount on, and when I tried on the modified yoke I was happy I'd made that choice :) I was a bit dubious about modifying colorwork on my first sweater and first colorwork, but on the other hand I was like, it's just pixels on graph paper :)

[thistleingrey]

Agreed, seems to me to be a body type thing--bust relative to armhole depth, primarily. Your mod looks good on you! And absolutely yes, pixels on graph paper. :)

[mildred_of_midgard]

if she wants that modification I can try to find the graph paper where I plotted it out.

Neat, I will pass this on, thanks!

Oh WAIT I don't think I realized that about knitting mistakes, that... sounds SO much easier, thank you!

Oh, YAY! I'm glad me telling her about your yarn posts continues to be helpful!

I'm also working on a crochet cardigan.

Lol, she is *always* working on a crochet cardigan, it seems like. ;)

(K)

[(Anonymous)]

Wow. Those are spectacular!

On Friday I was complaining to D about how girls tend to go to the textile art activities and boys go to the STEM activities (see skipping MOEMS for macrame) and consequently the girls pick up these time-consuming hobbies that get in the way of other activities. (kind of like being in a school play)

But then I see work like yours, and I see the other side of the argument...

Re: (K)

[cahn]

Thank you! And aw, knitting and crochet, at least, don't necessarily have to be time-consuming activities, I usually do it while multi-tasking something else, like watching the kids practice or waiting for an activity to be over or something. Though it's true that to do the neat-looking stuff like the Coral Story or the yoke of the sweater, that needed some concentrated time. (The Hue Shift blanket looks complex but that's only because of the color interplay; it actually didn't take a lot of concentration, though on the other hand I say that and it explains to me why I had to pull out so many mistakes..)

School plays, though, definitely. I think I've told you, my parents wouldn't even let me do them at all!

[cenozoicsynapsid]

Those are gorgeous! I showed them to my partner (you'd recognize their fandom 'nym but you've never been officially introduced so they don't want to post here) and they say the same! The colors and designs are amazing.

[cahn]

Aww, thank you! And your partner too! <3

[zdenka]

Pretty!!

[cahn]

Thank you!!

(Unrelatedly, I have been watching Sherrill Milnes as Rodrigo (the 1980 Met) -- you once showed me him as the quintessential Rodrigo :) He is just GREAT and I see what you mean :D )

[zdenka]

Yay, I'm very glad you enjoyed him! :D Btw, I haven't been ignoring your emails about the Met's Don Carlo -- I just haven't managed to watch it myself yet . . .

[eye_of_a_cat]

Those are so pretty!

[cahn]

Thank you! <3