Wednesday, May 30, 2018

WIP Wednesday - Week 22

StashDash2018 (a podcast knitting race) started this past Friday so as usual I'm finishing All The Things! (Capitalized, so it's true now). The previous years I've signed up for the 5K event, but I'm thinking I might only do the 3K this year - we'll see.

First finished item - the wingspan made out of my Christmas yarn. It's ridiculously colourful and I love it! Don't know how much I'll actually wear it, but I had fun knitting it, and that's the important thing.

Second finished item - a pair of socks for a colleague of mine. They're nothing special, but just a simple spiral around. I finally got to give them to her yesterday and I think she liked them 🙂 Of course, it is waaaaay too hot to wear them now, but they'll keep.

Third finished item - the forest wreath cowl. My first real attempt at two-colour brioche. I like the way it looks, but am not a huge fan of the actual knitting part of brioche knitting (which is also why I stopped after just two repeats instead of the 3 the pattern suggested), so I'll probably never knit any of the larger items.

I loved the yarn I used for the forest wreath though, and as I still had quite a bit left, I decided to use that for the Summa Shawl. I cast on Sunday and have pretty much been knitting exclusively on that ever since. It's flying off the needles, and I absolutely love how it's turning out. I fully expect to finish within a few days :D

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

WIP Wednesday - Week 19

No finished objects this time. I'm saving up finishing projects for stashdash (starts May 25th) in the hopes I'll be able to reach 5K again :-D

That said I've made a lot of progress on a lot of WIPs :)

First, I've been working on no fewer than 3 pairs of socks! The first are just plain vanilla in a self-patterning yarn. I'd brought them along to knit on at a work event as they required little to no attention and therefore made for perfect "keep my hands busy" knitting. I'm just past the heel but am in no rush to finish as I'm putting these aside for mindless knitting.
One of my colleagues/friends saw me knitting (hard for her not to - she was sitting right next to me!) and started squeeing so much over the socks that I immediately offered to knit her a pair too (would just have offered her said socks, but her feet are quite a bit smaller than mine, so that wouldn't work). I cast those one the very next day and am about half-way through the first sock. I really like both the pattern and the yarn.
Finally, I discovered a test-knit I just had to sign up for as it called for "extremely varigated yarn", and I had just such a skein I didn't know what to do with. I cast those on and finished the first one (all the test called for) in less than a week - it was very potatochippy to see the diamonds appear! I can't quite decide what I think of the finished sock - the purl bumps make to almost too busy - but know that I definitely want to knit a no-purl version at some point.

Other than that I've been knitting on my colourful wingspan. I'm on the very last wedge and my very last colour. Definitely not sure that I'll have enough yarn to bind off with, but fortunately it's just plain black, so I should be able to find more in my stash ;) This has been put aside to finish for stashdash! :D

Since I put that aside I had to find something else to work on, so I picked the Snowmelt back up and have managed to add on another 20 rows to that. I'm half way now, and will soon increase the stitch count to 500+ stitches per row!!! :-O
(Still not a huge fan of the current colour, but I loved it in the skein so I'm sure it'll be better once the green starts to appear.)