I should feel sheepish that I’m posting my finished Christmas socks a month after Christmas. But for me, this is actually fairly timely as I think I once finished Christmas knitting in March. Progress not perfection!
These are a mashup of the Vanilla Socks on 9 inch Circulars basic pattern from Kayla Litton and the Summer Camp Socks by Jill Zielinski. Main color is West Yorkshire Spinners Sparkle “Yuletide” and heels, toes, and cuffs are WYS “Evergreen”. I usually do 64 stitches on US 0 (2mm) needles.
I feel like I became more committed to and organized with my knitting in 2024. I finished 9 projects, which were smallish, but still – as a slow knitter, that’s not bad for me.
I spent much of my holiday break reorganizing the small room in my house (in the back; under the eaves, looking out into the pines) that serves as my home office, spare bedroom, cat playplen, and craft room. As I dug through the layers of flotsam and jetsam accumulated over the years, I found MULTIPLE project bags that I’d set up with various knitting projects. MULTIPLE. Some of them I’d forgotten all about.
I don’t usually like to set goals for my knitting because – again – I knit very slowly and sometimes having a set schedule of what I’m going to knit can feel restrictive and doomed to fail. However, this year I’d like to identify a few knits that I can tackle to clear out the projects bin and keep the momentum of making going.
First – finishing up my 2024 Christmas socks. I’m on the leg of the second sock so hopefully I can wrap them up in January.
I’d like to knit myself a hat for my neighborhood ‘no bad weather’ walks. Probably the Purl Soho Simple Pleasures hat. I knit one for my daughter several years ago (unfortunately now since lost) but we both really liked it.
I’m going to cast on a new set of coasters for our den – the Chocolate Bar coasters (again from Purl Soho) in some great neutral Cascade Superwash 128.
I am about to cast on the Wolop cowl with my Homespun House Advent minis!
Another pair of socks from the project bin…probably these.
And I’d actually like to knit a cardigan this year, too. I’m not much of a garment knitter, but I’ve found that a couple of good, cozy, nonfussy cardigans are missing from my wardrobe. I have thin ones that I wear to work, but I need some oversized casual ones to wear around the house to up my usual loungewear hoodie game. It’s been fizzing in my brain that I’d like to knit another garment and have a go at it. I have my eye on the Good Grandpa cardigan. It’s just the sort of vibe I need and using bulky weight, it shouldn’t be a multiple-years-long knit.
Other potentials for 2025 include finishing up my Turning Leaves socks, continuing work on my Homespun House Cozy Comfort throw and my Cozy Memories scrappy blanket, and the Cloud Mountain cowl which I bought as a kit from Fibresmith. (The Leslie Keating behind Fibresmith was an enormous blogger influence for my knitting journey way back when I was an expat living in Australia and she has gone on to do amazingly beautiful things!)
I hope to do a much better job at updating this space with my crafting progress…in the meantime, I hope everyone is dreaming big with their 2025 makes and finding lots of inspiration in the freshness of January! xoxo
What’s everyone up to for the long US holiday weekend? I’m off today so it will be a nice 4 days for me. I haven’t taken one long vacation this summer, just a few long weekends, which have been welcomed. This week felt like a really long one with storms and a power outage one day as well as the kid’s first marching band performance at the first home football game. (I don’t like the early season games – it’s so fricking hot and last night the stadium was almost as full of bees and wasps as it was half-dressed hormonally charged teens.)
The kid started school on Monday which feels weird to me as a Gen-Xer who always started school after Labor Day. Lots of memories of that last sad Labor Day weekend (possibly spent watching the Jerry Lewis telethon on my grandparents’ screen porch) which I usually couldn’t enjoy because of the looming back to school jitters. However she has today off so assuming she gets up in time we’re going to do some back to school shopping. Otherwise, this weekend I want to get a couple of runs in, have breakfast with my bestie tomorrow, and do some cleanup in the yard. We still have lots of branches down from the storms.
Oh and my knitting mojo ramps up as we near the ‘-ber’ months. Finished a pair of socks for the kid and have pulled out another sock wip to hopefully make good progress on this weekend – maybe listening to my current audiobook “The Villa” by Rachel Hawkins.
Hope everyone has a very safe and happy Labor Day.
It feels so good to post a finished object! These are the “Vanilla Socks on 9” Circulars” which is a fantastic pattern by Kay Litton aka Crazy Sock Lady. The yarn is Knitting Lizard Fibers Super Soft Sock (75% superwash merino & 25% nylon) in the “Carlson’s Fishery” colorway which was a special offering via Wool & Honey’s Sleeping Bear Yarn Club.
Last year, I was madly casting off and stitching the toes up on Halloween, this year I finished my Halloween socks a full week early!
These are the Hermione’s Everyday Socks pattern by Erica Lueder, knit on Casual Fashion Queen’s plush merino sock in the Spider’s Lullaby colorway (with just some black Patons for toes and cuffs).
The only bummer is that I usually use a 2.0 mm for my socks and this time – following the pattern exactly because they are my first pair of magic loop socks – I used a 2.25. They’re too big for me. I can wear them with another pair of socks underneath but I need a 2.0 Chiao Goo red lace needle for future magic loop projects. These are modeled by my daughter whose feet are bigger than mine.
I hate to start out a blog post with bitching, but the weather right now is too damn hot. I am ready for the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness and the forecast for Tuesday is 87 degrees. Completely unacceptable. But I also know that in the depths of bleak February I will miss these days.
I had a fairly relaxing Saturday but Sunday was rife with preparation for the week ahead. A very humid mid-morning run, a trip to the nursery to buy more plants for my planters (no fun to be planting fall ornamentals in 80+ degree weather with sweat pouring into your eyes). Meal planning and grocery shopping.
On a minor grocery shopping rant – lately I have been choosing to shop mostly at the smaller and slightly more organic, upscale grocery stores in my town, which are more expensive; but they offer greater selection and a more relaxed and enjoyable shopping experience. During lockdown I exclusively patronized them because everyone was masked and considerate. I felt safe. My local Kroger was a melee of angry people ramming carts around and being pissy about masks, getting too close and just general bullshit. So I have been feeling like even in non-lockdown times I should shift my business to the entities where I felt safest when the chips were down. Unfortunately, Kroger is much cheaper and yesterday I had two rewards checks and so I bit the bullet.
It was as unpleasant as I remembered. So many angry people. Dude – I don’t say a freaking word to you about your maskless state. I choose to wear a mask (same as I chose to be vaccinated) and if you don’t, I just go right on past because honestly I don’t give two shits about hassling with you. You do you – just accept the consequences of your choice, which again have nothing to do with me. Yet you want to bleat about personal freedoms and then tell ME that I shouldn’t wear a mask? Where’s the respect for individual free choice in THAT? Ohhh – yeah, I forgot, it’s only free thinking and independent and non-sheeplike if everyone is doing what YOU want them to do. Got it.
How about you worry about your own face and leave mine the hell alone.
ANYWAY my planters turned out nicely – I’ll post some pics when they fill out a bit. Black petunias and ornamental cabbages!
I got a lot of knitting done on my Halloween socks. I guess the upside of the hot weather is that there can be a lot of front porch knitting with vlogs and small chipmunk visitors.
I was a bit worried that my chosen pattern – Hermione’s Everyday Socks by Erica Lueder – wouldn’t be visible due to the colorful yarn, but the more I knit the more the texture is apparent. And I’m really pleased with pattern and yarn.
Since I can’t seem to get my act together for a Show Us Your Books lately, here’s a mini recommendation- “Fire Keeper’s Daughter” by Angeline Boulley. It’s a YA novel that doesn’t read YA. Plus it’s set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula which is cool for a downstate Michigander and centers around an Ojibwe woman and her community. It took me about 80 pages to really get into it but after that point it caught fire and I couldn’t put it down.
So that’s my weekend and my week ahead will be more heat, home office work (did I mention that we’re back to predominantly remote again? Through early December now), school for Miss L, some charitable donation dropoffs (a stash of Colors of the World crayons & colored pencils for a local school and stuff for some of Miss L’s classrooms) and the usual cooking, laundry, and running. I hopefully will also get to sneak in a few rows on the Halloween socks and continue with some goth cross-stitch.
I hope wherever you are, you are well, safe, and happy. xo
To me, September has always felt like the true new year, when you buy new clothes and pencils and organize your stuff and have a new schedule to attend to. Even as a 48-year old grown woman, Labor Day to me is the time when I set new resolutions. And one of my resolutions for the true New Year is to get back to blogging on a more regular cadence. It’s been hard for me since my dad passed to find a lot of joy and comfort in self-reflection because the pain of missing him is always right near the surface. But although that has not changed, and probably will never change, because he was such a massive part of our lives, I’m ready to pick up this stitch and keep going.
So here’s a few recent photos from my camera roll to ease me back in.
I finished up my mom’s birthday socks! These took me forever because knitting also sort of fell by the wayside. These are Raveled but I’ll tell you that they are the Kia pattern by the wonderful Dawn Henderson (find her on Insta as knit.yarn.stuff) knit with Six and Seven Alfalfa base which is stunning.
The little one is back to school in-person for the first time since the pandemic. And not so little anymore. She’s vaxxed and they wear masks. (And seriously, adults – neither she or any of her friends have lodged a single complaint about full day masking. Quit your bitching. If my 13-year old can wear one without issue, SO CAN YOU.) She’s very happy to be back, and is expanding her fashion sense now that she can see all the different “lewks” at the morning bus stop. (So far she is heavily favoring a ‘90s throwback, with ripped boyfriend jeans, t-shirts of bands she probably has never listened to, combat boots and oversized flannels, with a sk8ter boi undercut for her glossy red locks.)
Watching a lot of stuff lately – a very mixed bag. A pretty bad Heidi Fleiss doc, ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High’, and ‘Val’, which Brandon and I highly recommend. Heartbreaking and interesting and nostalgic and ultimately uplifting.
And lastly- shame, shame, shame on Texas. For my friends not in the US, this state has recently enacted the most restrictive abortion law in the country, banning abortion after the sixth week,when many women don’t even yet know they are pregnant. Moreover, the Texas law deputizes private citizens to sue anyone who performs an abortion or aids an abortion. So yeah, think – Uber driver. Friend. Any plaintiff unconnected to the patient or the provider can bring a (frivolous) lawsuit, collect attorney fees and a $10k bounty. As you may expect, this law disproportionately affects vulnerable populations- teens, and low-income populations who can’t afford to travel to obtain safe healthcare. As well as allowing a bunch of self righteous Karens and Bubbas to clog up an already taxed legal system.
Withholding critical healthcare, without ramifications for the young men who participate in insemination, without aid or assistance after that baby is born, no carveouts for rape or incest, taking choice away when this is the ultimate choice of the woman and the woman alone – nothing good can come of that. And don’t ever tell me you are “pro-life” if you don’t care what happens after that baby is born. It’s the most nonsensical and cruel virtue signaling.
Abortions will continue to occur – now they will just occur in more highly risky conditions under more barbaric and traumatic circumstances.
1 in 4 women
I hope everyone out there in the US has a fantastic Labor Day and in other areas a great end of your weekend / beginning of your week.
All I can say is thank goodness Apple TV loosened their capitalistic stranglehold on the Peanuts holiday specials and are allowing them to be shown on PBS after all. I bitterly railed against the loss of the Halloween special and can’t imagine getting through the holidays without seeing Snoopy fight with a lawn chair and Linus bring us to tears with his simple reminder of what the holidays are all about, Charlie Brown. At the age of 47 I will still be sitting in front of the TV at 7.30 EST Sunday night November 22 with Miss L and my snacks (maybe popcorn, pretzels, jelly beans and toast?) to bring back a taste of my childhood.
2. Some weekends, all I want to do is sit and knit with something soothing to watch. I love vlogs and am so excited about Vlogmas coming up. Some of my favorite crafting vlogs include Ina Knits, Sandy by the Lakeside, Birch and Lily, and Mandarine’s (all available on YouTube). I also love Christine McConnell although that’s less crafting and more aesthetic (achievable crafting, anyway), Talasbuan, and Northern Heart, and I recently found a new one that I love called Simple Swedish Life. This is a very quiet, peaceful vlog about a young Korean man married to a Swedish woman living in Sweden with their toddler. It’s very aesthetic, full of poignant musings and images, not much (if any) spoken word, and some great cooking and recipes. If you’re looking for an excellent accompaniment to an afternoon of working quietly with your hands with a cup of your favorite beverage, I would highly recommend any of the above.
3. I don’t think I’ve shared yet, but I cast on my holiday socks in the post-election trauma and have been busting away on them ever since. They are the Summer Camp pattern by Jill Zielinski (which is not seasonally appropriate, I know, but looks great with the yarn I chose and a contrast heel / toe) in two colorways from West Yorkshire Spinners. I can’t remember them offhand and the ball bands are downstairs so I will just say the socks are Raveled and I’ll add the colorways later on. Whilst I was taking the inaugural picture for Ravelry, Emmett decided he wanted to help display their attributes and I let him. He’s a handsome model, don’t you think?
4. For the first time perhaps ever, I am almost finished with my Christmas shopping before Black Friday. Making a budget and lists in advance helped. My biggest project left to finish is Brandon’s Advent calendar. I don’t want to reveal it here, but I found the base idea on Etsy and have to buy the supplies for each day. I have 6 days done but need to hit up some shops over the weekend to finish it up. I didn’t quite realize that the month was going so fast. All three of us are getting Advent calendars this year and I look forward to sharing them here on the blog and also over on my Instagram (link in the side column).
5. For the past two weeks I’ve been scheduling my workouts in advance and blocking off time on my calendar. Over the summer, it got light early enough that I could be up and out and get back and shower and not have to delay the opening of my home office, but with the shorter days and darker, cold mornings, I find I have to make accommodations. Setting aside a few mornings a week where I don’t schedule meetings too early has been great and I’ve stuck to my scheduled workouts every time – either getting out for a walk or run or, if the weather is inclement, going into the basement for a strength workout. It’s not always going to be possible this winter to do this, based on my work schedule, but anything is better than the nothing active I did last spring during early work-from-home times (and the corresponding weight gain). Could it be that I’m getting the hang of this “adulting” thing? (Questionable.)
Anyway, I hope you are all well and safe and your families, too. What’s on tap for this weekend? I will be finishing up the Advent calendar for Brandon, picking up the last bits and bobs for our Thanksgiving dinner next week, knitting and enjoying my books and vlogs. Take care and enjoy. xoxo
I hope everyone had a great Halloween weekend. We set up our firepit, a Halloween playlist on a radio in the garage, and our table of individually bagged candy at the end of the driveway, and the weather cooperated! We bundled up and enjoyed the fire and said hello to the intrepid folks who came by. We had a lot of trick or treaters, parents wore masks and respected social distancing, and all in all it was a very enjoyable evening.
I had been doggedly working on my Halloween socks and squeaked in under the wire, weaving in the ends at 2pm on Halloween. And they were on my feet for the festivities!
As a reminder, these are ‘Minecraft’ pattern by Heather Cox, knit on the Less Traveled 757 sock yarn in the ‘Slutty Pumpkin’ colorway. I did modify somewhat, replacing the pattern heel with a simple slip-stitch. I’m really happy with how they turned out – the pattern is squishy and comfortable and fun to knit, and the yarn is a perfect weight and not in the least bit itchy.
Now the Halloween decorations are put away, the yard is buttoned up for the season of long darkness, and things feel oddly empty and barren. The clocks are turned and I find myself without a pair of socks on the needles or a horror film to watch! The first will be rectified soon. I need to start on my Christmas socks and in the meantime, I’m just going to catch up on my vlogs and knit another careless stripe of garter on my never-ending Log Cabin blanket.
As a footnote, if I’m honest I’m dreading the week to come. I am prepared for the worst of Trump gaslighting and trying to steal the election, but hoping for the best that the results are so clear that they simply can’t be lied about or obfuscated. I hope that 4 years of the worst president in US history will soon be over and whatever we have to suffer this week will be the last of his poison.
I can’t wait to line up at the ballot box on Tuesday and vote him down.
Six Ten 