twelve22

Hardly over a week late with my recap of January’s knits!

Finished Objects

As expected, I finished my two December WIPs pretty quickly. It looks like I had the cardigan blocked by 1/6 and the pullover by 1/13.

I powered through this Good Grandpa cardigan in, I think, ten days? I just really wanted to wear it! I remember I knit the first pocket while the kids were at Girl Scouts and told my friend that I would NOT be knitting the second, sewing them on, and blocking it that night. So of course I sent her a photo of it blocking a few hours later.

This has immediately become one of my most frequently worn knits — I knew it would because I had been wearing my brown version a ton since winter hit. The yarn came from That Estate Sale, and I wasn’t sure about the color for a long time, but as soon as I started working with it, I fell in love! It’s Black Watch from Christopher Sheep Farm.

My second finish in January was my Easy V pullover:

You might remember that last month I was debating whether to shorten the first sleeve I’d knitted. I did! I put circular needles through the rows above and below the section I wanted to remove and then cut and unraveled that section. I grafted the two pieces of sleeve together the same way you graft closed the toe of a sock. I’m able to find the graft line if I really look, but it’s just about invisible. So I’m pleased with that!

I want to love this, but I think it might be my least favorite thing to wear… ever? I have some grievances. The pattern calls for worsted-weight yarn, though the yarn used in the sample is considered light-worsted/dk. If I were the boss of knitting patterns, I’d say this is a dk pattern that should be knitted in cotton or linen, not wool. The very wide neckline says “warm weather top” to me, and worsted-weight wool is not that. I don’t want to wear a tank top under a wool sweater, but it looks goofy with anything that has a winter-appropriate neckline.

I also have issues with the shaping of the garment. Instead of short rows to shape the “neckline”, there are a few short rows AFTER the yoke colorwork — short rows that end on the sleeves, which makes the shaping awkwardly visible even after blocking. And that shaping does nothing to stop the sweater from constantly wanting to shift backward as you wear it. This pattern maker is very popular in the knitting world, but after this and the Halibut pullover (also hers), I think I’m done. It’s probably not fair to generalize from two patterns, but if I were gonna, I’d say she’s got a great eye for colorwork design and perhaps not so much for garment construction. I’ve knit a lot of tops, and those two are the only ones where, when I put them on in the end, I thought, “This just doesn’t work.” Bummer!

My last FO for January was this pair of Biscuit socks. I mentioned last time that I made these from some very soft synthetic yarn I thrifted. They have been a pleasure to wear! I did more standard toe decreases instead of the circular decreases called for in the pattern — circular just didn’t sound comfortable to me. Otherwise, they were knitted as-is, and I still love that eye-of-the-partridge heel flap!

Works in Progress

I continued working on my self-striping socks but haven’t made much progress since my first post about them:

Sometimes knitting is just really boring, guys. I will be very happy to wear these when I finish them, but no part of me feels like working on the foot of that sock — and then I have to knit ANOTHER ONE??

Speaking of boring…

I discovered that some yarn I thought was worsted was actually sport weight (clearly I didn’t look at it too closely!), which sent me down a delightful rabbit hole of pattern searching (my TRUE hobby). I settled on the free Parnell pattern, which I think will look really nice with red-on-red stripes. It’s worked bottom up, which means you start with the garter panels that make up the split bottom hem. And my brain just does! not! wanna! I was looking forward to a slower knit with lighter-weight yarn, but garter stitch is a minor PITA, and it grows soooo slowly. The front panel needs to be 3″, which is what I have so far, and the back panel will be 5″ — oof!

Anyway, TBD as to when I pick that up again because I indulged in a dopamine cast on:

This will be a Driftwood pullover, another free pattern on Ravelry. I’ve made progress since I took this photo, but this one shows the sleeve construction nicely (as well as my pretty t’toos). The stripe colors are what happens when you let the thrift store choose your colorway! I got a bunch of balls of unlabeled wool yarn last spring/summer, and hopefully it’ll be enough! It’s giving 90s Gap striped sweater, no? I really hope this turns out well because it’s been a lot of fun to knit, and a colorfully-striped henley pullover is definitely something I don’t already have!

Plans

Folks with amazing memories may have realized I didn’t start the Forest Keys vest that was in my plans for January. That’s still on my to-do list, but I don’t know that it’ll get cast on in February, either. I’d like to finish up / keep working on my current WIPs, and other projects keep jumping the queue.

One of those projects miiiight be the Mini Maine Motif socks that I came across a little while ago. I found them on Ravelry, but the pattern is in a magazine that I managed to track down on Libby! I would make them with purple, fuchsia, and very pale gray sock yarns that I already have. On the one hand, SUPER cute, on the other… all-over colorwork socks? No thank you very much. But maybe yes.

Is everybody mostly watching YouTube these days? I have shows I watch on other streamers, but they feel like drops in a sea that is mostly YouTube. People doing things, making things, fixing things. That’s the good stuff!

Anyway, knitting YouTubers love to call a particular format of video a “podcast” — if you know why they do this, please let me know, because a podcast is a thing, and that thing is… not a video on YT? In these videos they talk about what they’ve finished (FOs), what they’re working on (WIPs), and what they’re planning or yarn they’ve acquired. I like that format, so here we go:

Finished Objects

I wound up being a liar when I said in my 2025 recap that I wouldn’t be finishing anything else before the end of the year. I had two WIPs that had been lying dormant for a while, and I decided not to bring them into the new year that way.

This was the third Felix cardigan I’ve knit, although you’ll notice it’s NOT a cardigan. The first one I made is one of my most-worn knits, and then I made a second and hardly wore it, so Kid 1 has taken it over. I bought the yarn for this one in Scotland — a wool/bamboo (viscose) blend that I held with mohair. I thought the colors I’d chosen were cream and taupe, but when I saw them in better light, I realized they were actually off-white and gray. So step one was that I knit a Felix cardigan, and step two was that I dyed it to the colors you see above. It’s actually a little warmer than the photo.

When I blocked the cardigan, it dried a lot bigger than I expected, which made it really awkward to wear. And the collar and button band felt clunky. So I threw it to the side and got on with knitting other things. Until I pulled it out last week and decided to work with what I had. I took out the collar and button band, seamed it up the front to create a pullover, and then reknit the collar on much smaller needles. The seam is not invisible, but I’ve decided it’s like a shirt with a flat-felled seam down the front. That’s a thing, so mine is too. I don’t think this will wind up being a favorite sweater, but it’s very soft and comfortable, so it’ll get worn, and I’m glad I could rescue it from being a disappointing cardigan.

My other FO was a project for Kid 2 and… not my usual color palette!

I actually used the Felix pullover as a base for this, but I should have just used standard raglan increases. This yarn is Knitpicks Wool of the Andes that I dyed with Kool-aid and food coloring when the kids were little. Even that variegated black (which I love)! Kid 2 loves insects, so she got a little moth motif. This was just a project to use up some scraps of yarn, not something I’ll treasure forever. If Kid 2 gets sick of it, I’ll overdye it with beige to make everything more neutral and wear it myself as a cropped top.

Works in Progress

I knocked out both the FOs in the last week of the year, but most of the month was spent working on my Easy V.

It’s been a very quick knit, but I finished that first sleeve, realized it was too long, and now I’ve been hit with decision paralysis about how I want to proceed. I have to try it on again. I COULD leave the sleeve this length, and it would be more or less fine. What I SHOULD do is take out an inch or more from the middle of the sleeve and graft the two ends together. It wouldn’t be that difficult, but I don’t wanna. So I’m stuck while the two lazy wolves inside of me battle it out.

I will say that I love the colors I picked out. It’s estate sale yarn, of course, and I only had a couple of options for the main body color but loads for the colorwork. I really wasn’t convinced about the gray until I started knitting — now I love it all together. I’m very neutral about the motif itself, but the colors are great.

While I grumped about what to do re: sleeves on that sweater, I caked up some Aran-weight yarn and started a Good Grandpa cardigan. It’s in its ugly duckling phase:

I started this last Saturday and did the entire body in one week. I was craving boring knitting, and this sure delivered! I’m really excited to wear this, so I’ve been knitting like the dickens.

The yarn is one of the colors my mom brought back from the estate sale, and for a long time I wasn’t even sure I’d wind up using it. The first several times I looked at it, I thought it was a strand of navy plied with a strand of forest green (a very 90s combo, imo), but the “navy” is actual charcoal. And knitted up, it’s a black-green that I’m really liking. When I blocked my gauge swatch, the yarn bloomed in a lovely way, so I’m very eager to finish this and block it and see the yarn “come to life”.

I almost forgot, but I also worked on some DK socks, using the free Biscuit sock pattern:

Aren’t they cute? I really like the textured heel flap, even though it’s such a small detail. I used 100% sYnThEtIc yarn on these. I am a natural fiber brat, but I found several skeins of this super-soft acrylic/nylon blend at the thrift store over the summer and bought them all, thinking I’d made a sweater for one of the kids. But the yarn is this cream color and a very pale purple-gray. Not very kid friendly. How this yarn holds up to being worn as a sock is still TBD, but it’s comfy! I’m almost to the heel of the second sock but got distracted by starting that cardigan at the end of the month.

Plans

Obviously no new acquisitions, since I’m not allowed. But I do have plans! Unless I’m struck by a blast of knitting ennui, I should be easily able to finish up my two WIPs in January. Next up is Teti Lutsak’s Forest Keys vest.

I also have some sock yarn that I want to try dyeing. Specifically, I’d like to make my own self-striping yarn. So that’ll be something to figure out, and hopefully I’ll have some results to show by next month!

Socks continued to be the theme in the middle part of the year, although I did cast on my Halibut pullover in August.

These socks were from estate sale yarn, and they’re the ones that I forgot to switch away from the US1 ribbing needles when I got to the stockinette part. I really like how these fit! This isn’t a colorway I’d normally choose, but I love a stripe-y yarn, and I feel like anything goes, color-wise, with socks.

The last pair of socks I finished this year were something a little different:

They’re Stardew Valley socks, one autumn and one spring. Not blocked in the photo, so don’t judge my colorwork! These were fun but also super tedious to knit, not to mention weaving in all those different ends! Yuck. Kid 1 wanted to see the Stardew Valley Symphony of Seasons concert for her birthday, so I made these for her to wear to it. I’m going to say that someday I’ll make the matching sock to the two seasons — I’d like the autumn ones for myself — but I really don’t know if that true. I’ve been doing a lot of colorwork lately and can’t quite stomach the thought of another of these!

This next one was a joy to knit:

The yarn makes such a difference to the experience of knitting any given project! This was done with a strand of lace-weight baby alpaca held with silk-mohair. Both were from the estate sale, and I only had the one skein of the baby alpaca.

The pattern is the Fancy Camp Bandana, and there are some issues with the pattern. The pattern doesn’t match the photos of the bandana the creator used. Instead of there being 1/5/9 of the little eyelet flowers in each row, there are 3/7/11. I wanted to use more of my skein of baby alpaca and figured out how many stitches to cast on to add an extra row to the wide end, as well. So mine is more of a mini scarf, and it’s so soft and delicate.

And I guess the last FO of the year will be my Halibut:

Now. I have issues with this sweater, and I’ll own up to my part by saying that the issues could have been mitigated if I’d gone for a size with more positive ease (ie, made it bigger). It’s not actually as narrow as it looks in the photo — that’s just because I had my hand on my hip. I think my finished sweater has about 6″ positive ease, which should be plenty! I’ll also say that I love how the colorwork looks, even though I hated working on it.

The biggest issue is the yoke depth, which is a known problem with this pattern. The top of the sweater is just too long (to accommodate the colorwork), meaning the armpit of the garment falls much lower than one’s actual armpit. With a very oversized top, this mostly just makes it difficult to wear anything over it. With the one I made, it’s annoying to lift my arms up — not hard, but it feels like the entire sweater shifts around and rides up when I move. You can also see in the photo how unnaturally it sits around the collar and top of the yoke. It feels like there’s too much fabric in that area. I think that’s again from the riding up — the top can’t settle down to where it would actually fit.

I’ve still been wearing the sweater but nowhere near as much as I would if I loved the fit of it. It’s a shame, given how long the yoke took me. The yarn is from the estate sale, but I know nothing about it except that it’s DK weight and wool and very NOT next-to-skin soft. It’s really warm, though!

I’ll be back in a few days with a shorter post to talk about what I’ve been working on in December. But I don’t think I’ll be finishing anything else before 2025 wraps up!

In the future, I’d like to make monthly posts about what I’m knitting — FOs and WIPs. For now, I’ll recap my finished objects for 2025. After digging through my photos, I’m realizing I need to do a better job of taking GOOD photos of knitting. I usually just take a quick snap to share with my crafty friends.

Anyway, the first finish of the year was Teti Lutsak’s Mama Bear Pullover:

This is one that I really wish I had a more flattering photo of! It took a while to knit, as it’s quite oversized and knit with DK yarn. I cast on the last day of August 2024 and had finished the yoke in time to bring it with on our Scotland trip in September. I started this immediately after finishing another of Teti’s patterns (Javelin pullover), and I would happily knit any of her patterns!

My next finish was a Good Grandpa cardigan that I had started AGES before and set aside:

This yarn has had quite a life! It’s from Quince & Co., and I don’t remember which yarn it is specifically and won’t look it up because I wouldn’t use it again. It’s not terrible, just not lovely. It was originally a very flat gray, and I knit a cabled cardigan with it when Kid 1 was a baby (she’s twelve now). I didn’t really like it, so I frogged it to reclaim the yarn and dyed it a variegated purple. Then I knit this cardigan and decided I didn’t want it to be purple, so I gave it a yellow dye bath to turn it brown.

I was very “meh” on the whole thing when I finished it (though I do like the color). I’m not sure why I made the body so short! But it’s wound up being one my most frequently-worn items this cold season. It’s bulky-weight wool and very warm, so if the temperature is right around freezing outside, I don’t need anything more than this. So I guess that’s a lesson to always keep everything forever — because You Never Know.

Next up was a Flora vest:

This was a fast little project that I made with thrifted DK yarn (I want to say some sort of Rowan wool and another brand’s BFL). I’m in love with vests and think they look… fairly terrible on me? I’ve hardly worn this, but I like looking at it, lol.

The next project was super silly:

Kid 2 had a “creepy crawlies” theme for her ninth birthday. We have a cheap (toy) knitting machine, and I don’t know why I had pulled it out to play with it, but I realized one could make a very long worm if they just… didn’t stop. This was an entire skein of cheap acrylic yarn and is known as Party Worm. He was hung up as a decoration for the party and had his own little party hat. I don’t have a good photo of the finished object, but I used DPNs to taper and close up his tail.

I seem to have then entered sock mode:

This was yarn from my local yarn store, and I wear these all the time, BUT they’re a bit too big. I like to use TinCanKnit’s Rye pattern (omitting the garter panel on the top of the foot), but I’m somewhere between their adult small and medium. Small winds up being too tight around the start of the gusset, but medium is too big overall. I did knit a pair of socks (that will be in my Part 2 post) where I made medium but forgot to switch from my ribbing needles after the ribbing, and those fit almost perfectly. So mediums on small needles is the way, I guess.

And the last FO for this post is this:

I swear there are two of them, but I wound up making them for Kid 1 and never took a photo when I finished! This is the same pattern as the other pair but in worsted-weight yarn. I made small, and they were a little tight for me. This was the start of knitting with the estate sale yarn. This stuff (which was wool and a little bit of nylon — perfect for socks) looked so pretty and interesting in the ball and so… ugly? when knitted up. I don’t NOT like it, but it’s very scrappy and random looking!

Part 2 coming soon!