Well, this month’s recap post should be blessedly short because I didn’t manage to finish ANYthing in February! Honestly, that’s much more of a standard month of knitting for me. Or maybe the fluctuation is. Sometimes I can’t stop knitting, and other times I’m distracted by other things. Getting obsessed with Animal Crossing in 2026 hasn’t been a distraction lately, I’ll tell you that.
Works in Progress
I’ve cleverly cropped this photo to make it look like I finished my Driftwood pullover! But it’s currently sporting just one sleeve. When I finished the body, I was a bit disappointed by how big it was. I did size up because I wanted more ease than the pattern calls for, and silly me didn’t think about how that would affect the shoulders. It’s a shame, because the sleeve/shoulder construction is really nice, but they don’t sit quite how they should. After finishing the first sleeve, though, I’m liking it a bit more. Knitting sleeves just isn’t much fun, so I’ve been putting off starting the second one.
Acquisitions/Plans
A friend recently asked if I’ve kept to my vow not to buy any new yarn, and I was like, “Well…”
BUT they’re sock yarns! BUT they came from the thrift store! We’re all in agreement that these don’t count. The Mary Maxim Footloose yarn was hard to pass up because you know I love a self-striping sock yarn! And I was intrigued by the sock reel. I’ve seen sock blanks, which are usually large rectangles of machine-knitting sock yarn that you can dye (or buy dyed), unravel, and then knit up. This is the same idea, but it’s been knitted into a very narrow tube/tape instead.
I… kinda feel like perhaps the dye job was meant to look cool in reel form vs. looking cool when knitted into a sock. I found some sock projects that had used it on Ravelry and didn’t love them. The black-gray-teal stripes are so short compared to the large sections of neon green and aqua. With a combo of luck (where the pattern started on the reel) and planning (breaking the yarn to start with neon green when picking up stitches on the heel flap), I’m decently happy with the layout of the stripes so far. TBD whether there will be enough left after the first sock to match the pattern on the second! I wouldn’t have chosen this color scheme, but the yarn itself is nice enough, and I’m not that fussy when it comes to socks.
I have a big bag of this Briggs & Little Regal 2-ply wool in Midnight Blue (9 skeins — something like 2400yds!), and it’s also not a color I would usually pick, but it came from That Estate Sale. I’m actually really loving it. I think it’s going to look smart in this cardigan, which I’d like to finish soonish, so it can be my spring “jacket”. But we’ll see!
My YT algorithm started feeding me a lot of videos about journals and planners a little while back. I kept a daily “journal” for years, not to write about my thoughts and feelings but as a sort of to-do/have-done list. That used to be a big part of my morning routine, but I’ve never been able to consistently find a place for it since having kids.
But I’m very easily persuaded by YT content, so I started thinking about what kind of notebook or journal would be right for me. I had a journal back in college that I made with binder ring clips, and I’ve always liked how eclectic and creative that was, but the thought of making something from scratch was daunting now that I’m… *flops feebly*
But apparently Filofax planners are all the rage these days? (On my narrow slice of the internet, anyway.) It’s all Filofax this and analog that! As many folks have pointed out, the analog “trend” smells a lot like overconsumption, with people buying special bags and supplies to distract themselves from their phones. (One knitter said in a video that the rest of the world has suddenly discovered project bags — yes!) Anyway, I didn’t want to buy a fancy planner because 1) SIGH and 2) will I even stick with it? Enter good thrift vibes:
It’s not Filofax but a Dayrunner Looney Tunes planner from the mid-90s. But basically the exact same thing and less than a buck. A crow sticker nicely covered the Tweety Bird on the front cover. I took out the remaining planner pages and made my own tabbed dividers, cut paper to size (I like plain graph paper best), and printed out some calendars. Clearly my personal aesthetic for this sort of thing settled on “cute” at some point and won’t budge.
I realized I really liked the ring-binder system because it’s so easy to add or lose things or start all over, if I want to. Kid 2 is a little jealous and looking to start her own. My “setup” (as it’s called in the Filofax-girlie world) is not particularly interesting, but if you need to lose one to seven days looking at interesting, stationery-related things, Pinterest can help you out with a little “Filofax setup” search. Then hit the thrift stores!
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.
Here are a couple of random things we’ve made recently.
The discount food store we like surprised us with a few jars of mincemeat (with veggie suet), so Kid 1 helped me make mince pies. She wants to learn to bake lots of different things, and pie crust is a good one to learn! We all liked the pies, but the kids really want to try the crust recipe with various fruit pie fillings — they love a mini pie!
And a few days ago, I gave needle punch a try. Kid 1 had gotten a kit a while back, and it looked like a lot of fun! I made this with leftover yarn from a knitting project. I was annoyed I wasn’t *immediately* a pro, lol, but it’s cute, and it was great to try something new.
My training is going well. The ravens have me putting out food every morning, though usually not until they’ve been by once (to shout at me). They’re usually out and about before the sun is over the horizon! And you’ll notice in the clip above that we have crows now, too. They’re much more suspicious about the food pile than the ravens are, but they come by usually in a group of four and seem a little braver when they’re all together. I call them my “baby crows” because they look so small and delicate compared to the cat-sized ravens.
And a blue jay quickly dips into frame — triple corvids!
I swear I didn’t intend for this to be a knitting-only blog, but I’ve been living a(n almost) knitting-only life lately, so that’s what you get. I’ve been wanting to try making some self-striping sock yarn, and I finally gave it a try:
I started by knitting a few 64st rows (since I tend to make 64st socks) with the original yarn — Lana Grossa Meilenweit in pale gray — and then unraveled it and measured the length of yarn needed to make 4-5rows. That length was roughly twelve feet, so I wound a forty-eight foot hank and tied off twelve-foot sections. It was very unwieldy! I dyed each section a different color, and I can’t believe I didn’t tangle the yarn any more than I did. The cake above kinda just looks like variegated yarn, but when you start knitting:
Stripes! I’m doing a basic sock with heel flap and gusset, though I did eye-of-the-partridge stitch on the heel flap because I think it looks so cool. I also did a longer flap (I think forty rows instead of thirty-two?) and gusset. I’m knitting the entire sock on US1 needles, which gives me the fit I like on the leg and foot, but if I make the flap the standard length, the sock winds up too tight over my arches. But I think these ones will be perfect! I’ve finished the gusset decreases and knit maybe an inch of the body of the foot since I took the photo, so I’m past the fun part.
It’s also worth noting (I mean, only to other knitting peeps) that I got a US1 ChiaoGoo cable needle for these socks — I like using DPNs, but they start to hurt my hands if I’m doing too much knitting. I prefer bamboo needles, but the cable on these is NICE!
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!
I’m ready for a new year! (The photo is from last spring — we do NOT have open water right now!)
My main goal for the year is to not bring anything into the house that we don’t NEED. We have so much stuff. Every time something new comes in, it seems to float around with nowhere to go.
I have no desire to move, but sometimes I daydream about what we’d bring with us if we had to. And then I think about what the house would be like if we got rid of everything we wouldn’t deign to bring with us on a move.
So the second part of my plan is offloading a lot of the boxes that are basically just in storage (downstairs). The kids are getting older and are now able to admit that, yeah, maybe they WON’T ever play with dolls again. We can save a few precious ones and donate the rest. And I have so much stuff like that, things I need to admit to myself I’m never going to use.
Craft-wise, I have all that estate sale yarn to use up, and I have a decent selection of fabric. I’ve been seeing a lot of people posting about their “Make Nine”, which I think is basically just picking nine items to knit — being intentional and having a cohesive plan instead of knitting things willy-nilly. I don’t feel an urge to do that, really. When I plan my knitting out too far ahead, I get bored of the projects before I even start them! And I only know what I feel like knitting right now, not what I’ll be in the mood for in the second half of the year. So I probably won’t plan out my crafting for the year, but I do recognize that I need to use what I’ve got instead of chasing the dopamine of acquiring more.
Maybe the theme for the year is whittling down — getting rid of the clutter and figuring out what we really need in our lives. And then being able to enjoy those things!
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!
