Sweater Progress and Making Do

 Tegna sweater lace hem in progress.

Hello there!  How are you all doing?  I'm pretty happy and content these days.  I have even been adding long daily walks with my Black Labrador Easy to my mental health regime.  She's such a sweetie as labs generally are, but even more laid back and easy going hence her name.  It's funny that when you are well mentally doing the things that add to your mental well being are no problem, but when you are depressed can be a Herculean feat.  A few months back taking a walk around my block would have been more than I could handle, but now I'm up to walking 10,000 plus steps a day!  My hope is that by establishing a walk as part of my daily duties during these warm summer months I'll be able to keep it up during autumn and winter.

On the knitting front, I have been making slow and steady progress on my Tegna sweater.  I fussed with the gauge, as I seem to be doing lately, trying to get the yarn I already have on hand to work.  I knit up and washed a large swatch of the Charlemont fingering weight yarn on US size 5 / 3.75 mm needles and got too many stitches.  Realizing I would have to go up to at least to a US size 7 / 4.5 mm needles to get gauge, made me also realize that the fabric would be quite loose and too sheer to wear the sweater by itself.  So, since the Tegna pattern had a good selection of sizes I was able to do some math to pick which size would get me the closest to my desired amount of ease.  I'm hoping to get about 8 inches / 20 cm of ease at the bust which makes the ease at the hem a wild 27 inches / 68.5 cm by knitting the 2XL size.  If I would have gotten gauge I would knit the L size. 

Let me tell ya there are quite a few cast on stitches for the 2XL!  I followed the advice of another knitter and placed my stitch markers for the lace repeat as I was casting on to make the counting simpler.  It was such a good idea!  Good luck was with me and I didn't twist the cast on when I joined in the round.  Woohoo!  The lace chart is very clear, but with so many repeats I made any number of mistakes as my attention waned.  Some mistakes I fixed and some I just left alone as the sweater will fall into folds with so much ease that no one should be able to see them.  There are still 6 rows of lace left, then it's onto the stockinette stripes that I can knit easily while I watch a movie.  Since I talk to myself when knitting lace to keep on pattern, I haven't been able to watch or listen to any podcasts for quite a while now. 

Not being able to watch or listen to anything has made my time knitting more focused and actually more relaxed.  Thus, I am enjoying my knitting even more  This need or desire we have to multitask I think robs of of this enjoyment of being in the moment with our knitting.  Hmm, maybe I'll rethink how I want to knit the stockinette section?

As I mentioned earlier about making the yarn I have on hand work I have also been trying really hard to make due with what I have around me for other things such as my wardrobe, sewing, making dinner etc.  This brings me to having some success of turning a "wanting new" into  a "I can do that myself."  For a while now I have wanted a Fringe Field Project Bag.  I see them all over, but quite frankly they are too expensive for me.  It dawned on me while I was looking online at said bag that I could sew one myself.  It wouldn't have the leather handle, but I had thick red canvas (cira 2008) thread and got some cotton clothesline from the hardware store for cheap.  So, I embarked on an afternoon of making a project bag for myself with no pattern just a general idea from the pictures I've seen.  Below is the result.

Homemade Field project bag.

My only disappointment, if you can call it that, was that the bag doesn't close completely as the fabric is really thick.  Otherwise, I am thrilled with it!  It has 3 inside pockets, double thick sides and bottom and it stays open on it's own.  It is also big enough to hold all 4 skeins for my Tegna sweater!  A wonderful achievement for an afternoons work.  How are you finding ways to "make do" with your crafting?

I'm Back

     I'm back both in both the literal and figurative sense  I'm "back"writing a blog post and I feel "back" to my old self again.  The wonders of modern medicine and talk therapy!

     It feels wonderful to be enjoying knitting again.  Since I last posted, I finished that scrappy linen stitch scarf as well as a shawl (shown above) called Areas by Martina Behm.  Areas was a very simple and soothing knit with no purling at all.  Because I didn't do a gauge swatch (I know, I know, bad Ann.) it came out smaller in length measuring only 72 inches instead of the patterns stated 84 inches. I am a tight knitter by nature and should have gone up a needle size, but in the end the shawl turned out to be perfectly fine for how I would like to wear it come cold weather.

     The yarn I used I've had in my stash since Mother's Day of  2015, so it's high time I used it up.  It's called Charlemont by Valley Yarns and consists of a blend of Merino Wool, Silk and Nylon.  I used their colorsways natural and navy blue as these two colors represent about 80 % of my wardrobe and as I mentioned earlier they were already in my stash.  I enjoyed the feel of the yarn while knitting and adore the sheen when it catches the light, but it is rather a splitty yarn.  That said, I am already planning to use it again as it's such an excellent value for the yardage and fiber content.  Of course, there is the fact that I still have 2 more skeins of the navy blue left in my stash.

     Yes, I am already off planning a new project.  Yay!  I love the planning stage.  My wardrobe lacks any summer short sleeve sweaters or dressier tops so my plan is to next knit Tegna by Caitlin Hunter to fill that gap. Tegna is a swingy oversized short sleeved sweater which consists of a lacework hem, stockinette body, dropped shoulders (I been seeing these everywhere on knitting patterns lately) and snug short sleeves.  My 2 skeins of navy blue yarn will not be enough to complete the pattern, but then I thought of adding stripes to the stockinette sections and I think it will work out.  I landed on the colorway called fawn which is a warm light brown shade.  The lace, neck edging and sleeve edges will be knit solely in fawn and the rest of the sweater will consist of narrow 2 row stripes of navy and fawn.  I think it will look smashing!  So, I have purchased two more skeins of Charlemont from WEBS and now am anxiously awaiting the mail.  After having downsized my stash I was a bit loathe to buy more, but it will help lessen my stash in the long run.

     This method of first accessing my wardrobe to see where there are gaps, second to view my stash to see if I can make what yarn I have on hand work, then third picking out a pattern is how I plan to go about my knitting in the future.  In this way I am hoping to only make what I feel I need and not just getting pulled in by a the latest patterns excellent photography/model/yarn and making something that doesn't suit me or my lifestyle.  I'm hoping to slow down my knitting and I think this method will help me do just that.  Why am I wanting to slow down my knitting you ask?  Well, I've decided to get off the producing treadmill and focus more on the enjoyment of the project in and of itself.  Because really, what's the rush?  I'm not a designer with deadlines to meet.  I've gifted so much to my mother that she has told me to stop knitting her sweaters.  My own closet is already pretty full so I don't need much more.  Why speed through the knitting simply to have something new to photograph?

     This documenting of knitted products I find good in that it's enjoyable to see your past knits and your progression as a knitter, but I think it can cause stress too.  As much as I enjoy Instagram I feel it is one of the culprits of this stress to produce more so you can share new photos of what your working on and thus feel part of the knitting community.  It's this feeling of more, more, more that I want to rid myself of , instead focusing on that I have enough already and I'm only refining my wardrobe here there.  Do you know what I mean?

     To keep myself in check of accumulating endless amounts of yarn for endless amounts of projects I found that I have to miss out on going to fiber fairs, knitting shops, knitting retreats and classes.  This leaves me sometimes feeling like I'm missing out, but I know myself too well that I can't just view.  If I view, I want, and if I want, I buy.  Then I feel the push to knit faster and faster in order to get through all that yarn.  It's time to stop the madness.