My Life in Stitches: My Year in Stitches, 2012

Dinner in the Eiffel Tower

As the year comes to an end (and not the world), I thought I would do a little review of my knitting life. My totals for this year are:

 Six cowls

Six shawls

Four scarves

Three pairs of fingerless gloves.

Two sweaters (maybe three if I can finish my Solaris by the 31^st)

Two baby blankets

One hat

One pair of socks

One shrug

26 projects this year. Wow. That’s about two per month.

Verdant

Favorite project for the year: (tie)

My Verdant shrug. It turned out much better than I expected. The picture of me wearing it also featured on the patterns page on Raverly.

My $5 in Paris sweater. This thing is lovely. It fits so well because I sized it as I went.

$5 in Paris

Least favorite project for the year: (tie)

Mini Mania Scarf. As much as I loved the idea of this scarf, working on it drove me crazy. I had more colors to add, but I lost the will to live. And I thought I was going to make two of these...NOT!

Dinner in the Eiffel Tower.  For some reason, my stitch count was off every other row, which got annoying really fast.

Pleasant surprise project of the year:

Dinner in the Eiffel Tower

Dinner at the Eiffel Tower. This project annoyed me…until I bound it off, blocked and wrapped around my shoulders. Wow. Sometimes a project is worth the trouble.

Major disappointment of the year:

Arcadian Shawl

Arcadian Shawl. This project had several strikes against it. First, the yarn I used was coarser than I expected. Second, it was too easy to miss my mistakes. I wouldn’t see them until I got two or three repeats away. I did a lot of ripping with this one.  Third, I was hoping one of my friends who said they liked it would as for it, but alas, they didn’t.

Next week, I'll share some of my knitting goals for 2013.

My Life in Stitches: Back in Paris

Paris is an interesting city. Some people love it. Some people hate it. I am among the hate crowd. Maybe not as strong as hate, but I did strongly dislike it. It was a little too dirty for my tastes and I think maybe my expectations were a little high. And honestly, I would go back to see Notre Dame and the Louvre and actually go to the Eiffel Tower (I saw it from the window on the trip back).

Apparently, I like knitting projects about Paris more than I actually liked being there. The knitting "trip" to the City of Lights begin with my $5 in Paris sweater, which was delightful project (see post). This time, my "trip" was the Dinner in the Eiffel Tower scarf by Jessie Dodington. I'd added this scarf to my Ravelry favorites last month and discovered that I had enough DK weight yarn in my stash to try it. I was also excited to try a semi-circle scarf with that much lace. Most of the ones I've done were triangles. I must say that this scarf wasn't as fun as the sweater, namely the lattice lace section. 

One of the things I love about knitting is that one project can pretty much solidify your likes and dislikes in knitting. This project reminded me that I don't know knitting lace on the wrong side, especially when you work on 200+ stitches of lace. 

Also, I realized I have a "hate it on the needles" problem. I repeatedly told my husband that I wasn't going to like this pattern, until I casted it off and blocked it. I even didn't like the yarn that I was using while I was knitting it (Sidar Flirt, 80% bamboo, 20% wool), but when I blocked it, it has a good weight to it. It's heavy than what I'm used to in my shawls but with cooler weather coming, this may be a good item to have in my wardrobe. 

Thanks, Renae for the pics. 

My Life in Stitches: She's On Fire!

Last week, I posted about my lovely little Verdant. I raved about how much I enjoyed knitting it. It rightfully earned its place as my favorite project. Unfortunately, it held that spot for a short while. I seem to be on fire with picking great projects.

Love this sweater!

Last week was odd for me. I got a sinus infection with debilitating headaches. I slept most of the week and the pain from the headaches made it hard to concentrate (the migraine I got last Thursday didn’t help, either). I couldn’t read. I tried watching TV but found that too mentally tasking. What I needed was something super-mindless. And what could be more mindless that stockinette in the round? My husband caked my yarn for me and I casted on $5 in Paris by Anna Peck. Boy, I’m glad I did.

First of all, it did meet my requirement for mindless knitting. It was simple and easy.  I’ve had a sweater-phobia for a long time, and this project went a long way to ease my fears. But more than it being mindless knitting, it’s a really great pattern. I love the fit, the look and the color (I used Stonehedge Fiber Mill Shepherd's Wool Worsted). I love everything about it.

I also love the fact that I could make adjustments as I went to insure a perfect fit. Don’t have to worry about my teenage daughter stealing this one. It would look frumpy on her since I’m a little curvier than she is. I had no problems understanding the increases and decreases even with a pounding headache, which earns this pattern more cool points.

This pattern looked so great on me that it inspired my husband to start a sweater project of his own (but no sweater-phobia for him. This is his fourth sweater). He’s working on Cloudy Sunday by Hilary Smith Callis. It’s nice, but it’s not as fitted as mine. I certainly want to make a striped version of $5 in Paris.

My $5 in Paris is now my favorite pattern. We’ll see how long it stays at the top.