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: Ravellenic Games...Epic Fail

This year, I participated in the Ravellenic Games, an event in which knitters compete by completing a project while they watch the Olympics. I hadn’t planned to participate, but after all the hullabaloo over Raverly.com (the website hosting the event) getting a very nasty cease and desist letter from the US Olympic committee (and their subsequent apologies), I decided to join my LYS’s team. I was completing in the scarf sailing with a design of my own.



Verdant blocking...

Epic fail. Like German-diver-hitting-the-water-flat-on-his-back epic fail. Or Michael-Phelps-failing-to-qualify epic fail. I started the sample of my scarf on needles two sizes too big (and yes, I did create a swatch but decided to ignore it). I should have entered the frogging competition. Anyways, I had to drop out because there was no way I could have finished in time.

 And then I casted on Verdant by Gina Bonomo on the Friday morning before the Olympics ended. I finished it last night…which makes that six days of work. Why, oh why didn’t I knit that for the Ravellenic Games? Despite this, I love the shrug so far. I foresee I’ll be wearing this a lot.

Also it was great to take a break from fingering/sock weight yarn. This is my favorite weight to work with, but projects made in this weight can be slow going. I’m reluctant to go back to fingering. Unfortunately, my two WIP are both fingering. I’ve been trolling Ravelry looking for another project using worsted weight but having no luck. Maybe I’ll look for something in DK.