I've been reading my way through Stephanie Peal-McPhee (The Yarn Harlot)'s books this month, having just finished Free Range Knitter: The Yarn Harlot Writes Again. In it she writes that

A more appropriate sentiment I could not find this week.

To be fair on myself, it's not that my taste has necessarily changed, or that my taste in yarn used to be inherently bad. Rather, I am now better able to see an unknit ball of yarn and know, pre-agony, that I am simply going to hate the way it knits up. This is all very well and good while procuring shiny new yarn - but is utterly useless in my attempt to knit my way through my stash.

I've been hoarding this one particularly skein of sock yarn for about four years now. It made me happy to see it amongst my stash because I thought the skein so pretty. But more and move over the past few months (as the skein came to rest on top of the stash mountain), I've found myself looking at it with increased wariness. Suddenly the colours, which I had previously thought so beautiful seemed too stark in contrast. My (granted limited) maths skills kicked in and I saw the gradient I had once imagined contract and disappear.

Biting the bullet I decided to see if I was merely paranoid. Picking out something from my queue, I cast on the Orchid Cowl, hoping that the sizable stockinette panels would absorb some of the colour changes. I may have been right, but I'll never know because I never made it through the first lace section. The colour changes came even quicker than I had anticipated and that colouration over a lace panel had my eyes hurting and my yarn rage fuming.


Some told me to stick with it, but when Lisa agreed with my pain that project was frogged quick smart.

Still, I was determined to win - mainly because I had two hours to fill in with nothing but this yarn. Clearly this colour was too bright for anything pattern intensive. Surely garter stitch was the answer - a nice simple shawl in garter stitch, then it could be as colourful as I liked. I hit up Ravelry and, surrounded as I was by the library's calming rows of books, I set aside my previous grievances and cast on something simple. But with each row I just felt stronger about how much I hated this yarn and it didn't last very long either.



I should be clear - the yarn itself was lovely to work with. It was soft and the colours were vibrant. it did not split, nor fray (even despite the multiple restarts). It just wasn't the colourway for me. Thankfully, in an act of kindness (and perhaps concern for my mental well being), Wendy has taken the yarn away. I wish her better luck with it!

I always enjoy when craft night comes around again - not because I enjoy the crafting (I do!) or because it means seeing my friends (of course I do, this goes without saying!) but because I get to refer to it as my 'rager night'. It's the night that I stay out past midnight and get up to all kinds of shenanigans with my friends. Crocheting and consuming tea counts as 'shenanigans', right?

We aim to have our craft night, our Block of the Month or BotM night (cue many giggles around the world 'bottom' every time), once a month. Unfortunately the last time we managed any degree of consistency in this regard was around the time all three of us turned up with our assigned blocks in hand - so... some time ago. It was sad for us to learn that our last craft night was a whopping 18 weeks ago (thank you instagram for providing the timeline). That life has become too busy for our crochet nights just means that we need them all the more.

This month yielded no BotM squares, save a few paltry unblocked offerings from myself (I think I've lost my blocking pins an a subconscious attempt to allay my guilt over my non existence blocking ability). Despite this, however,the night was far from unproductive. We had birthday celebrations and gift giving, lessons in Ravelry (I think my attempt to convert them needs a little more work), good conversation, and, yes, even a little crafting.

Wendy worked on her mood blanket (reminding me that I am still woefully behind) and showed off the beautiful scarf she's crocheting out of Noro Sekku.

I think Renae surprised herself a little with the rate at which she flew through a knitting scarf, knitted up on size 15 needs. She has now finished it and looks very pleased with herself!

I was the least productive of the group, working away on the second incarnation of a shawl, only to rip that back also (my rage over this to appear in a post of it's very own). Throw in a thorough spoiling by Matt in his providing of watermelon sorbet (yum!) and I just know you'd agree that we had a wonderful craft evening.

July 29th, 2014 marked the end date for my 101/1001 project... which I'll admit to have completely forgotten about. Despite this, I did manage to complete 25 goals on the list - I'd say a 25% success rate on a project I wasn't actively completing is pretty good, yes? In any case, I've decided to restart the project with a new list.

I've kept a few of my uncompleted goals, but for the most part it's a pretty new list. Mostly because a large chunk of the old one was unrealistic - I had a lot of travel goals on there that were never going to happen in the time frame allotted. The Day Zero website also has a 'someday' list function, so a lot of those goals went onto that list. I am, however, allowing myself to promote any of those goals to the actual 101/1001 list if I'm lucky enough to actually do any travelling! Also, at this point, I don't have a complete list of 101, but I shall add more as I think of them over the coming days. Feel free to head on over to the list in the navigation bar and make suggestions!

Pattern: Lacy Baktus by Terhi Montonen

Materials: Schoppel-Wolle Crazy Zauberball; 75% wool  |  25% nylon

Amount: 1 skein in Lilac Breeze; Approx. 419m/100g

Needles: US 3/3.25 mm

Start Date: 27 June 2014

Finish Date: 2 July 2014

Nothing like a road trip and some nice cosy down time with friends to shoot through a quick shawl in a week! A couple hours in the car, a high percentage of garter stitch, and no work in the morning; it's rare that all those elements line up so well, but I'll enjoy it when they do.

 

I bought two zauberballs (this one in the Lilac Breeze colourway, and another in Little Fox) on a whim quite some time ago and, during some stash diving last week, they resurfaced and made their way to my coffee table. Just in time for this month's School Librarian Knitting Group meet up and it was pretty well claimed by my friend Jenny. It was pointed out to me that it was, after all, in her colour, and who could argue with that?

I was surprised by the colour transition when I knitted it up, which, I suppose, is the fun of a variegated yarn. I had expected it to be darker with far less white woven through, but now that it's done, I rather like the effect and think that Jenny will make it work well. Now the real question will be whether she lets it sit in my house until Christmas or if she shall be knocking on my door before school starts back.

I kind of took the wind out of my knitting sales with my last post, undermining my own sense of progress, but I still have two projects to happily report as finished so I shall enjoy those.

Pattern: Honey Cowl by Antonia Shankland

Materials: madeline tosh dk; 100% merino

Amount: 1 skein in Golden Hickory; Approx. 205m/100g

Needles: US 8/5 mm Knit Pro Symfonie

Dimensions: Approximately 30cm in width and 55cm in length, unblocked

Start Date: 1 June 2014

Finish Date: 26 June 2014

(model: ren22a, image: smasharazzi)

It's an excellent on-the-go knit, with a quickly memorised four row pattern. Because of this it became my work knitting and was completed in brief snatches around the lunch table. It seriously knits up so quickly, with such a smooth feeling pattern that I could happily knit this pattern over and over again (so be warned, everyone in existence may be getting this for Christmas).