Decision time

Juggling between life’s daily demands and planning the final details of our move requires a lot of decisions. Every item in our house  I touch – and I swear: there are hundreds if not thousands of them! – needs to be evaluated: Do we move it? Do we keep and store it? Do we recycle it? It takes a lot of time and that is becoming scarcer every day. Nevertheless, I make an effort to carve out a few minutes here and there to see friends and knit or spin. But I noticed that my drive and focus for crafting something more complicated has been lost. Back to the basics with knitting the occasional sock – and in the past 7 days – knit and felted mini bowls to keep my hands busy and keeping my mind at ease.

The pink-purple striped socks hand-dyed by White Birch Fibre Arts turned out beautifully with the stripes matching up. I weighed my yarn after finishing to see if there would be enough for a second pair and realized I can make them about two stripes longer in the cuff as I only used 43 gm of the 100 gm skein.

The double stripe of purple around the ankle was caused by using all the pink to knit my German short-row heel. The plan is to keep the width of all stripes the same in my next pair.

The mini knit-felted bowls can be used for holding jewellery or as a coaster for mugs. They work really well as a soap dish, too, as the wool absorbs the moisture of the soap bar and does not attach to the softened soap. Preventing all that “gunk” that collects in porcelain or ceramic soap dishes. They are easy knitting in the round on 4 mm DPNs and fast: One is usually done within an hour – almost instant gratification!

15 mini bowls in 7 days

I love to use felt-able wool yarns – no super wash!- with long colour changes. The top seven bowls were knit in Noro Kureopatora col. 1009  in blue, purple, white and green. Each turns out a little different depending on where in the colour change the knitting starts. Sometimes I use some of my small skeins of hand-spun samples mixed in with some commercial yarns as well. The three bowls on the right of the second row were created with a blue-purple hand carded blend and a crepe yarn spun during my class with Diana Twiss in March. The five red-orange bowls were knit from a squishy (discontinued) yarn “Nashua hand knits Wooly stripes” gifted to me by my friend Y, an inspiring story-teller through the media of crafts and words.

Now, that I have come close to knitting as many mini bowls as I wanted to knit and running almost out of the Noro yarn the question of “What will be my next project?” swirls through my mind. Usually, there would be plenty of answers to that, but in the awareness that most of my yarns have either been packed to be moved or to be stored, there are limited options available. It basically comes down to these three:

1. Knit my second pair of pink-purple striped socks
2. Start the Channa sweater by the lovely Liisa OR
3. finish my Bear’s Rainbow blanket by PurlSoho

Each has its own merit: the socks are small and portable and therefore ideal for carrying around everywhere in my purse, but not that exciting as I just finished one pair. And who really wants to knit the same item twice?

The Channa sweater is the most exciting for me to anticipate to knit and since it will be created in Katia Linen it is a great piece to be worn in our new home town. As I was curious to see if I can get gauge I set out to make a swatch. The 3.5 mm needles give me exactly the stitch count of 22 stitches/10 cm (4 inches) – yes! The row count is off by 6 rows which can be compensated for by recalculating some of the directions. I am looking forward to start, but am holding back as I am not sure that I will have the focus and time to finish it in three weeks.

gauge swatch in Indigo with 3.5 mm needles

tiles for Bear’s rainbow blanket

colour difference outer row of top tile the one below

The blanket is one of my Unfinished Objects or UFOs that was started a while ago – the exact time eludes me – to finish up some left-over Lion Brand Cotton Ease yarn. I had about 1 and a half balls of the grey-brown in my stash and thought that it would be enough to frame about 24 to 30 colour rounds for a small blanket. After 6 squares I realized that my assumption was way too optimistic and I needed more of the same colour. Off to my yarn store Wetcoastwools I went to find that the exact dye lot was no longer available. The new dye lot was a little darker which is almost impossible to see in the photos (the outside of the top square was crocheted with the darker colour), but quite visible for me. I discussed my dilemma with Glenda and thought that changing the last outside row on all squares to the darker grey would even it out. Frustrated that I needed to unravel and crochet the outside of six completed squares – into the bag it went waiting for a better time (with more motivation). That time may be now since it would relieve me of “stash” I would not need to move or store. And another idea how to use the different dye lots has formed in the meantime: I will crochet nine squares completely with the lighter grey colour and use them in the middle of the blanket and the remaining ones in the darker colour. Only one row needs to be unravelled and I can move forward hoping to crochet one to two squares each day. It looks as if I could finish it before we move and most exciting: once done I can start the sweater I am really desiring to knit.

To the crochet hook!

Cheers, Maike