A New Year!

I'm beginning the year 2015 with a flu. My niece must have given us this lovely Christmas present. The New Year's Eve I spent on our coach, hugging a toilet paper roll because I was convinced it wouldn't get to this point, thus not getting proper skin friendly tissues. :) 

But more importantly, I'm beginning this year with crafts in mind! 

First of all I tried to finish the hat heel socks that I started last April (while hugging the roll of toilet paper). They are missing the leg part, but the foot is done and there's no yarn attached to them at this point. I fear I will just stash them somewhere where the sun don't shine. First of all, I don't like the look of the yarn. I wish the labels showed what kind of a pattern all the self-striping yarns form. Secondly, they ended up a round or two too short for my toes. Thirdly, I noticed close to the toe decrease that (having picked them up 8 months later) one of the socks had 27+28 stitch and the other sock had 28+29 stitches. I suppose they average out to the correct amount of sts... Fourthly(?) I had no idea where the beginning of round was and I managed to do the SKP & k2tog decreases the wrong way around. Fuzzy brain. Also I have come to the conclusion that I actually somewhat prefer to do socks on DPNs, since with a magic loop it's more difficult to hide the line where the adjacent stitches are on opposite sides of the loop. If that makes any sense. Especially if there are decreases exactly at that point. So for top-down socks, DPNs are actually yay. Though I would need to get another set of DPNs because trying to clone a sock after one is done is impossible for me.

For Chrismas I knit three pairs of socks for kids. Baby sized, for a 2-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy. All were done differently. The first baby socks I knit on DPNs top-down, one sock after the other. For the girl I knit the socks 2-at-a-time, toe-up. For the boy I did again top-down on DPNs, but this time I did the leg until heel on the first sock, proceeded to the same point on the other sock, did one heel then another heel etc. Much nicer that way! I had the idle sock waiting on 0.25 mm smaller DPNs. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the boy socks and I wasn't present when they opened their presents, and I haven't heard if they actually fit or are wonky. The toes seemed to be weirdly wonky in relation to the heel even though they were done exactly according to instructions of a basic sock (I did tell them that I can fix it if it's bad but I guess they're too polite and too far away to comment on the socks at all). The girl socks probably had too short leg ribbings and did say to my sister that I can make them longer if they fit otherwise but they hadn't been tried on yet and haven't heard from her since... She did send a photo of the baby socks being worn and said she liked them. So at least one out of three was ok! 

But that was last year and last Christmas ;) After Christmas I wanted to work on something. I accidentally ended up ordering different yarns again. But while they're traveling here, I was still itching to do something. I have some DROPS Nepal in my stash (5 skeins and 14 skeins). I was trying to find stuff to do with the 5 skeins so I was browsing through scarves, cowls, shawls and other smaller stuff. I found [url=http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/through-the-woods-2]Through the Woods[/url] among other things. So next morning I went to buy some larger exchangeable cable needles (5.0 & 5.5 & 6.0 mm). After some research and reading the pattern I think I realized that it's for a bulky yarn and that the projects that have been made with Nepal just don't look as nice because they're smaller. I have some other options of a cowl/scarf that incorporate a hood, like this and this, but all of them would require some adjusting. I definitely want to do something like that, it would be nice when going to the city with a bus, a hood would be good enough and it wouldn't get lost or take space from my bag like the big woolen hats that I have to take off when I get indoors. But it would have to be shaped or sized more like Through the Woods or I'd just look like an old granny.

Anyways, I went back to browsing pattern ideas for Nepal. So many cardigans, so I thought to myself. I'd really like a cardigan with some cables or something. I kept searching and searching and there were several ok looking patterns that had several projects using Nepal. I ruled out all that were 100% in some small textured pattern, all that were plain stockinette stitch (with maybe some garter stitch) because they would be too boring even if they'd fit perfectly. Then I tried to think if I just really like it on the model or if it would actually look good on me (I might not be the best judge of that, though). And of course, I then looked at the price of the pattern and/or whether I had the (e)-mag it was published in. And also the comments and look of Nepal projects. I found Aidaz but wasn't sure if that would be too difficult. Also I found many projects saying they did it in one piece and I don't yet know how to do that exactly, and I'm still scared of trying to match many pieces together. Even after reading all about the magic of blocking. :) 

Finally I found Leitmotif cardigan that coincidentally is written by the same author that wrote the pattern of my unfinished cardigan. Is that a good or a bad sign? I'm not sure. I happened to have the magazine as well, so I think that's what I'll try to accomplish this year. :) 

My project list would be: 

• Kalajoki socks using that paticular yarn
• Burning Stripes socks copycatting that yarn combination
• Leitmotif cardigan using my stash of DROPS Nepal
• A scarf/cowl with a hood using Nepal or something bulkier?
• A shawl or a scarf made from Cashmere Blend

I sort of made some crafts-related "resolutions"

• There's this LYS (local yarn store) that I don't like. I will try to avoid it and prefer a LYS that sells DROPS products
• Finish something wearable!

Not much really :) In regards to the LYS, I really don't like the one I've bought all my KnitPro/KnitPicks stuff from. The staff never seems to smile and the only almost-contact they make is what feels like hovering over my shoulder to make sure I don't steal anything. They didn't even offer the stamp card, I had to ask for it. Also they never promote anything to make the purchase go over 20€ to get a stamp (I usually end up buying with 19.20€ or something). It's not that I would want to add something extra I don't actually need, I just feel like they don't want to sell me anything. I also listened to another customer getting some "advice" from one of the shop assistants. She asked "oh what's alpacca". The seller's first reaction really apparently was "IS THIS WOMAN AN IDIOT?". The reply was "Alpacca is an animal." and then after a long pause she thought to explain what the yarn might be like. The customer said something about the husband waiting and left without buying anything.

Anyways, I bought 5.0 mm DROPS Pro Romance interchangeable tips to test if they would work with KnitPro cables. They look like they come from the same factory as KnitPro Symfonie wooden needles, and there was no compatibility issue. I did get KnitPro 5.5 mm & 6.0 mm but didn't remember to compare the prices. I'll get my stuff from that LYS from now on, even if it's smaller (and they really ought to advertise at the sidewalk that they exist, I actually had to check Google Maps to see which building it would be because none of the buildings had numbers, and I still struggled since it wasn't even listed next to the door among other businesses that were inside).

But I've now swatched for Leitmotif and I'm waiting for the swatch to dry. It's probably too demanding a pattern for me, but I still prefer that to something boringly simple. And it's not the knitting that's the most difficult part, it's the picking up stitches or joining parts together, and that happens with even the simplest patterns.