It's warm enough for sandals so it's time for a Knitted Things Update

I really do need to figure out why I feel such a strong compulsion to keep posting FO’s to this blog, as I can’t imagine how writing blog posts like this could possibly be important or helpful to my business; in fact, right now I really should be putting the pattern pieces for my newest pattern into layout so I can test out v.1 but instead here I sit rounding up my recent knitting. Elliot just walked by and said, “Mom, I can’t believe you still blog. It’s so ten years ago.” Hah. I guess I just can’t help myself.

I’ve never had good system for posting here on the blog, and as a result I’ve only shared a small fraction of the things I made last year, both sewn and knitted. In a lot of my Friday Faves posts I post peeks at things I’m starting to knit and it bugs me not to post “ta-da!” photos of them once they’re done. So let’s just start with the knitted things, now that it’s truly warm enough to put all knitted things aside and not look at them again until September. PS All yarns were purchased at Spun in Ann Arbor unless otherwise indicated.

Let’s start with my Anker’s Summer Shirt, a summer cotton sweater I finished right as the weather turned cold last fall. I bought the yarn from LeRoo cotton at a pop up they had at Spun. The beauty of this cotton yarn is how brilliant the colors are; this is not your grandma’s dishcloth cotton. I really love how beautiful this copper color is.

Then there’s my Ranunculus sweater, which I made with two strands of yarn (Suri alpaca for the fuzzy fluffy look, and Fave merino fingering from Fiberstory). This was my first time using two stranded knitting and I really like it!

Next up, I made this Mountain Mist sweater for Elliot. Twas meant to be a present for him for Christmas but alas the holidays got the best of me and I ended up finishing right before the year ended. He picked out the pattern and colors, and I thought that this yarn (Wooldreamer’s Mota, mainly) was lovely but unfortunately he finds it a bit too scratchy, it’s quite long on him, and the neck is really too large sooo we’ll see - I may pull it out and make something else with it, unless I can figure out a way to tighten up the neck. Maybe he will grow into it yet? IDK.

All in all, for my first go at a colorworked sweater yoke, I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.

Next we have a fun little project that I made with scrap yarn, a Ginger Glad Hat for Hugo. It was so fun to do a colorwork hat - again something I’d never tried before - and I loved that this pattern has a classic ski hat motif that’s approachable for colorwork newbies.

Hugo wears this hat everywhere and has therefore also lost/found it multiple times. Every time it goes lost I think noooooo but I could probably just whip up another one fairly quickly. I also made two more in navy yarn: one for Mr Rae and one for his dad as a birthday present last fall.

Last one! I received gifted yarn from Woolfolk to try out one of their new spring colors this year, L23 which is the palest, palest purple. It’s like, barely a purple, like if you had a drop of purple paint and it fell into a can of white paint, which I kinda love, not being a big purple fan to begin with. I had made a Sunday Sweater (the “mohair edition”) a year before but with superwash DK, and though I loved that yarn, I don’t think it was the right choice for the pattern. I’ve since come to understand that superwash yarn isn’t always the best choice for sweaters, as they tend to stretch out more and lose their shape, so I wanted to give the pattern another try in a yarn that was better suited. The original (non-mohair) Sunday pattern calls for two strands held together to get a bulky weight, and Woolfolk’s Luft accomplished both the bulky weight and fluffy texture perfectly without the need for two yarns. The result is possibly the most comfy snuggly sweater ever, though the cropped Weekender I made with Woolfolk’s Tov might be a close second.

Mkay! That’s it for knitted things for now. I have one more sweater to post (my recently-completed bright yellow Astragal pullover) but I’ll save that for another post. And a bunch of sewn garments. More to come I guess!