I’m quite enjoying knitting smaller projects to be gifted. I decided I was going to take advantage of all this acrylic or mostly acrylic yarn my mother gave me last Spring. I can knit presents that are not going to be difficult to be taken care of. My experience from last year, when I saw the fear to destroy their gifts (the Silata Scarves and the Hiberknitting Hat) in my son’s eyes, drove me to choose a care-free fibre for this year’s presents knits.
For now, I have a few Trendy Little Scarves, and will make a few additional ones. I just finished a Musselburgh Hat by Ysolda Teague for my youngest son’s, and a Manhattan Hat by Tori Yu for my eldest son’s girlfriends. Both in mostly acrylic, care free yarns. I like the end results, both patterns are equally interesting and easy.
My next Musselburgh may be in size adult small, for the head circumference, but in the large size row count for length, or at least a bit longer than the one I just made. I like to have it either very slouchy or with a double brim. That requires a bit of length. The Manhattan hat has a triple brim, much cosy and warm.
I will knit some for myself once I have all the presents I need 🙂
The pattern is easy and it was a mindless knitting for me. Except I was worrying all along 1- to run out of yarn and 2- that the adult-medium size that was supposed to give me about 2cm of negative ease was going to be too big. And I was right on the second point..
I did not run out of yarn, I decreased the second crown a bit faster than the first (it does not show) and I even have a couple meters left.
But the final hat is wayyyyyyy to big 😿
So I placed an invisible elastic thread about in the middle and after washing and drying flat without any stretching, it feel OK if I wear it slouchy. Not if I fold the brim, I should for that place a couple more elastic threads but that does not look good when I wear it slouchy. I decided to only wear it slouchy, but am a bit disappointed.
This project had another difficulty : at some point, the overall speckles and colours on the skein started to change to more pink and it started to pool :
I then ripped out about to the point I started to see the pooling and knitted again alternating one thread from the outside and one thread for the inside of the skein to minimise the colour effect. That worked, but contributed to my fear of loosing at yarn chicken !
All in all I am more pleased than disappointed, the yarn is beautiful and I still like the idea of the double layer hat pattern. Next time I will cast on a much smaller size. I will to use it for my sons with the mostly acrylic tans my mother gave me, much easier care for them than their past Christmas presents, the two Silata Scarves and the Hibernating hat.. I may choose a smaller needle size than the one the yarn recommends though.
This month I made a few discoveries as I continue to explore my feelings related to my no-buy year.
First I did not buy any books, mostly because I bought a lot of patterns. I am quite happy with these as they were in an operation from Sari Nordlund towards the situation in Ukraine. I had either spotted the upcoming pattern and was waiting for it to come out (the Marzipan pullover) or had them all in my favorites and wishlist (Pas, Poet, Poetria and Seleste Tee).
On March 30, 2022, Meret Buetzberger released a pattern I was so looking forward to, s’Krägli (the Collar). An amazing piece I had fallen in love with at first sight. I bought it and casted it on a few days later, changing all my plans for my next projects ! I am so pleased with it 😻
Even though I feel satisfied, I am missing the books I still have on my wishlist, the ones from Norah Gaughan (Knit Fold Pleat Repeat: Simple Knits) and from MejuKP (Contrasts). The other book that I am interested in, Traditions Revisited – Modern Estonian Knits by Aleks Byrd, will be on pre-order on April 21st on the Laine Magazine website, phew ! That last one I did not have to deal with in March 😺
My book wishlist fills up more quickly than there are months in a year, so I may not be able to continue with my current guideline of one book only per month. What to do ? I do not know. My expenses already are over what I was envisioning when I decided for this year long project. That’s the first thing I discovered and need to be reflecting on.
Second, I bought one skein of yarn and I am so pleased with it.
All in all, I did spend a lot of money this month, almost 100€ with 96.09€. The grand total for these first three months of 2022 is 216.89€ which is above the 50€ per month I had in mind as it ends up being 72.29€ per month.
So now what ? Do I stop buying anything for the upcoming month ? How will I handle my frustrations if any ? Am I so addicted to buying things ? I do not know and once again need to ponder and take time to reflect on all these feelings. I can knit from my stash and do not feel much frustration not buying yarn. I am being very frustrated not to be buying more books. I have a whole series of shelves filled up with SciFi and cooking books and I was quite pleased to continue filling it up with knitting ones.
I know I have this tendency to accumulate. For what ? Why ? Accumulate things, backups for groceries that go bad before I get to cooking them, food in my mouth and my body , books, yarn 🙂 That is a lot and enough for today 💛
Knit Now 