New Year, New Knitting

One thing I try to avoid with this blog is apologizing for not blogging.  But after such a long lapse, I want to make an exception:  Yikes that was a long time without blogging.
Late fall seems to be a difficult time of year for me.  I haven't figured it out yet, but at least now I've noticed the pattern.

2012 Recap and 2013 Goals:
I met my washcloth goals for the year - one each month plus one more each quarter, total of 16.  November's was late, but other than that I did well, and I had enough for all my gifting needs.  I will renew this goal for 2013.

There were only four Christmas stockings to make this year, all done on time.  Two of them were a for-pay job.   So far I know of four needed in 2013.  My stocking goal is to do one per quarter.

In the second half of 2012 I was quite into the Harry Potter Knitting & Crochet House Cup group on Ravelry.  It was lots of fun, but somehow seemed to sap my blogging mojo and then my knitting mojo (although it may have simply been whatever-it-was in November that sapped most of that).  I completely missed the sign-ups for winter term (January through March), so I'm sitting out a semester and will see if I want to re-join starting in May.  I don't seem to have the mental energy to categorize my knitting so I can do all I want to in that game.

My main Christmas knitting projects were hats for one of the nieces-and-nephews groups:

(Swirled Ski Caps from the book Knitting for Peace.  Fun and appreciated, but a bit down to the wire, and my homemade cardboard pom-pom maker is now completely worn out)

and a hot water bottle cozy for my mom.

I'm pretty proud of this one.  I used a basic cozy pattern and a snowflake chart pattern and adapted them to fit both each other and the water bottle I bought.

Also coming up in 2013:
I know many people expecting babies in the first part of this year.  So many that I have had to write a list to keep track of them all. So there will be lots of baby-sweater knitting in my immediate future.

I will be going to Rhinebeck!  In October I'll be having a knitting weekend away!  A group of us have rented a house for the weekend of the New York Sheep & Wool Festival.  My goal is to finish the sweater I started for myself on New Year's 2010 in time to wear it to Rhinebeck.

Other big projects include at least three baby blankets for late 2013/early 2014, so I better get an early start on those.

One final note to close out 2012:  My brother knows how to shop for a knitter.  He gave me "socks; some assembly required" (yarn, pattern book, and needles), yarn for socks for him, a yarn bowl (!), another set of needles, a yarn travel book, and a "Keep Calm and Carry Yarn" tote bag.

I'm looking forward to a new year of knitting, and of sharing it with this blog!

2012 Washcloths - 2nd Quarter Report

Washcloth knitting has gone very well in the second quarter of 2012.  I already posted about the April washcloth, and here is the one I finished in May:

This pattern is "chevron rib" and is featured on April 27 in my pattern-a-day calendar.  This washcloth took the longest of any this quarter because it was a long time before I could "read" the knitting in this pattern.  For most of the time I was blindly following the written instructions, but finally I got to the point where I could tell what to do based on the previous row of knitting.  I'm not sure what made this pattern like that, perhaps that I was doing only one repeat, perhaps the narrowness of the ribs.  Anyhow, finally finished.

Next is the extra dishcloth for this quarter, knit in May and a little bit of June.  Again falling back on the Ballband Dishcloth standard, this time with yellow bricks and pastel rainbow mortar.  Whenever Lil One suddenly wants to "help knit" I'll quickly cast on one of these for her to watch a row or two.

 Finally, the June washcloth.  I knit this all in one day in early June, and will be turning it in to the Harry Potter Knitting & Crochet House Cup as my homework for Flying class.  The prompt for Flying this month was about "flying by the seat of your pants" and crafting something such that you didn't know what the finished product would look like during the crafting (or making pants).  I decided to try my hand at making a randomized pattern, so I quickly set a few rules and dove right in.  I started reading the first Harry Potter book, and every time I came to a proper noun I'd make a two-stitch cable.  For people names it would be right-leaning and for place names left-leaning.  I kept a three-stitch and three-row garter border, and cabled on both sides of the knitting.  This washcloth represents most of the first chapter.  If I were to do it again, I think I'd cable one way for first names and the other for last names, dropping the place names because there weren't many of them.
This process made for slow reading but very fast knitting, and what I think will be a very scrubby washcloth.

Yarn Along - 2012 Washcloths April Edition

Joining in Ginny's Yarn Along. She says:

Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs. I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well.
Check out some of the great projects and books linked there this week!

The Lil One wanted to help me knit today, so I pulled out the April washcloth. She sat on my lap for maybe two rows, and then I finished it later in the day. Simple garter stitch with three-row stripes. The goal for this washcloth was to use up the scraps of dishcloth cotton I've accumulated and to do a trial run of three-row stripes. My friend Alisha made a Baby Surprise Jacket a while back using three colors and making stripes that were each three rows wide. It's a little hard to see the effect in the washcloth because I was using variegated yarns and had to swap in new colors when my remnants ran out. But I really like this idea, and I believe I will use it in my next BSJ, which will be my second and probably to be knit in the next few months.

The book is my new toothbrushing reading (use the moments you can), as I've finished the Harold Bloom collection from way back when. The Growing Church: Keys to Congregational Vitality was edited by Rev. Thom Belote, who was our History and Theology presenter at UU MidWest Leadership School my student year and my first year on the volunteer staff. It's a collection of essays by ministers of thriving congregations, and I'm using it to help me get back into church-lady mode as we gear up for this year's MWLS, and I gear up to rejoin my congregation's board in July. I think my position will be Secretary, which means I won't be able to knit as much at the meetings. :-P

Oh, and I finished the OSU Baby Blanket. In time and everything. It ended up being 170 stripes long plus two 3-inch borders. 170 stripes x 2 sides x oh, at least 130 stitches per row = I don't even want to know. Let's just look at the pretty instead.

Yay.

2012 Washcloths - First Quarter Report

So far so good with the 2012 Washcloth knitting. I've made one washcloth in each of the first three months of this year, plus one extra for four cloths knit so far.

From left to right in this picture we have two ball-band dishcloths made last year, the January and February cloths in the same white-lime-tan colorway, the first-quarter-extra cloth, and March's. I don't have an individual picture of January's cloth, finished just in time, in a knit-one-below pattern called Bee Stitch. I have not yet been able to make a Bee Stitch cloth come out square.

February's was finished in the first week of the month and was knit in a stitch called Crocus Buds

Since I finished that one so early, I started in on the extra cloth for these three months. Back to the good old Ball-band pattern using the left over yarn from January and February and denim. This one sat for most of February and got finished in early March.

Mid-March I cast on a fairly simple textured pattern -- seed stitch diamonds -- and finished it in two days.

So I'm keeping up with the washcloth schedule and am pretty pleased with the results for the first part of the year. I'll be needing more Sugar n' Cream yarn pretty soon.

2011 Washcloths - December Edition and Wrap-Up

I met my 2011 washcloth goal!

The December washcloth was knitted in the car on family visits in the week after Christmas. It's the fall-back pattern of the Ball Band Dishcloth (ravelry link) from Mason-Dixon Knitting, using Denim Sugar 'n Cream and a multi-color remnant (also Sugar 'n Cream) whose name I've forgotten.

I knit one washcloth every month for the whole of 2011, and in two months I knit two cloths. Christmas preparation was much less stressful with these little gifts ready to go, but I feel like I'm still not quite where I'd like to be. Two of the washcloths ended up as hostess gifts back in the summer, and one was sent as a prize in the Knitters' Brewing Company's Football Knitting contest (the store is on a break this week, so here's a link to their Ravelry group, too). I figure these are also good uses for my knitted washcloths, and ones I expect to run into again.

So for 2012 I am going to continue knitting washcloths, and increase my goal slightly. For this year, in addition to knitting one each month, I plan to knit one extra washcloth per quarter. So by the end of March I should have four washcloths, eight by the end of June, etc. I think 16 washcloths a year will be a good supply for the assorted little gifts I'd like to give.