What a crazy past few weeks!
Although much late, I do wish to say I hope everybody had a lovely holiday season. Mine was busy (but good), and the past few weeks I’ve been down for the count with various minor ailments that have been taking up far too much of my time an energy – capped off by a wicked head cold that completely thwarted all my attempts to knit (damnit).
I am very happy, however, that in December (and a bit into January) I decided to take a few weeks off from designing and instead, focused on knitting some other designer’s patterns.
The first, and my official entry into the 2016 Indie Designer Gift-A-Long was the Stranger Things Cowl by Mary Annarella. I love this thing! It’s so lovely and warm, and the design is incredibly fun. I knit it with Drops Alpaca, which is a little fuzzy for a stranded pattern, but the feel of it is heavenly. It’s so much fun to wear, and fans of the show immediately get it.
I ended up using 225 yds of the light grey and 206 yds of the dark grey. Why 20 yards less when both sides are exactly the same? Who knows, it’s one of those mysteries.
The second project I made up was Ella Austin’s Leighton House Handwarmers. Again, I used a slightly fuzzier alpaca – I really have to stop doing that for extremely fine stranded patterns. But the siren call of soft warm alpaca is something I can’t beat. However, when I knit this pattern again (which I will), I will go with a yarn that affords a bit more stitch definition, so I can really do this design its justice.
What I loved most about this pattern (besides just how plain beautiful it is), is although it’s extremely finely detailed, the repeats are very easy to remember. For the yarn I used Scheepjes Alpaca Rhythm in three colours: the light blue (cuff and Latvian braids) I used approximately 26 yards, for the dark blue on the hand I used about 61 yards, and for the whitish main colour I used 96 yards – leaving more than half the balls. I could easily knit up another pair without purchasing any more yarn!
So as you can see, I’ve been on a bit of a stranded kick lately.
But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on my own patterns. After a few weeks break I came back looking at a few projects fresh, which is exactly what they needed, and jotted down ideas for a few more. I even came up with a long-form multi-release project, which is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while but couldn’t quite nail down exactly what I wanted to do.
Sometimes mini-breaks are all you need to clear the cobwebs out. Gives you a fresh perspective on something that otherwise you’re starting to run circles around.