Midwinter, the perfect time to get the knitting needles out. When the days are short and they're mostly spent in the office in town, I find that knitting is my calming companion to offset the stresses of the day. I'm sure I'm not alone in that!
I finally finished Tom's Moby Sweater - hooray! It felt like a bit of a marathon knit, but he loves the finished piece and wears it often, so it was all worth it. The Moby Sweater is a pattern by Petite Knit knitted up in sport-weight yarn. It has all-over cabled and textured stitches, with dropped sleeves and a folded neckband and lots of nice details such as tubular bind-offs and short row shaping. I used a cone of possum-merino yarn from the Woolyarns factory near me - it used up about 3/4s of the cone (there were moments where I worried I wouldn't have enough - and no way to find more!) The yarn is a sort of grey-blue shade with tweedy flecks of other colours - it could be some sort of recycled wool maybe. It's a lovely weight - not too heavy, with a slight possum halo.
It was a great fit on Tom straight off the needles, but it has stretched slightly with wear, which isn't great. The sleeves are quite loose especially - I'm thinking that maybe I could risk a few minutes in the dryer to shrink it a bit? Please let me know if you have any opinions about that idea! My Ravelry notes for the project are here.
I've also included above a picture of a beautiful traditional wooden trug Tom gave me for Christmas last year. It held this sweater project while I was working on it, and now it's home to a crochet blanket in progress. Isn't it a beautiful object? It was made by this craftsperson in Golden Bay which is where we love to go in the summer.
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Future knitting plans:
- I would love to cast on one of these heirloom quilt cardigans! The seaming is not so appealing, but I love the style and can imagine it would be so nice to wear over a linen dress!
- I've been thinking about wool embroidery lately, and probably baby cardigans would be a good place for some stitching. Also maybe some fingerless gloves, like these? I have a Pinterest board devoted to wool embroidery, if you're after some inspiration.
- A few years ago, I made this little bunny for one of my nieces. I would love to make more of these characters, and the designer of that bunny now has a book and many other patterns to choose from, all of them gorgeous.
- Let me know about your crafty plans - what are you wanting to make these days?
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Since my last post, Arlo (my eldest child) turned 20! I guess he's not a child anymore. I was tidying up the linen cupboard when his beautiful baby blanket, spun and knitted by my Mum more than 20 years ago, fell out. It was a bit moth-eaten and felted but I hadn't seen it in years! I thought I might cut it up and sew it into a hot water bottle cover for him, but couldn't quite bring myself to do it. So I just mended the holes, washed it and popped it back in the cupboard.
In a lovely cycle, 20 years later, we're expecting a new baby niece or nephew sometime soon so I've been working on a few tiny garments! Above you can see some small booties I made recently for said baby-in-progress, made using my favourite pattern which is this one. I'll have a few more baby knits to share in my next post!
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And lastly, I have included a few snaps of our winter skies from the past few weeks. I do love this luminous time of year.
I hope you are doing very well, and keeping warm if you're a fellow Southern Hemisphere-dweller. See you next time, friends,
Melissa