But about the moose. Having "a thing" for a particular animal, and collecting items on that animal theme, is definitely "a thing" in North American culture, and in Greg's case he has a thing for moose. Back in 1994 he had a few toy moose and other moose-themed items in his office. On the day I visited his office in the fall of 2022, I saw that he had a dozen or so stuffed moose lined up in the windowsill by his desk, and while they were almost all commercially made, one was crocheted. While walking home that day I got the idea of knitting a toy moose for Greg as a thank you gift for everything he has done for me over the many years since I first met him. I have always thanked him verbally for everything he has done for me, but it was long past time I thanked him in some sort of concrete way.
That evening, I searched Ravelry for a cute moose pattern, and very quickly zeroed in on the Juniper Moose, designed by Rachel Borello Carroll, for the obvious reason that it's adorable, though it didn't hurt that it's also a free pattern. The one modification I decided to make was to nix the wreath, as I thought it had a somewhat Christmassy look that wasn't culturally appropriate for Greg, who is Jewish. But the moose definitely needed to have a substitute accessory of some kind, so I decided I would make it a scarf instead.
I searched through my stash to see what I had that would be appropriate for this project, and soon came up with two colours for the moose and two more for the scarf that I thought worked well together. I didn't have any safety toy eyes on hand, but when I looked in my button tin I found two black plastic shank buttons of a kind that I've often bought to use as the eyes for stuffed toys. I also had a bag of polyfill stuffing. I even had a suitable gift bag to put the moose in when it was done. This project would cost me nothing but time and effort.
The finished and accessorized moose. I was reasonably pleased with this project, and it made a nice surprise gift for Greg, who exclaimed, "I see antlers!" when he first peeked into the gift bag. The moose is cute and even a little sporty-looking. He looks as though he shops at the Gap and wouldn't at all mind stopping by your backyard to hang out, kick around a football, and maybe have a few brewskis. But then when one stands up to 6.5' tall at the shoulder and weighs up to 1600 pounds, one can shop anywhere and hang out anywhere one wants, or say, trash a person's car if they look at one funny. It's all in a day's experience for a Canadian moose, and getting used as a thank you present is even more so.
This project was made entirely of stash yarn, and I used up a total of 75 grams of yarn on it.
Back in 2012, one of my knitting projects was a red worsted cardigan. The yarn I used for it came from a red hoodie I'd made circa 2010 and had only worn a few times because I found it too bulky and unflattering. I thought I'd get more wear out the cardigan. However, this proved not to be the case because the cardigan's collar didn't sit right and the sleeves were too long. I always meant to fix those things, but never got around to it. One day in the fall of 2022 as I was tidying up my sweater cupboard, it struck me that rather than fixing that sweater (which, after all, I didn't need) I could take it apart and use the yarn to make something I would otherwise have to spend money on: a sweater for my grandniece Cauliflower's 14th birthday present in summer 2023. The red would suit Cauliflower quite well, the sweater(s) had been so little worn that the yarn was still good as new, and I'd be sure to have enough given that I was going down two sizes and had an untouched 100 gram skein of the yarn in my stash to boot.
I searched Ravelry for a suitable pattern and came up with the Cabled Yoke Pullover, from Patons, which you can see depicted above. It's classic enough to be a safe choice, detailed enough to be interesting, and also a free pattern.
The construction of the sweater was rather interesting. The directions say to knit the cable shoulder strip first, seam it together at the ends, pick up stitches around the top of the cabled strip to make the collar, then pick up stitches at the bottom of the cabled strip to knit the body of the sweater. My version, which I made in a woman's size extra small/small, knitted up relatively quickly and without incident, and I was contented with the result. This sweater used up 673 grams out of the 900 grams of red worsted I had started with.
And then I realized I still had 227 grams of the red yarn left. What should I do with it?
Two hundred and twenty grams is more than enough to make a hat, and I thought Cauliflower might like a matching hat for her sweater (she can wear it for her figure skating lessons), so I searched Ravelry for a suitable tam pattern in worsted. I looked specifically for a cabled design that would work with the pullover. I chose the Sweet and Slouchy Hat, designed by Kim Haesemeyer. I was able to check a copy of the book the pattern is in out of the Toronto Public Library and work from the book.
One day in mid-February 2023, I received the happy news that I was to have a new grandniece in May 2023. With only three months' notice, it was clearly time to fire up the knitting needles. By the time I went to bed that night, I had the baby's birth gift planned and knitting patterns selected for it. I decided I would make Baby Swan a baby blanket and a pair of matching booties, and also buy her a storybook.
For the baby blanket, I selected the Dreamland Adventures Baby Blanket design by Mary Triplett. It's a very pretty and not especially time-intensive knit.
Then I searched Ravelry for a baby bootie pattern that would be a good complement to the baby blanket design. The My Fairy Booties design by Drops seemed to fit the bill, as the teardrop lace stitch on the anklet and the garter stitch in the feet and at the top are quite similar to the teardrop lace and garter borders of the blanket. And it's a free pattern.
When it was time to shop for yarn, I went to Michaels and looked for a DK weight yarn with some natural fibre content that was machine washable and dryable. They only had one brand of yarn that fit my criteria, and it only came in three colours, only one of which was at all attractive, so I only had one real choice, but hey, I only needed one suitable yarn, and it was on sale for 25% off. The yarn was Loops & Threads Luxe Merino in Bridal Rose, or what I would describe as a shell pink, which is slightly warmer and richer than the standard pastel baby pink.
A close up of the baby booties. They have a crocheted picot edging on the top that I had to buy a 3 mm crochet hook for, but then it doesn't hurt to add another size to my set of crochet hooks. When I went through my ribbon cannister to see what I had that I could use for the ankle ribbons, I didn't have any pink ribbon whatsoever (not surprising, as I never wear pink and don't often work with it even as gifts for other people), but I did have some cream ribbon that looked well with the pink yarn.
The completed dress, made in size 6 to12 months. I try to learn something new with each knitting project. This project involved a few new knitting experiences for me. I am not sure if I've ever used the mosaic technique before, and I enjoyed trying that out. I don't believe I'd ever used a yarn double to increase its weight before either, and that's a good option to keep in mind. But the most valuable lesson I learned from this piece was that I finally figured out how to pick up wrapped stitches without having them show. The trick of it is that when you're knitting the wrap and a live stitch together, you must make sure that the wrap stitch is on the wrong/under side of your work. You might have to rearrange the stitches on your needle to get them in the correct orientation, but that's easy enough to do.
For the single button on the back of the neckline, I found a button in my button tin, keeping the material cost of this project at $0. (I did have to buy the pattern.)
For this stash yarn project, I used 30 grams of salmon and 167 of the green, or a total stash decrease of -197 grams.
Here's the completed sweater in the Sawyer version, in a size 2. This colour scheme is attractive too, and will suit Sawyer, who has blond hair and hazel eyes.
When I searched Ravelry for a suitable pattern for a ten-year-old Canadian boy, I quickly narrowed the search down to this one, which is the 452 Round Neck Zip Sweater, from Bergère de France. It's a free pattern. It's more contemporary in style than the patterns I usually go for, but I thought it rather sharp, and it looked so good in the sample shot that I decided to replicate its colour palette rather than selecting one myself, something I don't often do. The one thing I didn't like about the design was the zipper, which looked rather crude to me, so I decided I would make Bug's version with a buttoned placket.
Here's the finished item, in a size 10. This was quite a straightforward knit, even with the added complication of my having to wing the button placket modification. The body pieces are just stockinette, and the sleeves are mostly just a simple stripe pattern with the chevrons added in duplicate stitch.
I did run into one snag in that I had not enough gray yarn for this project. I used a little more than the designer intended to do the placket, of course, but I wouldn't have had enough even if I had made the sweater with a zipper as the pattern directed. And I needed just 10 grams of the extra 100 gram skein I had to buy, sigh. To make this sweater, I used 10 grams of charcoal yarn, 10 grams of cream, and 10 grams of red that all came from my stash. I had 90 grams of the new gray yarn and 30 grams of the new black yarn left, so that's a net stash increase of 90 grams for this project.
The finished dress. As mentioned above, I shortened the sleeves, and I also moved the waist shaping down a bit so it would sit at my waistline. I also changed the stripe pattern so that it involved more and narrower stripes. I ran short of the cream yarn, scoured the yarn stores of Toronto for more, and when none of them had any skeins of that yarn in that shade, ultimately had to order another skein from The Creative Knitter in Fort Erie, Ontario. (The shipping cost was more than the price of the yarn, sigh). When I finished the fourth stripe of green with just 15 grams of that yarn left and that wasn't going to be enough to knit a fifth, I finished off my stripe pattern with two stripes of cream and a coordinating second stripe of cream on each of the sleeves. I'm happy with the effect, and with the dress as a whole. Stripe patterns are more interesting if they're irregular in some way, and this is quite a flattering as well as a practical, comfortable dress for me to have in my wardrobe.
When I searched Ravelry for a nice pattern for Olivia's Christmas sweater for this year, I ended up selecting the very same pattern I had used in 2017 for my grandniece Cauliflower's eighth birthday present: Color Me Pretty, by Elena Nodel. It is a very pretty design, and I already had it in my library, so why not?
In the spring of 2023, when I was putting away my winter footwear and getting out my summer sandals and flip flops, I discovered that there were holes in the soles of the much-worn felted slippers that I had made in late 2016. I sighed and added "new slippers for me" to my already overly long list of 2023 knitting projects, deciding also to prioritize them and get them done by October, as they were something I actually needed.
I did an extensive search of slipper patterns on Ravelry, and ended up deciding that the French Press Felted Slippers, by Melynda Bernardi, which I had used to make my previous pair of slippers, was still the pattern I liked best and that I was just going to make myself a new pair. I'd already purchased the pattern, it is a design with a certain amount of style (that is, as much as one could expect from a pair of woolly slippers), and my first pair had both kept my feet warm as toast and lasted for over six years. I could hardly do better than that.
But I could do better in terms of colour choice. I had liked my old slippers, but had always regretted making them in a khaki green. In winter, I wear dark brown yoga pants (I own five pairs of them), or olive green khakis or corduroys around the house, and the old pair had really only gone with the latter. In August 2023, I visited Romni Wools, looking for a dark brown worsted yarn that would go with all my around-home trousers. They didn't have anything in just the right shade in a worsted, but in their bargain basement I found some bulky-weight Linie 231 Filz-Wolle in 12 Chocolate Brown that I thought would do -- I would just have to felt the yarn more to get it down to the right size. Knowing I would probably need more of a heavier gauge weight yarn than the 150 grams of worsted the pattern specified, I bought four 50 gram skeins of yarn to be on the safe side.
When I began knitting the slippers, it soon became clear that 200 grams of yarn I had weren't going to be sufficient. I had to go back to Romni and get two more skeins -- I think they only had three left. When I was finished knitting the slippers, I realized that I should have made the soles with three strands of yarn instead of only two. But this was a mistake I didn't bother to correct, as I wouldn't have had sufficient yarn for it, even if I did go back to Romni and get that one remaining skein -- assuming it was even still there. The two-strand sole was pretty thick as it was anyway, given the yarn I'd used, not to mention of a comically large size. But I must admit that I simply didn't want to redo the soles. It was a relief to have finished the knitting, as I don't like big needle knits.
Then came the felting process, another thing I don't enjoy. I have a front loading washing machine with a Fort Knox-like auto locking system, so I thought I couldn't use my washing machine to felt things, but must do it manually. The last time I made these slippers, I did it in a pot on the stove, and it took me five and a half hours to felt them. This time I did some reading up and watching of YouTube videos on felting in advance. I started out using hot water in a cooking pot as the YouTube felter had done, thinking I could at least sit down during the process, but I didn't like that I had to keep refreshing the water as it cooled. I ended up going back to the method I'd resorted to for my last slippers: I agitated the slippers in a large pot of water which I kept simmering on the stove, occasionally rinsing them in cold water at the sink to shock the felt into shrinking. This time it took me a gruelling four hours and twenty minutes, during which I endured frequent splashes of hot water (it wasn't hot enough to burn me, though it was hot enough to be painful), but I thought was at least an improvement on the last time, and this time around I'd also done more felting in less time because the slippers had been larger to start with. My hands ached so much afterwards that I had to get up in the middle of the night and take ibuprofen, and it took me four or five days to get the brown stains off my fingernails, but it was a relief to think that the felting process was done and I wouldn't have to do it again for years.
With the slippers ready to assemble, I took one of the straps with me to Fabricland to buy buttons for them. It was a pleasant and easy task, I was in the home stretch of finishing slippers I really needed but that I hadn't enjoyed making and then... I lost the felted strap somewhere in the store, and simply could not find it again. And hoo boy, did I look. I must have spent well over an hour looking for it. I retraced my steps through the stores repeatedly. I emptied out and went through the contents of my shoulder bag and the one shopping bag I had with me three separate times. I went through my coat pockets, even taking off my jacket and shaking it in case the strap had slipped down one of my sleeves or something. I told the staff I'd dropped it and they looked for it themselves with a commendable thoroughness and customer service zeal. One young store employee even got down on her hands and knees and crawled around in the yarn area, where I'd been browsing, looking for it. But all of our efforts were for naught. We couldn't find the damn strap. Finally, too tired to look anymore, I gave up, purchased the buttons that had matched the strap while I had it, left my name and contact information with the store staff in the forlorn hope that the strap might yet turn up, and dragged myself home. I waited a few days, and when I didn't hear from Fabricland, I resigned myself to the inevitable, and made a new strap.
At least I had enough yarn left over for the third strap, and it took me less than fifteen minutes to knit a new strap and darn in the ends. Then came the felting part, which took about an hour, but then I hit yet another snag in the process when I realized the new strap and the remaining original strap were two very different shades of brown. I ended up stewing the slippers and the straps in a pot on the stove for five or six hours, which almost corrected the colour of the new strap. There was still a slight shading difference between the straps, but by that point I was too fed up with the whole process to care.
The completed slippers in a size 8. (The colours didn't photograph that well, and the buttons actually go better with the yarn than one would think given their appearance in this photo.) After all the trouble I had with them, I'm reasonably pleased with them. I think next time I make these slippers I will go with a worsted. These fit fairly well, but they are a lot bulkier than my old slippers.
I do have a few thoughts on how to make the felting process easier on me next time. First of all, I am going to experiment with using my washing machine to felt whatever material I'm working with, because I've discovered that I can work around the machine's auto lock by unplugging the machine whenever I want to check on or remove the items, as long as I don't let the machine go into spin cycle. If machine felting doesn't work for me, I will use the deep stock pot I recently bought from a thrift shop for the manual felting process, which should prevent or at least reduce the painful splashing. And lastly, in future I vow to be VERY careful with my samples when shopping for notions, especially if the sample is actually a needed piece of the project.
This project was made from newly purchased yarn and I had just 20 grams of yarn left when it was completed, or a stash increase of 20 grams.
Awhile back I had a look through the owl patterns in Ravelry's pattern database to see what useful gift ideas I could come up with for the owl aficionados in my family.
The Owlie Socks, designed by Julie Elswick Suchomel, stood out to me as a cute and suitable pattern. In 2023 I decided to knit my mother a pair for Christmas. As I've talked about before on this blog, my mother is very difficult to buy presents for, but she likes practical gifts and owls, and she would certainly like and be able to use a pair of warm black owl socks.
For the yarn, I selected a skein of Berrocco Vintage Sock in Cast Iron, or what I would less poetically describe as black.
The finished pair of socks. I reluctantly opted not to put beads on this pair of socks as in the sample photo. The beads do add a lot to the design, but beads also add a lot of weight to a knitted item and they feel cold against the skin in winter weather, and at 85, my mother prioritizes comfort and practicality over the aesthetic value of something no one else is even going to notice.
My mother liked the socks when she opened them on Christmas Day, though she commented they were "too thick" for trouser socks and that she'd save them for cold days.
This project was knitted entirely out of new yarn purchased specifically for this project, and there were 30 grams of yarn left, so that's a stash increase of 30 grams.
Sarah Gasson's Knit A Teddy pattern collection offers so many varied and irresistibly cute outfit designs that it was difficult to choose among them, but as soon as I saw the ballerina outfit I knew I just had to make it. It's so cute!
I'm not so much a fan of pink, though I'm aware that pink, white, and black is the classic palette for ballet wear. For Rainbow's ballerina outfit, I chose a 100 gram skein of James C. Brett Double Knitting with Merino in cream and a second 100 gram skein of Wendy With Wool DK in a sage green. Cream and light green are a fresh, pretty combination, and it's not like Rainbow will have some ballet teacher on her case insisting that she cannot deviate from the designated uniform for the class.
The completed outfit. I wish I had Rainbow here for a few minutes to model it for me, since it would show to much better advantage on her than it does lying on my desk, but oh well. This little ballet tutu, surplice sweater, ballet slippers, and headband were fun to make and only took me about a week. The one thing I had some technical difficulty with was sewing the tutu onto the leotard. I could not seem to figure out how to keep my line of sewing stitches on the same horizontal row of knitted stitches, and I must have made five separate attempts to attach the tutu and gotten it on crooked every time. In the end, I wove a length of green yarn through the stitches of the row above the one I wanted to stitch the tutu to, used the green yarn as a guideline while sewing on the tutu, and then pulled out the length of green yarn when I was done. I wish I'd been quicker to come up with a plan to keep my stitches even.
The other thing I would do differently if I were to make this ballerina outfit again would be to find a nicer, and probably crocheted, flower pattern for the headband. This knitted one looks a little rough and ready.
However, the outfit is very cute as a whole and I am looking forward to giving it to Olivia. I can see Rainbow doing pirouettes in her little ballerina outfit already.
I had 25 grams of the cream yarn left and 51 grams of the green yarn left over when I finished this project, so that's a stash increase of 76 grams for this project.
For a pattern, I turned to one of my slightly battered back copies of Vogue Knitting. The design you see above is from Vogue Knitting's Fall 1992 issue. It's Pattern #03, the Diamond Cable Pullover, designed by Michele Woodford. I liked its lush texture and its collar. I didn't love the long, oversized, rectangular shape that was the prevailing silhouette in women's fashion in the early 1990s and that only someone with a model-type build could carry off, but of course I could easily reshape and resize the sweater. I often reshape knitting patterns anyway, and this kind of reshaping is often necessary when one is using vintage knitting patterns. Proportions change, and what was considered a stylish shape in one era can look simply dated, frumpy, awkward, and/or unflattering in another. If you knit up a vintage pattern exactly as it was written, you may find you're not happy with the result, but a simple tweaking of the length and shape can update the garment into a piece that retains whatever qualities you found attractive in the original version and that looks current and flattering.
I had my concerns about whether I'd be able to find suitable buttons for this project, but Fabricland's button section came through for me as it nearly always does.
This yarn was newly purchased for this project, and I finished with 10 grams of it to spare, so that's a stash increase of 10 grams.
Now, for the last project of my 2023 rundown: the second doll outfit I made for Olivia's doll. When I was going through Sarah Gasson's library of doll outfit designs to pick out the ones I want to make in future, the Witch outfit was an automatic yes. I love witches, the outfit is fun, and Olivia would surely enjoy having a Halloween costume for her beloved Rainbow Sparkle Unicorn-Animals.
Then I decided that if Olivia was going to dress up her doll as a witch, Rainbow really ought to have a familiar. A cat seemed the obvious choice, as Olivia's family has three cats and she is cat-obsessed. I searched Ravelry for a suitable small cat toy design, and ended up deciding on the Wub Chub Cat Ornament, by Button Willow Knits.
And that's it for my 2023 projects. When I tally all my stash additions and decreases, I find I have a net stash decrease of 954 grams for the year, which is decent.
My 2023 project list was eighteen items long. I knew from the outset I would never be able to complete all of those projects (there was a multi-coloured afghan on it! and a multi-coloured fingering weight pullover!), though I did hope to finish sixteen of them. I suppose thirteen is not so terribly far below that goal, especially when I did put quite a lot of time in on finishing up that doll and its seven outfits last year, and then counted it as a 2022 project. My 2024 list has thirteen items on it, and I am aiming to get those done. As of this writing, I am a good 80% of the way through the second project on my 2024 knitting list, so I am more or less on track.
I've resolved that going forward, I'll be making every effort to keep my annual knitting list down to twelve projects or less. This should be doable given that I am cutting back on how many things I make for myself -- just three of the thirteen projects I made this year were for me. I have some other needlework projects on hand that have been sitting around for years that I'd like to get to, and I also don't like feeling hurried and behind schedule -- that's not what knitting should be about!
