A Me-Made Plan

I love the concept behind Me-Made May. Every year I want to join in, but May is a bit of a transitional month, and it can get pretty darn warm, and I really don't have a whole lot of warm-weather appropriate knits.

Last weekend I was Instagram-stalking a sewing blogger, and I got the urge to check my self-made wardrobe situation. Lo and behold, I've actually got a shot of making it! And, since I'm thinking about it this early, I have a chance to plan and strategically fill in any gaps in my wardrobe as needed.

So here's things as they stand-the following eight knits are done and in my wardrobe and should be appropriate to wear during May at least once:

-From Another Place Crop Top

-No Boyfriend Sweater

-Cam Tee Sample

-Battleship

-Marion

-Ella

-Yellow Pocket Skirt

-Amiga

Some of these I'm nervous about-most days it will likely be too warm to wear either Marion or Amiga, and my No Boyfriend Sweater is pretty heavy.

I also have three projects on the needles that I plan to get done before May:

-Beach House

-Que Sera

-Cherry Pie Skirt

And, I have yarn for four new tops as well-even though I know I won't get all four done:

-Work+Shelter Lace Striped Sweater

-Drift (a short-sleeved cropped version!)

-Tallahassee (also cropped!) 

-Make Up Your Mind

I'd love to get at least the Work+Shelter top knit, and one of the crop tops. I've also gone through most of my fabric stash and pulled out some things to try sewing. I'd love to get an easy skirt or two and a couple of simple tops done, and hopefully those will help cover some of the warmer days.

I'm really looking forward to the next couple of months now-anything to distract me from my yarn diet, lol! Is anyone else planning for Me-Made May yet?

Weekends

I hope you all had a fantastic weekend! Mine was busier than usual, but good!

Saturday I went up to the city to look at some bikes from Craigslist, and I came home with a vintage Schwinn Le Tour that's been kept in excellent condition. I rode it to the grocery store on Saturday, and to choir on Sunday, and it's a great bike-and so much faster than any of my old ones! I can't wait to get out on some real training rides for the Tour de Cure over the next few weeks.

I got through almost all of the grey on my Cherry Pie skirt as well, and I'm ready to start the colorwork! Since that project's getting large and unwieldy, I decided to pull my Beach House out of hibernation to work on. I love knitting this so much, and it's one of the things I want to get done for Me-Made May (I'll talk more about those plans later), so it was great to pull out again. I actually managed to get to the front/back split last night, so this is just sailing along!

Yarn Diet *GASP*

I've been toying with the idea of a yarn diet for a while, and when I realized that I have 50 patterns in my queue that I already have yarn for (!!), I decided it was probably a bit overdue. I have my annual knitting retreat in mid-April, so I've decided not to buy any new yarn until then, because I know I'll go crazy over all of Tara's yarn, and I have very little self-restraint in dyeing workshops, and we may or may not have begun hatching a plan involving a sweater's worth of yarn and some bright yellow and green dye. So I'll feel a lot better about going totally crazy for three days if I'm good and save up for the next six weeks.

Which, ugh. I love buying yarn. I really, really do. I know six weeks really isn't very long, and I know that I could have been really crazy and said no new yarn for six months, or even for a year. But of course, as soon as I decide to not buy new yarn I come up with new ideas that I just need yarn for now, dammit! When, ultimately, I know that I'm not going to have time to knit anything new in the next six weeks, so really, being on a yarn diet should be no problem. Except, we all know that's not really how it works out.

Creativity, and Being Kind

I've been struggling a bit creatively since the start of the year-I have a couple of sweaters stewing in my head, and one that I'm working out on the needles now, but I haven't had an original idea in weeks, and that's a bit paralyzing. I know it's technically impossible to run out of ideas, but it had been so long since I'd felt any kind of creative spark that I was really starting to feel a bit down.

Of course, my approach the past couple weeks to just take things as they come and pick up and put down projects as I feel like it has apparently freed up some of the creative space in my brain, and now I'm solidly in the brainstorming phase (so far it's a pretty big brainstorm, and I can tell there's going to be a lot of editing in my future).

My goal for this month (maybe I'm the kind of blogger that sets monthy goals now?) is to continue being kind to myself. I want to focus on getting some of my WIPs done-especially my KAL projects, but I've also got my Talus hat up there to finish before spring really gets here. But I also want to keep this attitude of letting myself work on what I want when I want to, and not to put undue pressure on myself, and to let these new larval ideas percolate as much as they need to in order to reach maturity. I love this concept solidification part of the creative cycle so much, and I'm really looking forward to enjoying it after that 2-3 month stint in the "I will never have another original thought ever" phase.

ETA: I just realized that this is the blog's second birthday! The past two years have been so much fun and our wider blog community as a whole is such a rich one that I am so proud to be a part of. So, in honor of my second blogiversary, go spread some blog love through the community! Share a favorite old post from one of your favorite bloggers, spread comments far and wide-basically anything that will help us all remember and appreciate that what we have here in the blogiverse is so special.

Careful Not to Twist

Friday night I finished winding the yarn for my Nusa KAL cowl, and I immediately cast on and found myself so smitten I just had to knit a few rounds. Saturday morning, I was similarly engrossed, and I knit several rounds during my morning coffee. Then, just as I was about to set it down to go for a walk, I noticed it,

You know that part in the pattern, where it says, "Join to work in the round, careful not to twist?" Heck, I've put that line in more than half of my own patterns, and I'm absolutely meticulous about checking my cast-on before I start knitting. But there, more than ten rounds into a project with a 336st cast-on, I saw it.

A twist.

I swore. I put it down. I went for a walk. I went for coffee. I went to catch up with some friends who were back in town. I went to the grocery store.

It was still there when I finally went home.

I'm almost back to where I was before I (gently) ripped back. Really, it's not much progress length-wise, but it was over 10,000 stitches when I had to rip it out. That stings a little bit. But hey, in terms of Tragic Knitting Mistakes, this is really pretty minor, and if that's my biggest problem right now, I think I'll be okay.

Along-Along

Well, the KALs I'm participating in are all trucking along just fine, and I'm...well, I'm not necessarily in bad shape, I'd just rather be in better shape. My Cherry Pie Skirt is at the point where I can knit a couple thousand stitches and not really see too much of a change, and I've been working on the main skirt for over a week and it still won't cover my bum yet, so that's disheartening. But I keep using up yarn, so that means that there's got to be some progress, right?

I did finally start working on this while reading-I'm behind on several library books, and I'd love to not have to return them without reading them, and I was so surprised to notice that I knit this faster when reading than when watching tv. I think it's probably because I read fast, and that naturally picks up my tempo, where with tv I generally match my knitting pace to the pace of the show. So that was a fun discovery, and hopefully I'll start feeling more momentum soon. Plus, I can't forget that I already finished a top for this KAL, so really it's unfair to think I should be further ahead than I am now.

My SpringTastic Socks are...plodding along. That's unfair, because I'm not working on them as much as other things. Last weekend I turned the heel on sock #1, and started the gusset decreases. hopefully it will pick up more now that only half of the sock is patterned, but it was hard to realize that the heel isn't actually the halfway point in an ankle sock. Womp-womp. This KAL goes until April 29, so I'm not really feeling rushed yet, which is nice.

Then...I tripped and fell in the indie.knits group and committed to the Nusa KAL. I've been wanting to do one of Cory's KALs, and this one just fit in perfectly-plus, it's almost eleven weeks long, so I'll definitely be able to finish on time. My yarn arrived on Wednesday, and I've been working on winding it, and hopefully I'll be able to cast on tonight, just a few days late.

**You may be wondering about the picture of me with a bike and a link to the American Diabetes Association 2016 Tour de Cure that's shown up in my right sidebar. I know I've mentioned it here before just a couple of times, but I've been living with diabetes since I was 18, and it can really suck sometimes. I rode the Tour in 2013, and I'm so excited to be able to ride again this year, and if any of you are able and willing to support me, I would be so grateful. So, it's there if you want to learn more, but I certainly don't want anyone to feel pressured at all.**

A Scrappy Cowl

Yesterday I had to get a crown put in, so I brought my Cherry Pie skirt to work on, since it's still an endless ocean of stockinette in the round right now. When I got home from the dentist, I really didn't feel like doing too much, so after a nap I switched over to my scrappy cowl for a bit of variety.

I'm loving this cowl so much-I've been saving up my Rios scraps forever with the hope of getting enough for a long cowl, and when I finally weighed them last weekend I had 224g, so I dove right in. I've been wanting an Amazing Seed Stitch Wrap for ages, but I haven't been able to commit to colors yet, so this is like a mini cowl version with the colors already selected. It's definitely renewed my interest for colorblocked seed stitch though, and I'm probably going to have to bite the bullet and choose colors for a wrap version soon.

My cowl is 47sts wide, and I think it'll end up around nine inches wide and 50-60 inches long. So far I'm absolutely smitten by how the Rios knits up in seed stitch that I don't mind only getting a couple inches done at a time-each finished stripe is it's own little accomplishment, and it's so fun to finally use up this bowl of scraps.

On Restlessness

I've been feeling a bit restless the past couple of weeks. I thought it was mostly due to my enforced near-monogamy with a couple projects-last week the only things I worked on were my Cherry Pie Skirt (at my lunch breaks) and a new sweater (in the evenings), and while I really enjoy both of them, it started feeling a bit structured. Thursday night around 10pm I finally snapped and finally cast on for my Talus hat that I've been planning for ages, and everything just seemed to click.

Right now, I have a fantastic queue full of patterns that I want to knit. I have a lovely stash full of yarns that I want to work with, and I have dozens of patterns and yarns matched up and ready to cast on. I also have several baskets, bags, bins, and shelves of WIPs, numbering well into the double digits, and I want to keep working on all of those things too.

But I know that there's always going to be more. I mean, some of the things in my Ravelry queue are five years old, so clearly they've been pushed aside by new patterns. As much as I want to be able to keep everything organized and scheduled, that's not how it works.

I very rarely have as many patterns tied to yarn and ready to go except for casting on as I do right now, and I can't stand to leave what is in my mind a WIP filed away in the stash for future use. I've been very fortunate the past several months to have some delightful yarns come my way, and to have  several yarns from Deep Stash finally reveal their ultimate purpose to me, which is great for these yarns, but not so great for a girl who has trouble delaying cast-on for any reason.

Over the weekend I tried just letting go. I brought all of my main WIPs to knitting group, and worked a little bit on each one as I felt like it. I started a new scrappy cowl. I turned the heel on my first sock for the Holla Knits KAL. I reorganized my projects, and that made me feel a little better. It's tough for me to let go and just knit in the moment, but clearly that's what I need to do right now. 

Finished Family Knits

 These have both been done for a while, so it's probably about time that I talk about them here! Anemone had requested a Portsmouth hat of her own back in September (eep!) and Mum mentioned that she'd like a Kermit (skinny version) of her own a couple of months ago as well, so I made an effort to finally crank these out.

I laughed a bit when I brought Anemone yarn shopping and she picked the same colorway as my Portsmouth sample. I think this skein is a little bit brighter than mine, but otherwise the two hats are identical. I banged this out in two days, and had it ready to give to her when I was in the city last weekend.

The skinny Kermit for Mum was also a really quick knit-not quite two days, but in less than a week of carrying it around it was ready for blocking, and she's already worn it several times. I love this green so much, and it's a spectacular color on her as well.

Ravelry Pages: Portsmouth and Skinny Kermit

Patterns: Portsmouth and Kermit, by Kat Riddell

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Rios "863 Zarzamora" and Knit Picks Swish DK "Forest Heather"

New Pattern: Old Davis

I am so happy to present my new cowl pattern, Old Davis! This one is very near and dear to me, and it's very heavily influenced by my time in the White Mountains and the poetry of Robert Frost.

Old Davis comes with two length options, for either one or two skeins of worsted-weight yarn, and to be honest, I'm hard-pressed to pick a preference. I'm usually a long cowl girl 100%, but the single loop has been perfect for walks around the neighborhood this week. The ribbed mountain lace is just the right weight for late winter and early spring.

Per usual, you can grab your own copy of Old Davis either on Ravelry or in the wayward knitter pattern store, and the pattern has both written and charted instructions. Happy Knitting!