I am living in the place of “ugh!” on my Exploration Station. I think this deserves and explanation.. I had grand expectations for my 4 day weekend. I was going to finish this WIP and move on to the nest one. It all started okay and than stalled Some where between make the Turkey with late night fixings  and doing some late night knitting I messed up on my double yarn overs in the chevron section..

This last part of the project has become my version of “Groundhog’s day” I seem force to relive it over and over. On the 25th I had gotten it so that I had only 2  and a half pattern repeats before I got to cast off. Sounds good in theory… well that was until I found that one of my double yarn over sections didn’t live up and it bothered me…. So I spent the whole day after watching Rogue One to thinking back to the scene of the crime stitch by stitch. It was a pretty quite rest of the day where at a knitting group I as able to get to work on the 7th of 8 repeats when I found another problem.

 

A few choice explatitives went through my mind and I started with tinkering with it. A friend who works at a yarn store looked at it and tried fixing it… but while it was a decent fix it still was not 100% it bothered me. I took it home to tiger with it… and well I don’t know if it was the nighttime sinus medicine or just frustration but I am now tearing back 4 repeat rows.. Oh yeah did I mention each row of these 2 row repeats are 400 stitches a piece….. so we are talking about 1600 stitches.

Well I know that this will eventually get done… but “ugh” just “ugh”

This is probably to late to make a difference but December is a reflective time of the year so I took a few minutes to jot down some notable things this year that took place. Last year I compiled a list of my favorite tools for knitters as gift ideas, but this year took me in a different direction.

While I did have yarn coming in, I actually was pretty restrained from my normal shopping tendencies. So I compile a list of my favorite things(and some lessons I learned) from 2016.

Most Worn Item: Chill Chaser.. It is just a great go to staple and the crochet just makes the garter stitch pop. The pattern is being relooked at to check the yardage for the pattern. Once it is fixed I highly recommend this patterns.

Best New Skill:

Woolly Tattooing: I took two classes from Tif this year. She is one of the most amazing creative people I have ever met. I get inspired when I see her and feel unlike knitting and crochet that anything is possible when you get to embellish your knitwear with this method

Spinning: I mean what can I say.. everything about this was new and amazing

Knitting: Icelandic Bind off and Brioche ……

Icelandic Bindoff: Is now my absolute favorite way to bind off in garter. I love the finish and the tension of this bind off.
Brioche: While it took a while to pick up.. I tried Nancy Marchant’s Craftsy video but it didn’t sink in.. ultimately You Tube helped me pick up the skill. It is an amazingly fun knitting technique. I really love how how speckled yarns look in this stitch.

Best New Tool: DYAK Northern Nickel Plated light crochet and needles….. So for someonee who can have poor circulation in their hands this is the best tool ever. I think they only made these for a brief time this year, but the coating on these interchangeable needles allows the metal needle to retain the warmth of the hands. LOVE THESE!!!

Favorite New yarn: The Plucky Knitter’s Spiffy…. hmmmm what to say… it is just amazing. the construction of this yarn takes th best properties of the silk and the cashmere and loses the worst. It has structure, softness and a brilliant glow in the sunlight.

Toughest challenge:

1.Running short on yarn on my Chill Chaser. Wow, the pattern was off by a lot on the yardage estimates. I thought I was safe going with a yarn that had more yardage but I still ran short. The good news is that I emailed the Plucky Knitter who published the pattern and they are relooking at the yardage on the pattern and were also able to help sourcing with colorway in this particular circumstance.

2 Using up my Fancy Tiger Crafts Heirloom Romney. This yarn while is great for other people is just a “miss” for me. I had bought 4 skeins a couple of years ago and found it difficult to use up. they yarn is not bouncy or with a lot of memory and is rough. The best ways I came up with to use this yarn was for slippers or as a main color in a color work pattern with hand spun as the contrast color.

Best new Indie dyer find: Viola and Druzy Rising are just amazing. There are a lot of dyers doing speckled but in my opinion of the ones I have seen these are the tops. The updates can be infrequent and go extremely quick when I say they are small batch I am not kidding. Inventory is small so it may be difficult to get more than a skein.

OMG moment: When I realized how much space spinning fiber takes up and that the finished yarn will just be added to my stash.

Many of us struggle for having enough time to do their own knitting.  Not only can it  be really hard to find the time, but it can be also hard to find the right place. It can be easy to knit at home..but every once and a while you may need to get together with a friend or just get out of the house and  knit somewhere; the challenge I seem to be coming up with lately is where to knit.

There are a lot of places to knit if you buy  a cup of coffee or a snack….. but if your not hungry or thirsty (I am not a big fan of paying to knit). I avoid the whole concept of paying for knitting with people and have not participated in a facilitated knitting group at a LYS in a long time.

The other thing that I have found restrictive is the time of the day, for most me it is easier to break away at the end of the day when the little one is asleep and other people in the family have broken off to do there own thing.  While it is great in theory to have time to finally get out and go knit, your dealing with the amount of lighting either artificial  or natural  later in the day which may not conducive to mistake free knitting. The weather out in Seattle makes it a bit tough too as it cools down at night.. What might work as afternoon in the park doesn’t translate well to 7PM.

When these two issues collide it becomes difficult to find a good well lit, but free place to knit. I have to admit I am quickly defaulting to knitting at home, but have started hitting up the coffee shop at local independent bookstores and the library.

I am not looking to  not support local businesses buy purchasing their wares, but when you are a frequent knitter there is only so much you can eat and drink to get a place to knit.  the purpose of this post is to solicit suggestions on  good “free” places to knit.  Please if you have any suggestions I am interested in hearing them.