I made a sweater in 16 days! I still can't believe it and I'm ridiculously proud of myself. Granted, my free time was taken up pretty completely with knitting, but this has taught me that I could probably finish a future sweater in a couple of months without being a complete knitting hermit.
I made the Rocky Coast Cardigan from the Coastal Knits book (which if nothing else is a very pretty book that is nice to own and peruse at your leisure).
I actually made this for someone else (not saying who since she might read this), and am already planning to make one for myself to wear next Fall/Winter. Which says a lot about how much I liked the pattern.
In January I made a couple of adorable vests for our friends who have a 16 month-old son and are having a second boy in April.
I made the 2T size for the older boy, but he's a big boy, so he's wearing it now:
Adorable!
I have recently decided that Ravelry is the best thing ever and I've been using all of its tools. For instance, there is a Stash feature where you can photograph and catalog your entire yarn stash. I have been in the habit of digging through my bins of yarn and thinking, "Oh, right, I forgot I had that..." which of course means that yarn isn't being used for anything because I forgot about it. We had a free Saturday a few weeks ago and I took the time to take pictures of and list every single skein of yarn that I have in my yarn bins. It was a big project, but now when I get a new hank of yarn, I just take a picture and add it to the existing catalog. And now when I see a new pattern I want to make, I can go through my online stash and figure out which yarn in my existing stash I want to use.
Also, on Ravelry, I can use the Queue function to line up my next several projects in the order that I'm going to make them, attach a Stash yarn to it, and make notes about plans and any deadlines. Nice! In my immediate future is a test knit I'm doing for someone who is writing a pattern, and a couple of hats for a friend's school silent auction.
I've been buying some nicer yarn lately, partly due to my exposure to more fanciness through Yarnbox, and partly because of my interaction with other hardcore knitters on Ravelry and in real life who are all enablers! (But in a good way.) I recently started test knitting a baby sweater for someone and pulled an old acrylic yarn from Michael's or Jo-Ann that I need to use out of my stash and realized what people mean when they talk about yarn being "squeaky". Yeah, it's just not as pleasant to work with after making the Rocky Coast Cardigan out of merino wool. Plus if I'm going to spend hours and hours working on a project, I want it to be pleasant to work on and result in something truly nice.
Here's some recent yarn (and food) acquisitions from a local farmers marker/fiber festival
Here's my thought on buying yarn. Right now, I have some disposable income. Once we have a kid, I won't. So I'll get some yarn now while I can, and then later, when I can't afford to buy the fancy yarn anymore, I'll have a nice stash of it to knit from when I have the time.
It could be worse. I could be buying Birkin bags. Pretty...
(OK, no, I couldn't really be buying Birkin bags, because that's ridiculous, but you get my point.)
