In 2009, I knit one pair of mitts, 4 pairs of socks, 4 hats, 11 cowls (!), 3 scarves, and two Ishbels (which are considered scarves, but since I made 2 I’m setting them out specially). I guess I’d have to say that 2009 was officially The Year of Cowls. I don’t know why or how that happened – I think I had single skeins of really luscious yarn (madelinetosh, primarily), and needed quick and portable projects. I wasn’t confident enough yet to take on big projects. Anyway, I really enjoy the projects I made in 2009:
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In 2009, I knit one pair of mitts, 4 pairs of socks, 4 hats, 11 cowls (!), 3 scarves, and two Ishbels (which are considered scarves, but since I made 2 I’m setting them out specially). I guess I’d have to say that 2009 was officially The Year of Cowls. I don’t know why or how that happened – I think I had single skeins of really luscious yarn (madelinetosh, primarily), and needed quick and portable projects. I wasn’t confident enough yet to take on big projects. Anyway, I really enjoy the projects I made in 2009:
MITTS: I made these Gasteropoda by Kristi Geraci for my daughter Marnie. She doesn’t like anything clinging to her wrists; she’s an artist and carves and draws a lot, so she needs to be able to make fine motor movements; and she doesn’t have good heat in her apartment in Chicago, so her hands get cold. I thought this pattern just fit the bill, in every way. It was also a lot of fun to knit! I used Sunday Knits Nirvana 3 ply, in a rich espresso color. Soft, light wool.
Marnie's Gasteropoda mitts, pattern by Kristi Geraci
SOCKS: Since I’d never made socks before, I started with the very popular No Purl Monkeys by CraftyPancakes, which is a slight tweak of Cookie A’s monkey sock pattern published in Knitty. I made three pairs (two for my stepdaughter Anna, and one pair for me) using Felici, the very soft self-striping yarn from KnitPicks. Mine have held up beautifully to a lot of wear, and to a lot of washing and drying in industrial machines. Good stuff.
Anna's green monkeys
Anna's taupe monkeys
my blue and purple monkeys
And one more pair of socks, using a beautiful skein of madelinetosh sock in Scarlett – Nutkin by Beth LaPensee. It was fun to knit, and while the yarn requires more care than the Felici, I never mind.
my Scarlett Nutkins
Even though it’s hard for me to wear hats since I get such ridiculous hat hair, I made four hats in 2009, only one of which was for me:
Felicity by Wanett Clyde – made by me for me, using madelinetosh DK, in a gorgeous colorway called Iris. The reason for the name is obvious.
my Iris Felicity
And for Marnie, to accompany her mitts, I made this wurm by katushika. I used the same yarn I used for her mitts, and it was glorious:
Marnie's wurm
I want to make another one for me! Then a hat just to have around, the Beaded Braided Hat by Lee Ann Bonson. I’ve made a bunch of these, they’re fun to knit because you get to do cool braiding, some colorwork (and you could easily draft a new pattern for the band), and a beautiful decrease on top:
see the beautiful flat top?
Then one more hat, a Marsan Watchcap by Staceyjoy Elkin for my soon-to-be son Tom, who is marrying Marnie this summer. Somehow I never got a photo of the finished cap. My bad!
Tom's Marsan Watch Cap - I really did finish it!
And cowls, I made 11.
1. helechos cowl, 2. Marg’s spiral cowl, 3. attabi cowl, 4. brown and blue attabi cowl, 5. marg’s attabi in progress, 6. candle flame cowl, 7. destroyed cowl wrapped, 8. holland cowl on, 9. madelinetosh pastoral – spiral cowl, 10. noble cowl finished, 11. Venetian Grassy cowl closeup
So many beautiful cowls, such beautiful yarn. Silky malabrigo, Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca and Silk, Berroco Pure Merino DK, madelinetosh DK (in fig, tart, and venetian), madelinetosh bulky cashmere, and madelinetosh pastoral (in chamomile and bosphorus). The Attabi Cowls were all gifts, and I want to make one for myself because it’s fun to knit. Maybe in 2010.
Three scarves in 2009 -
Queen Anne's Lace Scarf in Noro; Lengthwise Cable Scarf in madelinetosh dk; and Lace Ribbon Scarf in madelinetosh sock
And finally, the last 2 FOs in 2009. ISHBEL – I fell in love with this pattern, as did thousands of others. It has been knitted 7,000 times and it’s in more than 3000 queues. You go, Ysolda. I knit it once in madelinetosh wren, and once in a beautiful purple wool from Sunday Knits.
By the end of this year, I was a considerably better knitter than when I began! I also enjoyed making several items for a set, as I did with Marnie’s wurm hat, attabi cowl, and gasteropoda mitts. I want to do more of that.
Ysolda’s Ishbel is nearly perfect in every way!
The point of this post was to blog about a pattern or project to which I aspire – maybe because it requires skills I don’t yet have, or maybe because it takes a lot of time. Instead, I’m going to write about a pattern that inspires me for a different reason: Ishbel, created by Ysolda Teague. I’ve knit this twice, with a third one on the needles:
purple and small, with Sunday Knits Eden
greenish and pretty big, with madelinetosh wren
big and in the works, with madelinetosh lace
Why does this pattern inspire me? First, it’s great fun to knit – and lots of people seem to agree, since Ravelry lists 6400 projects and it’s in 3268 queues. (At £3.00 GBP, Ysolda has done very well with this little project! Good for her!). The main reason this pattern inspires me so much is that it’s very cleverly written while still being a LOT of fun to knit. Scientific theories that explain a phenomenon with an economy of variables are called elegant, and that describes Ysolda’s patterns. Ishbel hits all the marks, which is kind of great: it’s fun, it’s changeable (you can make the stockinette section larger or smaller, knit more or fewer repeats of each of the lace sections, etc), the end result is not just beautiful but also very practical, and it has clearly generated a very good amount of money for the designer while being inexpensive for knitters.
I’ve knit (or should I say, tried to knit) other patterns that were beautiful and ‘clever,’ but they were just fussy and kind of ridiculous in their cleverness. There’s no need to name names, because maybe I was just not a skilled enough knitter and others could easily manage the pattern, but there was one scarf that just made me so angry and you know? Who needs that in knitting! But Ysolda’s patterns are clever in the very best way, and I think Ishbel is a great example of her design philosophy. I would love to be able to do what she does; instead, I’ll just benefit from her talent. Me and thousands of other happy knitters.
Read the other posts on this topic: knitcroblo2
i’ve got WAY too many projects underway! why do i do this?!
You hear it a lot on television these days, where it seems like every show has at least one scene in an AA meeting: you have to take a fearless moral inventory. Although I think it’s a good idea for everyone to take a fearless moral inventory — AA or not – today I was thinking about taking a fearless knitting bag inventory. It’s a version of WOTN Mondays, but on Tuesday.
So what’s on the needles? There’s one I can’t reveal here, the wedding shawl, but here we go:
2nd Kai-Mei, ready to work the heel
My Kai-Mei socks – I’ve been sneaking little wearings of the finished sock because it’s so dang wonderful. Madelinetosh sock, in crow – feels kind of hard when you’re knitting it, but as the fabric flows from the needles, it’s softer than you think it’ll be. And when you soak it and block it? Really so nice. The pattern is clever and fun to knit, but when I was knitting the first sock I was just going on faith (Cookie A faith) because I couldn’t see how it was going to work. I highly recommend the pattern and the yarn.
OK, next?
oh, my dearly beloved Ishbel, languishing....
I do love this Ishbel, knit with madelinetosh lace, in lettuce. It’ll be my 3rd (why do I think “she’ll be my third”?), and the pattern is fun and the color is great and I love the whole deal but it’s been set aside for so long that I struggle to pick it up again. Once I finish the wedding shawl I’ll return to this because it’s going to be fantastic.
Next?
what is wrong with me?!
Stop it, me! Stop! Why did I start this one?! I had plenty to work on, the last thing I needed to do was to start another project, but I did. This is Baktus, and I got about 1/3 of the way through it with Noro Silk Garden Sock (pictured above, the yarn cake) when I decided that I’d rather alternate the Noro with a black yarn. So even though I had no business starting this one in the first place, I frogged it and started over, alternating it with a KnitPicks Essential Kettle Dyed, in soot. [Lori, do not start another project!!]
such a 3-D blankie!
Totally Autumn, which I’m knitting with Cascade 220 Heather in chocolate, so it’ll be more like a blanket. The photo represents the length I get from one skein; since we want it to be ~6 feet in length, I’ll need 7 skeins and of course I’d bought 6. Luckily the sale is still on at Webs, so I bought additional skeins.
Next?
hanging my mondo head in shame and denial
This project, the Mondo Cardigan in madelinetosh merino (graphite) has been so painful. I had enough yarn to complete the sweater, but I foolishly didn’t look at all the skeins before I started. One of the lovely things about madelinetosh yarns is the variability in color, but this time it bit me in the butt. When I got to this point on the first sleeve, I noticed that my last two skeins were quite obviously blue. That would not work. I couldn’t find any graphite in any of the online stores, so (to use Yarn Harlot’s phrase) I threw up the Bat Signal in the rav forums, pleading and begging. Very kind raveler Glennae offered to sell me two of her skeins, which looked like a match to mine, but that would leave her with an insufficient amount of yarn to knit a sweater – the reason she bought it. I didn’t want to leave her in that spot, so I basically just went into denial and ignored the problem. Then, last weekend, I “randomly” decided to look through ravelers’ stashes to see if anyone had any of this yarn, and found Jenny – boopersin on ravelry. Jenny, O Jenny, my new BFF and savior. I wrote her asking if she’d sell, told her my sob story, and she quickly agreed. Isn’t she wonderful? Friend her immediately if you’re on rav, she’s a keeper (and Glennae too, if you don’t know her yet). So Jenny’s two skeins are winging (or brown trucking) their way to me, which means I’ll be able to finish my Mondo Cardigan. Whew.
Next?
froth and beads
Is this technically “on the needles,” given the fact that I’ve obviously pulled out the needles? Apparently not. It’s gorgeous. It’s Liquid Silver, by Rosemary Hill, with Elann Silken Kydd, a luscious and halo-ey mohair and silk blend, with glass beads. I started knitting it when I first returned to knitting a couple of years ago, and honestly, it was beyond my beginner’s skills. I struggled with the very thin yarn on the very slippery needles, with nothing on hand to thread the beads onto the yarn. So I got this far and then put it away. Apparently at some point I pulled the needles out – to use them for another project, probably? – but I don’t remember doing that. The pattern would be very easy for me now, so I hope to frog this and just start over with the same pattern. After all, I have the beads. 
I know this is supposed to be a fearless inventory, but I’m not being fully honest here. There’s a sweater in progress, halfway up the back but I don’t like it so I’ll frog it and reuse the yarn, and a Christmas stocking for one of my girls, just begun and set aside.
There. Now I’ve been really fearless, I’ve confessed my excess. I feel much better. And I just noticed how many of my projects are made with madelinetosh yarn. I love her.
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