We have a bowl of angel cards on our sofa table- these are little cards with different words printed on for meditation and/or more everyday purposes. I also use them each new year’s eve to choose a theme for the coming year. This year I picked the Truth angel, which feels helpful as unfortunately I’m starting the year with some stressful times. Among other things, I was thinking about how Truth might apply to my 2016 crafty projects, and realised what I crave most at the moment is simplicity and comfort and colourful joy in my crafty endeavours.
One of my new, simple joy projects is the Memory Blanket by Georgie Hallam on Ravelry. I get to use up all my hoard of leftover sock yarn AND make something snuggly out of it! This was my only crafty resolution this year, to finally make a blanket after admiring so many that friends had made. I enjoy the garter goodness and how each square is a mini project completion in itself :) All my sock yarn is sitting in a bag and I’m picking a different colour each time. I have to say, I’m aware of my colour combo preferences and sometimes I get surprised by how well 2 unexpected, clashing colours can go together if I choose at random instead. I’m going for a Kaffe Fassett knitting philosophy of “when in doubt, throw in another 20 colours” with this thing :)
In other soothing knit projects I’ve got going, my Still Light tunic by Veera Välimäki is progressing s.l.o.w.l.y. but surely and I love the fabric that is being created from the basic wool/nylon sock yarn that I chose for it (the discontinued Lang Super Soxx yarn). Being insane, I like the idea of slowly knitting a dress out of sock yarn on small needles, but it’s really my kind of style, so I know I’ll get a lot of wear out of it once it’s finished. It’s my first time knitting pockets as well, but Veera makes it easy peasy which makes for relaxing TV knitting. Ahhh…
I’ve also started a new pair of vanilla socks. Nothing makes me happier than a gorgeous hand dyed sock yarn, so I decided to cheer myself up and break out my skein of Silver Sock by Fredsminde Unika Design. I bought this at a yarn festival last year. It’s 75% superwash merino, 20% nylon and 5% silver stellina, and I’m knitting on 2.75mm needles. The colours are a mix of purples, greens and blues and i’m looking forward to seeing how the colours come out- the colour changes are fairly short and change every round or so, so it will be interesting to see how the pattern comes out.
I’ve been doing a lot of spinning recently too. Spinning is soothing and good for my knitty soul! (sometimes it’s a bit too soothing and I fall asleep at the wheel, so to speak). I’ve mostly been spinning local raw wools from different farms here in Denmark- I’ve just finished spinning a 200g batch of carded Gotland wool, and I’m coninuing on with the sorting, carding, cleaning and spinning of the Spælsau lamb fleece that I bought at the Knitwork festival last September.
Spælsau is similar to Icelandic sheep in having 2 coats of wool- the tough outer “tog” and the inner, super-soft “thel”, and I’ve been seperating the 2 coats in the white part of the fleece to see how the raw thel is to spin on it’s own. Well, it was tricky because the fibres were fairly short, so I needed to put in a lot of twist just to be sure it would hold together. Now I’ve made a bobbin’s worth of 2ply, it’s ready for washing :)
Do you have any crafty wishes and/or resolutions for the year? Please share in the comment thread!
A happy knitty new year!
Rosie x