Welcome back guys! It's day six of the #fiberuary challenge and todays prompt is about our fibre family and so today I’m feeling particularly nostalgic thinking about how mine has grown over the years. I’m also reflecting on how crazy it is that I’ve got a fibre family wholly because Ashley decided to take up knitting seven years ago. Knitting was not ever a thing I would have naturally migrated to. Ash’s decision was to knit and mine was to follow her lead. It’s crazy that a decision that seems kind of unimportant can set a whole new course for your life, open up new doors and communities.
When I think of my family, it’s Ashley, my mom, a few close friends and you guys who come back and read my weekly ramblings every week but Ash will always be both fam and the origin story. Thank God too because I don’t know what I would have done these last five months without something to do.
Last week I mentioned that my little cousin is having a baby soon which naturally meant that I had to knit. I committed to making a baby blanket and unfortunately it wasn’t until I was about one repeat in that I remembered just how much work they were. Not like knitting a baby sweater, a baby blanket is pretty comparable to shawl knitting. I definitely forgot that. I knit the Leafy Baby Blanket by Leyla Alieva which is a free pattern on Ravelry. I knit this a long time ago for a friends nephew.
I was a pretty new knitter then and I sincerely believed in following the pattern to the letter. The pattern calls for two skeins of double knit held together and I used our Dreaming of the Water colourway so that I got all of these beautiful shades of blue and green all over the place. This time I used Mad Tosh DK. Ash and I very rarely get to use anything other than RSBSY because we’re always sample knitting but I took this rare opportunity to mix it up.
I also decided to change the pattern up a bit. I didn’t hold my yarn double because it seemed like a waste. Instead, I went down a needle size and then to compensate for the loss I added a few repeats. In fact, I doubled the repeats, got about two inches in and realised it was way too big. In the end I decided on ten repeats (the pattern calls for six) and then I added repeats to the length as well to make sure that it was still proportionate. I did eight and a half repeats lengthwise and I probably could have added one more but by the time I hit eight I was ready to be done.
Nevermind, that I also signed up to do some other fun stuff for the shower and I was eager to get started on those bits as well. My cousin found these beautiful tiles on Instagram and she decided that she really wanted them for her gift to her guests. She originally tried to order them and then I said, “why don’t we do them ourselves?” Before we started these I remember thinking, “why would anyone pay for something they can do themselves?” and then about the fourth time it didn’t work I realised why: because doing it yourself is work that frequently requires the patience of a saint. I also realised that 80 percent of my anxiety was feeling like they were going to suck and that my cousin would be disappointed. Of course that didn’t happen but our brains do wonky things to us some times.
Now that the shower is done, I’m relaxing with some sweater knitting. Actually it’s not relaxing at all. I really just want some quick hits but I want the sweater as well so I’m plugging away at it. The pattern I'm working on is Nurtured by Andrea Mowry and it's a great knit. The slip stitch pattern means that it actually knits pretty quick and I can't wait to see it start coming together. This pattern starts with the sleeves which is both good and bad. Good because it means getting the hard part out of the way first and bad because I have to start with sleeves and I hate knitting sleeves.
Both my mom and Ashley cast on new projects today and I’m a lot jealous. I even stole my mom’s sock and snuck in a few rows. It was awesome. I’m tempted to cast on something little just for fun but I know it’s a distraction that I don’t need. The other day my doc kind of told me to focus on getting my brain better and not depleting my energy. This guy has no idea what it’s like for me to be constantly doing a whole lot of nothing but I guess going to school for a decade prob gives him some authority to tell me what to do. At least in this instance.
Anyway, that’s it for me for this week. It’s way past my bedtime and this blog post is officially late but I’m hoping you all won’t mind too much. Until we speak again, PEACE to you and yours and as always, happy knitting!