See? That's much better (where better is defined as 'more to my liking,' I get that it's subjective). That is making the part of my brain that likes speckles and soft things and somehow gloomy-but-luminous things very very very happy. I pretty much never regret ripping if the yarn isn't quite right.  In fact, I pretty much always regret not ripping if the yarn isn't quite right. And yes, normally the swatch is enough to tell.  But every now and then it isn't. But in this case, the new pairing is an absolute delight, and I'm so glad I switched! [...]

Remember how I said I had more yarn?  That's because the good folks at A Very For Keeping Warm are still shipping yarn right now, and they had something irresistible to round out my floof collection. And I'm pretty darn sure that yellow one was the shade I actually needed to pair with that purple in the hat I just ripped.  But I've also been knocked right down dead by this pairing with the dark orange, so the purple and yellow might have to wait a bit. Don't worry though, I have a feeling I'll come back to it in [...]

This was supposed to work. These two were supposed to look all delightfully dramatic and high contrast and zippy. And they almost do.  Almost.  But in the fabric, the yellow is just a little too green. And the yellow bits on the purple yarn are just a little too peachy. And the whole thing looks a tiny bit muddled. And the yarns are too good on their own (and the pattern idea too good on its own) to doom them to a not-quite-right pairing.  So I'm going to rip it. But never fear.  I have obtained more yarn.  This will [...]

I've given this spiel before, but yes, yes I do generally cast on over two needles (at least for the long tail cast on).⁠ Now, I see a few of you out there warming up your fingers right now to send me impassioned lectures about how this is bad and wrong and will bring about the downfall of society as we know it. Please don't.⁠ I'm not doing it this way to make my cast on stretchier or looser. The type of cast on you pick mostly determines how stretchy it is. The amount of space between your cast on [...]

I'm thinking about what I want to do next. The answer of late is 'something soft...something soft and fluffy and bright, and don't you dare try and make me feel bad about it.' ⁠So i figured I'd do a floof census and see what my choices are. ⁠ ⁠ Somehow the colors I grab in floof are So Much More Saturated than the other things in my stash (if you wander back to mid January, you'll see a picture of the whole stash laid out, it's mostly the color of rocks, wet rocks, or lichen covered rocks).  Luckily brightly colored [...]

So, there's this thing that sometimes happens where the easily distracted part of my brain says 'hey, what would happen if we tweaked this one little bit?' And the ever so much more practical part of my brain has to come along and say 'nope, make a decision and stick to it.'  And usually the practical big wins.  But occasionally the distractable part makes a convincing enough case that it's worth indulging, just a little. And the whole time I was knitting this, the distractable part of my brain kept hopping up and down and saying more colors More Colors [...]

And done. Because what I needed was another hat.  I mean no, I have an absurd number of hats, about three of which I actually wear 90% of the time. What I need is more people on whom I can inflict my misguided hat making tendencies. As always, pattern will be out fairly soon (it's off with testers now, and some time fairly soon here I'll wander around my yard and find somewhere to take photos). Next up, perhaps I'll go with something other than gray and pink (meaning it will probably be gray and blue...or gray and green...or grey [...]

Perhaps, in an ideal world, I would not knit two speckled gray hats with pink accents in quick succession. But as we clearly do not actually live in an ideal world, we shall have to do our best to shoulder this hardship and carry on. I'd feel worse about this choice if the hats were anything less than charming.  But as they are rather delightful, I think we'll all be ok!

I've found my pandemic knitting sweet spot.  I need projects that are very, very mellow, but with just a tiny bit of something going on so they don't get boring.  For me, that seems to mean miles of stockinette with just a hint of something fancy for a few stitches.  If that sounds like your jam, Midst could be just the ticket.  It's out on ravelry right now and it's 10% off with the code MIDDLE. This really is high impact, low effort knitting.  Which I'm a fan of under the best of circumstances.  But right now, it feels even [...]