Who needs new year's resolutions?

Today,  unsurprisingly, my social network feeds are full of comment on the New Year.  Some friends hate it and intend to spend the evening on the sofa with their heads under a cushion, some will party. There are posts, full of hope and optimism, others simply wishing good riddance to 2014.  And there are the resolutions...  I have always gone with the flow and accepted invitations if they come but not really initiated anything but when it comes to resolutions I  have always thought these just set me up to fail, but sometimes I would like to rid myself of the tendency to over commit.

Always dreaming of new projects

Lately I have been thinking vaguely about sitting back and taking stock, to try and be more mindful, not keep up my usual frantic pace which is sometimes just displacement activity. So much of what I do is an excuse not to deal with one or two big issues that have been plaguing me for a couple of years. So in 2015 I'm going to shape up!  But this is a crafting blog, primarily a knitting one, so I will concentrate on one big area of displacement activity, my yarn buying habit.

I couldn't risk it's super chunky squooshynes

My stash is out of hand.  Once I would buy yarn for specific projects and although it often went straight into stash at least it was bought with something to make in mind.  Lately yarn has been bought simply because I liked the colour, the texture or like some demented collector 'ooh I don't have any Madeleine Tosh sock yarn, must buy!' (actually I don't...) I just had to have it.

Then this morning I followed a hashtag on Instagram #personalmysterysockclub2015 . The idea is that many of us don't need to join sock clubs we just dive into our stash and find enough sock yarn to knit 12 pairs of socks from right there, bag it up and label it one for each month.  This bit is easy

Socks around the clock

Although I have cheated slightly and included two UFOs

And following around the clock the yarns are :-
1. UFO#1 half completed sock in Sweet Georgia Yarns Tough Love Sock
2. Sweet Georgia Cashluxe fine
3. (just peeping through) Lopi left overs from these socks (I'm sure there will be enough for a second pair)
4. Opal self striping
5. Fibrespates Vivacious
6. John Arbon Alpaca sock
7. Tiger 100% wool sock (extra cheap this stuff)
8. Manos del Uruguay sock
9. Bergere de France cotton and linen mix
10. NiMu summer sock club 2014
11. More Sweet Georgia Tough Love Sock
12. West Yorkshire Spinners 4 ply spice collection

There is still the question of whether I will stick to my resolution but it's all bagged up ready

bagged

(In bags that tell the tale of my yarn buying habit!)

sheepish labels

And, of course, I still have some much larger projects on the go to, like the Lead Light cardigan which I'm knitting in Fybrespates Scrumptious

the yoke in colour work and cables

And a baby blanket for the next arrival in the family, due in April (I'm using the pattern Vivid from Tin Can Knits)

the new mum's choice of baby colours

So No More Yarn Buying This Year.  If I make the socks and knit up some of my stash specifically earmarked for sweaters and shawls I may let myself shop in 2016.

I'll keep you posted

xx

c

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go

Tennyson

Sock excitement

I would never have thought of knitting socks but I can't help admiring my first effort. I have tried knitting in the round before and always the piece I was knitting turned out twisted and uneven with ladder like stripes of loose stitches running up the length.  But the more I looked at other peoples blogs and websites it seemed that knitting a good pair of socks was practically a prerequisite of being a knitting blogger, a wooly graduation piece.  And who could fail to be inspired by this photograph? A kind twitter friend told me about the wonderful on line shop for all things socky p2tog from where I bought two balls of self striping Opal sock yarn new double pointed needles and received a free pattern too.

 Blogging about my knitting has made me think more before embarking on a new project.  I wondered why I always got the ladder effect of loose stitches when I used DPNS.  Perhaps everyone knows this but it occurred to me if I knitted one stitch off the following needle all the way round so that the stitches constantly changed paces on the needles I would avoid this unevenness.  It worked.  I was completely astonished to find that from the very beginning I loved knitting my socks.

What also kept me knitting 'just one more round' was the yarn. Self striping yarn means just that, as you knit, up comes a new colour and all you want to do is knit more to see how the stripes will turn out.

I took my socks to my first ever knitting group and one of the other members supervised me turning my first heel.  Needing stitch markers I made my own.  I'm completely won over, even the men in my household are impressed (they may be receiving socks as presents one day).

The pattern came with very helpful instructions on adjusting the size of your socks, I knit a little tightly, and needed to make the the socks larger (following instructions stitches are added in multiples of four) and longer.  I still had enough yarn in one 100gm ball. 

Right of passaged completed.