2014: A Year in Review

It's 2015! (Or #20swifteen as my cheer-leading future doctor daughter has taken to calling it). New Years Day is about taking stock of the old year and making resolutions for the new year. (Let's leave the resolutions for later, shall we? If you don't make them, you can't break them, right?...)

So here is my stock take of the 2014 knitting. My needles were exceptionally productive this year with 27 separate finished projects in 2014.The year started with cowls and scarves. In the heat of an Australian summer I turned to crochet and made Tweed ruffles. In February, I KALed along with some lovely ladies and I can Cowl if I want to! fairly flew off the needles.

I knitted my life into a cowl - Knitographical. I wrote it's story and exhibited it and the Flat Fox picture in a art exhibition. (And people actually treated it as real art!)

In February in solidarity with knitters all over the world, I plied my needles for the Ravellenics as I watched the Winter Olympics from Sochi in Russia.  Two pairs of mittens had their birth as competitors in both Mitten Moguls and Lace Luge. (That's Steampunk on Toast on the left and Oyster Shell on the right)

I made toys... Lots of toys. I spent my lazy January holiday assembling long neglected toys. (See The Great Sew-up-a-thon). I KALed along throughout the year and bent the rules of COM (Cast On Month) to cast on a new toy piece a day. (Clockwise from top left, Nativity camel, Intrepid Fox, A headless bear - clearly he's not headless anymore, Fit to scare children, Christmas sheep, Jean Greenhowe Teddy, Mike the Monkey, Tropical bird and Rabbitty in the middle).

Unlike 2013, I made only two hats. These were little whimseys diverting me from the main game for a weekend here and there.(Divergent and Mum, I need this!).

I discovered shawls. I planned to make my first lace shawl but along the way made two more. I think this is the start of a new addiction. The last new project on the needles for 2014 was a shawl too.

(From left to right: Curly wurly, Lacewing and Brown as).

And there was freeform. I got enticed to play along with the lovely ladies in the International Free Form Forum on Ravelry. With their enthusiastic encouragement I made my first freeform shawl and then went  on to design my first patterns and have people successfully make mould from them (Mould is Fun). In honour of the future mycologist daughter, I made little knitted mushrooms too (Fungus among us).

2014 was the year of the jumper; One for Mel (Funky Chunky), one for the boy (Not so little boy blue) and one for me (Recycled Rhodium in just 27 days in November).

The long term project of the year was a scarf- afghan (Anyone got cable!). This is a construction idea I'll be exploring further in future.Everyone in the family wants one.

And then there was the inevitable Christmas knitting. (Clockwise from top left: Angel in a box, Sunburnt reindeer and Pallina di Natale).

What will 2015 bring? The needles are primed for anything again.

(Note: All the links in this post go to the blogpost about that project. All photo-collages made using picmonkey).

The great sew-up-a-thon!

If you're a long time reader of my blog you may have noted the list of unfinished UFOs on the left hand side of my blog. At the beginning of 2012, I seriously took stock of all the unfinished objects that were hiding in weird places around my house. I dragged them out, dusted them off, photographed them and took note of what still needed doing on them, frogged a few in the process and blogged about them here in these two posts (UFOs and PhDs (a belated New Year's Resolution) and UFOs and PhDs (Take 2)). There were 14 of them at this stage.

It's now the beginning of 2014, and do you know how much attention I have paid these UFOs? That's right. None. They're all still languishing in their bags and baskets and cupboards. So this January whilst I'm on holidays, I'm making a concerted effort at finishing up those projects that essentially just required minimal sewing up and assembly.

I do like knitting toys but sometimes I hate sewing them up!

So drum roll! Here is the parade of  finished toys....

Stuffed Tropical Bird (sewn up and completed 5th January 2014)

My Mum gave my kids a Women's Weekly Book called "Knit a Square: Make a Toy". This is a combined effort from a few people knitting the squares. All the squares were knitted several years ago - it just needed sewing up. (Is anyone getting the impression this is my least favourite part of knitting toys?) This one is for sale or gifting.

Bits of birdy in early assembly stage. And this is where it stalled....

And this is what it is supposed to look like when it is finished.

 And so I forced myself to finish this one first. I swore and cursed and threw a few things while I was doing it, but about three hours later it was done. I'm proud of how it came together. It stands independently really well.  And then it posed for photos.

Raiding the chook's food

The Nativity Camel (Sewn up and completed 9th January 2014)
This is an addition to an existing Jean Greenhowe Christmas Crib set which belongs to the small grandsons of a friend of mine. The Christmas Crib was knitted by an elderly lady in a nursing home. However, one little boy when looking at the three kings, said "Where's their camel? They need a camel!" The original pattern doesn't have a camel so I'm knittied this one from Alan Dart's Noah's Ark instead. I was hoping the scale will work with the Three Kings.

Again partially assembled camel

This one had stalled because of the legs. Camels have weird knees. The legs are assembled by wrapping the knitted piece around a piece of drinking straw and carefully over-sewing whilst not crushing the straw. This was clearly a scary proposition to contemplate and so I put it aside. But this time I gritted my teeth and just got on with it. I stuffed the straw pieces firmly as well to make sure the legs were strong and stable. It only took a couple of hours to finish this in the end. Then the camel went and played in the weedy patch next to the railway lines.

The Christmas Sheep (Completed January 14th 2014)
This sheep is part of my sister’s Christmas Crib. Once again all the bits were here but I had to sew it up. There was probably only about an hour’s work here. Just finish it will you! (I also need to make a few more sheep, one sheep is lonely, 3 is a flock).

Sheep bits

And on January 14th 2014 in 36 degree heat, I sewed up the rest of the sheep. He is now a finished sheep. The kids think he looks evil but I pointed out that it was for their Auntie and they thought that an evil sheep was appropriate to go with her other evil pets.

The Jean Greenhowe Teddy (Completed 15th January 2014)
This was born from a skein of beautiful hand dyed merino I bought at a craft show. I love the wool and he is just the right level of fuzziness and squishy-ness. But I can't get his face right. He is supposed to have knitted nose and no mouth (see pattern picture below). I have done this but then removed it cos it just wasn't right... Also his back seam is off centre (which makes me cranky).

I knitted the nose and finished embroidering the face on 15th January 2013. The nose is knitted in an olive section of some leftover Trendsetter Yarns Tonalita yarn from the Shades of a Scarf project. He’s now a very woebegone looking teddy. Basically you can here him saying "Hug Me!". He is going into the gift box for the next baby gift.

Bear with no nose....

From Jean Greenhowe's Christmas Special, Reindeer and Polar Bear

 

Who could resist this face?