January Makes

My productivity has magically increased since swapping the bedroom and the office. Suddenly I can leave a work in progress midway through and not worry about anyone disturbing it, except maybe the cats. They do love to sit on my projects and nap on my desk.

I finished the Tamarack Sweater for my husband on Sunday, but alas, it was too long. Actually, I think it’s the correct length according to the pattern, and the hem seems to hit in the same general leg area as the model, but he tried it on for a final fit, and we both agreed it needed to be 3-4 inches shorter. Sometimes you just can’t tell if you’re going to like the fitting of a piece until you do most of the finishing, and that’s exactly what happened here. I had to take a deep breath because this project has been on my needles for so long already, but it is what it is. I had him hand the sweater over and began unravelling.

The Tamarack is knit bottom-up, so I suppose I could have cut the sweater and re-knit the ribbing top-down, but that isn’t a technique I’ve used before, and I didn’t want to teach myself on a sweater I was making for another person using Brooklyn Tweed. Luckily, it’s a bulky weight yarn and won’t take much time to reknit since the sleeves are already complete. I’m already at the point where I need to reattach them, and I’m finding more and more time to knit these days. I imagine I’ll have it done soon.

For travel/social knitting, I’ve been taking my simple sport weight socks with me, and I’m obsessed with them. I love how cozy they are, the way they fit, and how simple they are to knit. I wrote some basic notes down for the first pair I finished back in August, and I have been wearing them all winter, so I’m planning to do this with the rest of my superwash sock yarn. Superwash isn’t my favorite to knit with, and I’m not even natural dyeing with it anymore either, so I’m happy to have a purpose for it. Especially the skeins that were given to me or that I’ve dyed. For the sock pictured above, I used madder to dye one skein (the tweed) and avocado for the other. The avocado-dyed yarn was one of my very first natural dye experiments, and I remember how amazed I was when I pulled it from the dye pot.

Lastly, I’ve been dyeing up bits of linen and cotton for the past year or two whenever I feel like experimenting or exhausting a dye bath, so I’ve been slowly accumulating a collection of naturally dyed fabrics that I would love to turn into a quilt for my oldest daughter’s bed using this tutorial from Farm and Folk as a reference. I’ll probably need to continue dyeing more fabric (oh darn) so I have enough, or I might use some of the undyed fabric for blank space, but it’s just going to be simple squares. The first two quilts I made were done with the paper piecing method, and I’m afraid I intimidated myself with how time consuming it was. I consider this my version of getting back in the saddle.

I’ve also been hoarding old pairs of jeans to cut up and use for quiltmaking or aprons for the kids, and decided to turn three pairs into quilt squares. We need a good, sturdy quilt for picnics, though I’m seeing the blue with the naturally dyed fabrics and I’m thinking I might use them together somehow too. Why not? I guess we’ll just have to see how it all turns out. I don’t have a master plan yet, but just allowing myself to be impulsive and do what I feel creatively inspired to do right now. It’s nice to have my hands working like this again.