The Yarnometer: January 2018

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to keep track of how much yarn was coming in and out of my house, and what I was knitting. So here’s a new blog feature, the Yarnometer!

Projects finished

Selbu Mittens

My first non-design project if the year: Selbu mittens. This was a easyish foray into colourwork mittens with the hope of knitting some more complicated designs later in the year. The mittens are lovely; I’m pleased with how my colourwork turned out; they fit me; they’re super-cosy and great in the snow; but it turns out I don’t like wearing mittens... I might wear them a few more times this winter, but they are likely to be re-homed at some point. You can find out more about my mittens in their FO Friday post.

Rocket jumper and cushion 

I also have two new designs to give you a sneak peak of: my Rocket jumper and Rocket cushion.* Both these patterns have been a long time in the works - I wrote the pattern for the cushion last summer, but only finally started it over the Christmas holidays. Both the cushion and jumper feature a brightly coloured rocket,** and my three year old has insisted they are both for her, which might not have been quite the plan, but never mind, she’s certainly excited about them!

Something secret...

Shhh... I’ve also spent this month working on a secret commission, which I really hope I can tell you about soon, but for now, all I can tell you is that it used 228 g of DK weight yarn across seven colours. Hope that’s whetted your appetite...

The ins and outs of yarn

Yarn in

West Yorkshire Spinners Essential Aran in Rum Paradise and Cream

1200 g aran weight yarn for a design

100 g sock weight yarn for a design

Yarn out

Destashed

670 g to my mum

730 g to Knit for Peace

100 g to my friend Sam

Knitted

79 g for the Selbu mittens (Artesano British Blue Faced Blend DK and Erika Knight for John Lewis Double Knit)

229 g for the jumper (Paintbox Yarns Simply Aran)

260 g for the cushion (Paintbox Yarns Simply Chunky)

228 g top-secret commission

Total

Yarn bought: 1300 g
Yarn used: 2296 g
Total: -996 g

An excellent start to the year!

*Both designs will be released later in the year. If you want to find out when they’re launched, why not sign up to my newsletter? People on my mailing list always get an exclusive launch discount for new patterns, and a discount code for 10% off all patterns in my Ravelry store, all year round.

**You might recognise the rocket as it featured on a matching blanket last year. You can pick up the blanket pattern from my Ravelry store, and if you know you want to knit all the items in the collection, you can pick up the ebook at a special discounted rate until I add the next pattern.

Yarn Along: Winter warmers

If anyone knows where the weekend went, can they let me know? I swear the bit between Friday evening and this morning just disappeared. I did do some lovely things with my family - we went for Sunday lunch at a farm shop and went to Shildon Railway Museum to see Tim Peake's space capsule - but otherwise I think we all slept quite a lot!

I do have a bit of knitting to show for my weekend though: I finished my Selbu Mittens, and they're pretty fab. They're currently blocking and will have their own FO post on a Friday, but here's a sneak peak.

I also managed to get a couple more stripes done on my Mind the Gap socks. I hadn't worked on them since New Year, and miss them a bit. The stripes are very motivational! I also cast on a hoodie for a friend's new baby, but 8 rows in I had already cast on twice and got the stripe pattern wrong, so unravelled it and put it back in the bag to look at next weekend.

Today has had plenty of missed knitting opportunities. I went to soft play with my daughter, but failed to take any scissors, which are pretty necessary for intarsia knitting! And I would have knitted while the kids were swimming, but there were no seats (the January effect: New Year's resolutions always make for busier swimming sessions!). I'm going to catch up this evening, assuming I can get the kids to bed before I'm ready to fall asleep - while we're well past the shortest day, the weather has been gloomy for days and it's making me tired!

As for reading, I started Sarah Millican's autobiography last week, and am enjoying it. Part autobiography, part self-help guide, I have laughed out loud while reading this so many times already and I'm only a quarter of the way through. I had requested this for Christmas, but got book tokens instead (not a bad thing, I love book tokens). At my earliest opportunity I popped into town to pick up a copy, only to find that everywhere in town had sold out (Sarah Millican is from Newcastle, which is very close to Durham), so had to wait until I headed south over the Christmas holidays.

What are you crafting on and reading at the minute?

You might have noticed a small change to the title of this post; Ginny has restarted her Yarn Along series of posts, so I'm linking up with that (her posts are now monthly).