thegiddystitcher

(Please excuse the fuzz and pilling, these are OLD)

Ok these are definitely not the most "impressive" cabling project I've done, but they are by far the most special to me so I'm going with them for cables month! A few reasons I love them so:

• I won this yarn in a knitting group on Google+ (RIP), about a month after I'd started knitting in 2013. It was my first ever fancy yarn and I was so incredibly excited!

• Because I was such a new knitter, these gloves were my first ever cables, and also my first time using DPNs. Felt like too many extra hands, I still don't like DPNs to this day!

• And because I like to jump in at the deep end, when one of them went wrong I decided to drop stitches down and figure out how to rebuild the cables as I picked the stitches back up. Worked pretty flawlessly and I was SO proud of myself!

• Last but not least, they always remind me of a friend who sadly passed away a year or so later. She helped me a lot with my first few projects, shoutout to Bernie ❤

Pattern is Roundabout Fingerless Gloves, and here's a bonus pic of the other side where the left one is looking weirdly baggy but I swear they do actually fit irl 😄

Started a shawl in late January, and it needs to be finished by July. Which, for most people I'm sure that's nothing but I am a very slow knitter, really!

The pattern is lacy and complicated and mistakes will be really visible, so it's no good to work on while watching TV or doing anything else and I'd just not been putting time aside to properly concentrate on it.

The solution: A spreadsheet to keep track of how far behind I am, and a graph so I can watch myself (hopefully) catch up.

There are very few problems in life that can't at least be a bit improved with a spreadsheet, and I reckon that applies to knitting just the same 🤓

Try it before you dismiss it, that's all I'm saying!

Edit: I have found my people.

I've been happily posting away here on two accounts since just before the Great Migration, and have no problem being openly a woman on the internet. Up to and including correcting people who assume I'm a guy, and even occasionally acknowledging the existence of periods.

Which, honestly that was a bad tactic back on Reddit, my inbox was a nightmare. But here it's gone much better, so thank you to anyone who ever received one of my corrections with good grace!

It's also brought quite a few DMs my way from other women who try to stay more anonymous with their posts, a choice I can completely understand.

So today on International Women's Day I just want to wave hello to the other women out there, even if you don't want to break cover and wave back. Anonymous or not, cis or trans, I see you out there and you're killing it.

This may break the community rule on encouraging discussion, if nobody wants to out themselves to say hello back. So I guess I should also ask a question.

Um...anyone else using it as an excuse to treat themselves today? I've given myself the day (mostly) off work and am doing some fun gamedev all afternoon instead, then we're planning a takeaway tonight. Easily pleased, perhaps, but sounds good to me 😄

I was on such a sock knitting THING last year and have really lost my mojo lately.

This second sock, I posted it two weeks ago maybe and since then all that's happened is I made a mess of the gusset. Not enough to bother frogging it but definitely enough to be grumpy about it.

Anyway hopefully showing off my woeful level of progress will humiliate me into getting a wriggle on, because I really do love this yarn and it deserves to be a cool pair of socks!

If there's one design feature that is quintessentially knitting, it's got to be cables! Chonky ones, intricate ones, symmetrical ones or weird ones, almost every knitter has tried them and found out the biggest secret of our craft: cables are a lot easier than they look 🤫

For once, I know exactly which project to post for this one. Just have to actually take proper photos, approximately eleven years after finishing the knitting part.

Cables are so squishy and fun, I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else has to show!

Anyway. Normally I announce a winner of the previous month but "winner" might not apply this time around!

Congratulations @[email protected] on the dubious honour of having the most highly upvoted knitting fail 😂

Very much appreciate everyone who shared, and it just goes to show crafting doesn't always go to plan.

Ok, off with you. Go find your cable-est thing to show us!

(I need to come up with some new themes before next month so if anyone wants to make a suggestion, do feel free)

This meme brought to you by my spiralling anxiety and some slight bickering when I packed a sock project into the car last night despite it being dark already 😅

(I will update the monthly theme tomorrow I promise, it's been a busy few days!)

Ok I wasn't sure what to post as a knitting fail. Tbh, there've been a lot, because that's how you learn!

There was the lace shawl I made after just a month of learning to knit, out of completely unsuitable cotton yarn that did the finished piece no favours at all (never mind all the actual knitting mistakes I made, too).

There was the summer top I frantically knitted for a holiday and finished literally in the car on the way to the airport, only to find out it was about three sizes too small because I'm nothing if not optimistic.

But these were forgivable, for I was just a newbie.

Not so with the time I decided to jump on the trend of everyone knitting the Find Your Fade shawl. I went through the stash, picked out a combo of yarns that could definitely not be described as a "fade" but I quite liked anyway, and got to work.

Unfortunately I'm crap at knitting shawls, and it took a year to get through the first two sections. So I've now been knitting in general for about 7 years, and on this specifically for 1.

THEN, and only then, I go to start the third colour and realise I've just sort of...completely mixed and matched yarn weights and this was never going to work? Honestly no idea how it never occurred to me until that point.

So, long story short, absolute fail, frogged it and was very salty about it. This may or may not have been when I decided a ban on shawl knitting was in order, a ban which has served me well.

Slow progress, as per, but it'll do.

On the left is the start of my Big Damn Heroes shawl, honestly not sure if I've posted this here yet but it's been at least a couple of weeks since cast-on which should tell you all you need to know about rate of completion 😅

Definitely requires a bit more concentration than I've been able to give lately, so I just keep defaulting to the socks instead.

Speaking of, that's the second sock of a pair using the Show Off Stranded pattern.

The weird heel construction (knit the gusset along with the heel flap) resulted in a slightly different fit than I'm used to, but I think it feels ok. Will only really know once I'm wearing them as a pair, so fingers crossed, but the yarn is so happy right now I don't care about the perfect fit 😄

What's everyone else been up to? Feel free to humiliate me with your productivity levels, I don't mind at all...

These were supposed to be the first of two pairs for a Discworld makealong but it didn't quite work out that way with the whole illness thing.

Also, couldn't take proper pics yet so you get me lying on my back on the bed wiggling my feet in the air instead, which actually might be better than real photos!

Pattern is Eskarina Socks by Rachel Coopey and the yarn is Socks Yeah! also (coincidentally) by Rachel Coopey!

I knit the size M which is way bigger than I normally go but another knitter who usually does my size advised it. Honestly, I could totally have gone with small, they're ever-so-slightly baggy.

They are also very awesome though so idc I'll just wear them over warm tights 😄

#SkipTagginator

Been back at work on my Eskarina Socks and I almost had them finished off yesterday but then realised the bit of knitting I'd done at the dentist was all wrong and needed to be redone. Woe.

Will probably get that redone and the toe finished off tomorrow though so prepare for gratuitous sock pics soon!

Last week I set my crafting goals for the year, and one of them is to make a shawl. Now, that's a big deal because I've been self-banned from making shawls for about two and a half years, but it makes sense for...reasons.

So to that end I picked up the Big Damn Heroes pattern that I've had bookmarked literally since it came out in 2013 and have started some good old-fashioned swatching. Oh shawl knitting, how I missed thee.

What's everyone else up to this week? Knitting yourself some emergency mittens to get through the cold snap? Or alternatively for our southern hemisphere friends, maybe resenting all yarn-based activities due to heat and humidity?

Either way, here's your opportunity for weather related knitting complaints.

Hi all, merry 2024! It looks like my instance is back to federating properly so to celebrate, an update post!

I've been gently reminded (thanks, whoever that was in my YT comments 😅) that while I was going about my new year business, catching up on work and doing the hoovering and generally feeling like a real on-top-of-stuff adult, I'd actually forgotten to update our monthly knitting theme 🤷‍♀️

So, first of all, apologies for that one! Please accept this sock yarn porn as partial repayment .

I thought I'd wait a couple days into January to do it, until lemm.ee federation was fixed, and then forgot. Which is maybe slightly better than completely forgetting. Sort of. In a way.

Anyway. Given that we're somehow halfway through the month already, my body and mind are a mess, it's Saturday evening and also I see you're still enthusiastically posting socks, I've made an executive mod decision to just extend the sock theme and move "knitting fails" to February instead.

I hope nobody is waiting in the wings, desperate to post their fails, and now super disappointed. But if you are, just post them anyway, let's face it these rules are more like guidelines and I promise you'll still get counted 😀

Hope everyone's having a good start to the year, and you can probably expect me to be this disorganised every January so if anyone wants to be co-moderator of this place to avoid it happening again...well...my DMs are open!