Queensland Collection Rustic Tweed

I love tweedy yarns. There's something so very satisfying about their small flecks of colors bursting from the main plies of the yarn. These blobs give a bit of a different texture to the yarn but also to the knitted project, providing depth and dimension.

In my usual fashion, I've collected a bunch of tweedy yarns. Collected isn't really the right word. I've snatched them up gleefully at yarn stores. Spurned their plain cousins. Hoarded them with delight. And I haven't really knitted with any of my darlings yet--because I needed the right project.

The problem is, there's also something sort of utilitarian about tweedy yarns. Sure, they're flecked and delicious. But they're usually on a base of something very straightforward. Like these suckers:

Queensland Collection Rustic Tweed. A DK yarn that I picked up on sale at my LYS because TWEED. On a lovely teal (turquoise?) blue base, but it's pretty straightforward. No variegations. No melded tones of blue shading from one to another like liquid sky.

Anyway, I spent a long time with these in stash. They were beautiful, but they weren't ever quite what I wanted to be knitting. Instead I did things with lace, with colorwork; I made intricately cabled fingerless mitts and knitted plain socks.

This past week, I got sick. Just a cold, but I spent most of yesterday in bed, and I woke up craving simple things. Chicken soup. Orange juice. Tweedy yarn. And not just any pattern. Garter stitch. Something that I could let fall to my lap when I got tired.

Some time in the past year, someone had gifted me Piper's Journey: a simple crescent shawl with a knitted on lace edging. It'd been in my queue for a while (even at the top of my queue for a while) but I didn't quite have the perfect yarn for it and somehow other things always seemed more important. But when the tweedy yarn craving hit, so did the Piper's Journey call. Tweed. Garter stitch.

perfection.

(I only had size 8 needles on hand. So it's a bit looser than the pattern usually looks:

 this image is from ravelry. pergola is the person to whom it belongs. please don't sue).

2014 in yarn: a preview

My knitting plan for this past year has been fairly successful. Planning which deep stash items I was going to use each month and what sort of project I would use it on was very satisfying. Some months it went better than others: January and February, July and September were all fantastic, while other months sucked balls (June and October, I'm looking at you). (December is still up in the air. I want to do some estonian lace but I sent my cashwool to a detangler in Maryland. It should be on its way back buuuut no sign of it yet).

I think what excited me most was finally getting to make some of the products that I really wanted. A shawl for Amanda. Socks that my sisters and I all have the yarn for (they'll catch up some day). A stuffed bunny rabbit that I improvised but that turned out well.

But the other exciting thing is, frankly, making myself use up and get rid of some of this deep stash. I think I've successfully used up or destashed more yarn than I've taken in this year. Well, maybe. But I've definitely used up more than the year before, so this is good!

SO! Knitting Goals for 2014:
exciting! my primary goal is to produce some knitted products that I've really wanted for along time. This means the yarn for it is pretty old too, so I can continue to use up my oldest stash.

January:
I picked up some red and yellow lopi wool (a thick, rough single ply, traditionally used in warm colorwork outdoor sweaters) back when I was in Denmark. Now I've decided at last that I want to make a dragon out of it. There's a (free?) alligator pattern on ravelry, and I'll have to improvise the wings. Haven't decided yet if I will felt it or not. Since I won't be at my yarn for a portion of January, I've chosen an easier project for this month.

February:
The Takoma Cardigan from Knitty several years back was what got me into knitting in the first place. I love it and I want it to be mine and I've always been too intimidated to try it, but this is the year! a short and busy month will make this a tough goal but I'll do some swatching in January and power through it in February. If I stay focused on it, I don't think it will be a problem at all.

March:
For ~ two years now I've had this Shipwreck Shawl on the needles. It's using sea silk and it requires beads. And I love it, I'm sure, but the beaded netting has defeated me. March will be the month that I kick its ass--I am requiring myself to work on the netting for 1 hour a day, every single day. That should make some serious progress on the thing.

April:
I really want to make a shawl for some of my more distant but wonderful friends, and I have a lovely green mohair that'd look great as some leaves. This'll be the month to start it! Maybe something simple, like birch or haruni--very leaf based.

May:
My Maluka from last year got demolished in an untangling incident so I want to take another stab at it. It was a pretty easy project and it looked great with the linen so I look forward to trying it again

June:
My Summer Flies from three years back got lost on a road trip last year. I finally found some yarn to recreate it, so I want to take a stab at it. That took me only a month and I didn't really know what I was doing then, so hopefully it'll be just as fast this year.

July:
I very badly want a color affection shawl. I've picked out the yarns and the order they go in but I haven't managed to start it yet. If I haven't worked my way around to it throughout the year, July is going to be my start date.

August:
The final lace shawl of the year is going to be a Queen Silvia shawl from my lovely red cashwool. I expect it to be fiddly and go on for a while, but my goal is to put a minimum of 40 hours into it throughout the month of August.

September:
This is when job-hunt season really starts up, and I have lots of holiday things to knit as well, so I'm going to keep it simple with a pair of Edwardian Boating Socks in september. I am thinking this might work nicely for my drachenblut wollmeise, or that satsuma colorway in LRB, or even my purple-black Happy Feet.

October:
Also busy. I don't want to count on getting anything done other than job applications, but I'm halfway done with a pair of mittens for a good friend so I suppose I'd best continue working on those and see if I can't finish them for the holidays

November:
Another insanely busy month. I'll work on my Berrocco Peruvia super-fuzzy cowl/cushion/cat bed thing-it's worsted weight and warm and quite soothing. Unless I churn it out earlier in the year.

December:
I'm a huge fan of fingerless mitts and love to make them for myself, even if I don't wear them enough. Anyway, I picked up some rowan felted tweed this past December and would like to finally make the punky stripey mitts I have planned in my head. At the very least I should have time over the holidays to get a bit done.


This is a pretty front-loaded year for finished objects. lace shawls for 6 months of the year. But I have the yarn for 30+ shawls, and I LOVE wearing them, so it is about time I started knitting and finishing them!

Do you have goals for the new year?