#knitting update

I'm not doing a December knitting update because frankly I was working on bigger projects and didn't finish anything. But I finished 18 projects this year, and I like seeing people's yearly wrap-ups, so please enjoy my knits (aka a lot of socks and also a few other things).

The Big Stuff

I am fundamentally not that much of a garment knitter (though I have at least 3 plans for 2026...), but I did get one sweater and one vest done in 2025!

I finished the Arachne Pullover in January (after starting in late 2023 and taking many breaks from it bc the stockinette was boring), and it's a nice sweater, but more importantly it has Big Ass Spiders on the arms.

Sometimes you go to a LYS and Berocco's tweed is on sale and suddenly you need to drop all of your plans and make a nice tweedy vest. Anyways, this Emery vest wound up being my summer project (started in May, finished in August), which was great because I wore it a ton this fall!

Rapid Fire Sock Wrap-Up

I made 9 pairs of socks this year!

Conjoined Sock Twins (Sock Madness qualifier, made in February). This was a very silly pattern where you make the pair of socks as one long tube and then cut them apart, which is more a fun thought experiment than an actual good plan.

Day and Night Socks (Sock Madness round 1, made in March)

Chattahoochee socks (Sock Madness round 2, made in March). I love how these look, but picking up the stitches for the soles was an absolute nightmare.

Itamaraty socks (Sock Madness round 3, made in April but not quickly enough to keep me in the competition)

Sixy Helix (started in early 2024, finished in May). These are double knit intarsia, which should be enough for knitters to know why they took me so long.

3 Leaves (made in May). My first 52 Weeks of Socks pattern, in a yarn where the stripes block out most of the pattern tbh.

Branches (made in June, another 52 Weeks of Socks pattern)

Echoes (made in late July/early August)

Bio-Mechanical Demonoid Socks (started in late August, finished at the start of November)

The "Oh, I should make a cute little thing to wear around my neck" Projects

I think these also all doubled as projects I could knit, at least in part, with my eyes closed while playing Blood on the Clocktower.

This is a super simple ribbed cowl I made in the spring (finished in May). Technically it followed a Purl Soho pattern but it was so simple that it didn't really need the pattern. Anyways, this is a small cowl in a nice camel wool, and also it kinda looks like Chilchuck's cowl from Dungeon Meshi.

This is an Age of Brass and Steam shawl (made over the summer, finished in early September) made in a nice multicolored linen to be a nice little summer scarf. I got this yarn from a friend's stash, and it is seemingly infinite because I still have another skein and a half.

And finally, my Sorgenfri Scarf (finished in early November), aka the small scarf pattern I could find that was both free and less ugly than garter stitch.

Some Hats

Stones on the Beach hat started in summer 2024 and finished in January. I need to get better at working on my tension with silk, because this one blocked out way bigger than intended.

A second hat in the same silk with a more improvised pattern of tree cables. I had a real Goldilocks problem with this silk because this one wound up a bit too small.

A super simple waffle stitch hat I made entirely while at a conference in February. This yarn is Hedgehog Fibres Tweedy, and it is so fun.

...And One Last Thing

I made these mittens (really fingerless mitts with mitten caps) over one weekend, only loosely following a pattern. They are in yak wool, which I have not used before (because it's pretty pricey), but I have been wearing these a lot and they are SO WARM and very soft, and I do love them. I only have 75 yards leftover, so probably not enough for a hat or anything, but I do love these mittens.

Anyways, now the rest of this post will not have cool pictures, so you can stop reading now if you want.

Some Stats

The projects above use a total of 6070 yards of yarn, which sounds very impressive until you realize that I bought 11556 yards of yarn this year, putting my net yardage at +5496. In my defense, over half the yarn I bought this year was bought at a fiber fest in early November (including multiple Large Project quantities), so I simply haven't had time to finish any of those projects!

Looking Ahead

First off, the yardage goal for next year is to make up most of my yardage deficit before this year's New England Fiber Fest and have a net yardage of -5000 at that point in early November. This is both easier and harder than it sounds because on the one hand, I have some larger projects already in progress, and on the other hand, I have about 2000 yards of pre-ordered cashmere arriving around March, and that will count for net yardage.

I have never *actually* finished a knitting project before. I've started a ton since learning in 2018, but I've never actually completed anything before today. I love knitting, but ADHD is really harsh when it comes to sustaining interest in projects. I'm great for ideas, but I'm not real a follow-through-and-finish type.

I got the idea in mid-October while feeling like I wanted to try knitting again. I saw this collection of cat inspired socks and had the idea of Marinette/Ladybug making some for Chat Noir for Christmas then discovering Adrien is Chat via seeing the socks. So I made a poll for others to vote on exactly which pattern, ordered my yarn, and started knitting the winning pattern (PolkaCats) the first week of November.

I learned a lot while knitting these socks. I watched way too much TV*, learned how to do stranded colorwork knitting, how to knit a sock from the top down, how much colorwork actually affects the stretch of the socks, how to knit heels, and how to meticulously un-knit several rows to fix a mistake I made rather than just getting frustrated and giving up.

My ultimate goal was to be able to wear them on my birthday, which is this week. First time I've actually met a goal in a pretty long time. I was really worried I wasn't going to make it because of all my various health issues and the ADHD hyperfocus dropping off sharply around the heel of the second sock.

So here they are, my Chat Noir socks. I'm washing and blocking them to improve the fit, but these are when they are just completed.

Still writing and editing the story, which will have two parts. I hope it turns out well.

Updates on my Cottage Core Crop pt.2 🤩

So funny like looking back on my previous posts when I first made the crop and how much I’ve progressed in knitting it’s so crazy 😅

It's finished! It used up the cotton yarn perfectly, and the overall product is nice enough that it will indeed be a holiday present.