Gauge Swatches and Secret Christmas Knitting

I wanted to do something a little bit different this year for Christmas, and with how happy my husband was with his hand knit hat, I figured I'd knit him a whole sweater. Thankfully I decided this in September, and would have tons of time to complete it, even though I can only knit it when he is not home.

I remembered that there was a pattern that he mentioned liking when I was scrolling through Ravelry one day so I figured that would be a good one to make, cause I already knew that he would like it! I ordered the yarn straight away and was so excited to get my gauge swatch finished up so I could start the sweater. Problem was, after I blocked the gauge swatch it had WAY too many stitches per inch. Like, it was shockingly far off. I'd never had that happen before. I tried making a second swatch with bigger needles and it was still way too far off to make the sweater. It seemed like by the time I got the gauge swatch right I'd be knitting with huge needles, and this would be a see through sweater. 

I decided to abandon the sweater, which was a really tough call because I was really excited to make him the one he wanted as a surprise. I searched Ravelry and found another sweater pattern that I think looks really nice, and seems like it's sort of his style.

The swatches for this one worked out much better. I still had to make a second swatch because the first one was a tiny bit off, but I'm completely certain that when the second swatch is done blocking it will be spot on, and I'll finally get to cast on. (A month later!!) 

I guess the moral of this story is to always knit your gauge swatches, because if I hadn't, I'd be half way to making a sweater that would have been even too small for me and wouldn't have made for a very Merry Christmas. 

I've also decided to finally take my family members' advice and start saving my swatches to eventually be used in a blanket! I thought it would take basically my lifetime to save up that many, but I already have a nice little pile going. I'm excited to see how the blanket will eventually look and I like that each swatch is a little piece of a larger project that I made or - in the case of the tree motif up top - didn't make. I think it would be cool to have a big blanket with a little piece of all of those projects in it. 

I ended up making a pile for worsted weight or heavier type yarns, and a little pile for fingering weight swatches. I'll probably make two blankets eventually so they will be somewhat consistent throughout, even if just in yarn thickness. 

What do you do with your gauge swatches? Keep them forever for reference? Rip them out and reclaim the yarn?

Fall Time Hat Knitting

Yesterday was actually the first day of Fall, which is absolutely my favourite season. I do really love summer because it's the only time that we get reasonably warm weather but watching all of the leaves changing, getting to light fall candles, wear cozy wooly layers, and make fall type foods is totally worth the brisk mornings. 

To be fair, so far this has been the warmest fall I can remember. Yesterday we actually got to 26 degrees celsius which is like a hot summer day and, while I really hope that this lovely warm first week of fall is the foreshadowing of an uncharacteristically mild winter, I also do realize that the weather is going to cool off a little bit in the near future so I've decided to knit a quick wooly project for my husband to enjoy.

He's recently mentioned that he really doesn't have a winter hat for this year, and I figured that rather than buying one, I would make him one. I went through my yarn stash and found some "Briggs and Little" worsted weight yarn to make a striped winter hat for him and I've been following Jared Flood's "Turn a Square" pattern that is actually free on Ravelry, and it's turning out really well so far! I think I'm at least as excited as he is to see how the hat turns out, but it's kind of a nice feeling that he's also excited to be getting the handmade hat once it's finished.

Working with Cables

I definitely go through phases when it comes to the different kinds of knitting that I love, for instance I went through a really long lace phase where for months I would knit nothing unless it was in a lace pattern, and made a crazy long worsted weight lace scarf. Then I went through a colorwork phase where I was literally not interested in texture at all and could only be happy if I was using two or more colours at a time.

The phase I'm currently in has probably been the longest yet, with no real foreseeable end in sight. For the past six months I have been entirely caught up in cables. I've been making cabled socks, working on my braid hills cardigan, and have been staring shamelessly at all kinds of lovely cables on pinterest. I've even been going through stitch dictionaries to pick out different cables that I really like to swatch up just to see how they look.

These were both done up in Louet 'gems' which I loved using and was really happy with the stitch definition. I loved the middle panel on the first one so much I used it again in the second swatch to see how it looked with different stitches. Playing around with these cables has got me really inspired and I'm even considering the idea of trying to make my very own cabled pullover design. Hopefully that will be in the works over the next little while.

Thanks for reading!

Starting My Braid Hills Cardigan

This summer has absolutely been flying by! I'm shocked at how quickly both July and August have gone, and can't believe we're staring down September and the start of Autumn. Lately I've been trying to get out as much as possible to go camping or to the beach to enjoy the warm weather while we have it. I recently finished spinning that yarn I was talking about a couple posts ago and so I got to start my new cardigan while we were camping recently. I'm so excited with how my handspun yarn is knitting up, and I'm in love with this "Braid Hills" cardigan by Kate Davies. I can't wait to see how the finished sweater looks.

I'm so loving the cables beside the button band! Although summer is coming to an end faster than I'd like, hopefully I'll have this new cardigan done by the time it starts cooling off.