The reverse side of the Stockholm embroidery, with all the loose thread ends. I could have fastened them or hidden them or something, but decided to leave them as-is. It’s working out decently well, although they are in the way a little bit.

What would life even be if I didn’t have a knitting project underway?

This is the third basic sweater I’m doing from the same pattern, Sweatrrr by Åsa Söderman. I don’t agree with all the details (and indeed the first one is getting less use than it could because I dislike the hem and cuffs and neckline) but the fit and shaping around the shoulder and neck area is so perfect that I keep coming back to it.

The first one was in a grayish speckled yarn from MadelineTosh, and the second one a speckled greenish yarn from Apmezga. This latest one also looked mostly speckled at first but turned out to be more variegated than that, and now the sweater is coming out striped. The subtle, thin stripes towards the top were nice, but then as I started decreasing for the waist, the colours pooled more and more and I was getting strong tiger stripes instead. Not the look I was going for! I introduced a second ball of yarn and alternated between the two balls on every row, which mixed up the stripes, but also didn’t look anything like the top section. And then the first ball ran out, and the second ball on its own gave thick stripes again, but by that time I was doing hip increases and the stripes evened out after a while.

It all looks like a haphazard patchwork of different kinds of stripes and I am really not satisfied with it. The only way around it is to rip it up and reknit it without the waist shaping. Do I want a straight, boxy sweater? Preferably not… but I guess it might be better than this.

My current meeting knitting project is a pair of socks. Socks are great background knitting. But this last pair is not moving along. I knit a bit here and there but they’ve been underway for a long time without getting done. I’m almost avoiding picking them up to work on them. What is going on?

I realized today that I don’t much like the feel of them. I use standard sock yarn of 70% wool and 30% nylon for all my everyday socks. Or that’s what I thought, because I hadn’t paid attention to how different the quality can be. Today I touched the green half-done socks just after handling another pair and it struck me immediately. The wintery ones were soft and smooth; the green ones had fuzzy fibers sticking out here and there and felt rough in comparison. Even when I hadn’t consciously realized it, I felt it.

The green yarn is the leftovers of the first thin sock yarn I bought when I had just started producing socks for everyday use. (I hadn’t even discovered asymmetric toes yet.) Some cheap thing, bought online, sight unseen. I switched to small-scale hand-dyed sock yarns soon after, for prettier colours, but never compared the two side by side.

I’m three-quarters done with the second sock in the pair so I’m not going to give up now. I’ll power through and get these done, especially now that I know what my hang-up is. My feet probably won’t even feel the difference once the socks are finished. But my hands most definitely do – I’ve even given up on a yarn due to the feel. I’ll have to be more careful with my yarn buying in the future.

Making progress on the trees. I’m not entirely happy with how they’re coming out because they look all flat, but I also don’t know what else to do, so I will keep going. Either it will all come together, or it won’t.

It’s World Embroidery Day today, which I discovered only by chance on Instagram. I just picked up my Stockholm embroidery again a few days ago – I need to make progress before the embroidery club starts up again to avoid endless shame – and continued today. I feel done with all the houses so I finally started on the trees now.

The best light was out on the deck, so that’s where I sat.

The super thick, super woolly sweater is done. Has been for several weeks already, but I didn’t get around to taking photos of it before we went to Estonia.

Looks stylish, doesn’t it? Too bad that I probably won’t get to wear it much outside the home, because I suspect it’ll be too bulky to fit under my (usually relatively form-fitting) coats and jackets.

The design and especially the construction of the triangular wedges comes from the Tell It Slant pattern, but I wanted a different fit and used a different yarn so I did the shaping myself, based on this tutorial for a basic top-down raglan sweater.

Overall it went smoothly. I had to make several attempts before I got the sleeve sizing right, but that’s par for the course. The only bit I struggled with was the neckline. I bound it off one way and it was too tight; I bound it off in a stretchier way and it was all floppy. I ended up using a weird hybrid of the two, where I alternated between the methods for every other stitch.

Bought fabric for a top. Lovely fabric, beautiful colours, thick with a nice drape.

Was going to try a new pattern. Forgot to check the amount of fabric that the pattern called for, assumed it would be about the same as for a normal top. It wasn’t – the pattern required more – so I couldn’t use the pattern.

That’s a bit sad, but OK, I’ll make an ordinary long-sleeve top from a pattern I’ve used before. Cut out the pieces, start assembling. Top does not fit because the fabric has less stretch than the jerseys I’ve used before.

The fabric was a one-off batch at that store and I can’t buy more.

Throw it all out.

In the middle of summer, I am knitting the thickest, warmest, woolliest sweater I’ve ever made. With every sweater or cardigan I make, I realize another gap in my winter wardrobe; this is filling the one for something simple and rustic to wear at home on the coldest days. Not that it won’t be stylish enough to wear to the office! But it will be bulky enough to be somewhat difficult to fit under a coat.

I’m not fond of ribbed hems, and I’ve also learned that rolled hems are not my thing, so here I tried a folded picot hem. Quite nice.

I ran out of the dark gray yarn just after the fold, so there’s a hidden, secret red stripe on the reverse side.

It looks like the sleeve will turn out too narrow. I think I underestimated how much the bulk of the fabric itself would affect fit. My gauge swatch grew a little bit in blocking, so the sleeve *might* be OK after blocking, but I’m sceptical. Nevertheless I blocked just the half-finished sleeve, to check, and now the living room smells like wet sheep.

Without the discipline and routine of the bi-weekly embroidery club, how will I make any progress on this during the summer?