Knitting – What’s on my needles going into 2023

Time to read 7 minutes

2022 saw many finished objects under my belt, but something strange happened to me from about August. Yes, I continued knitting on wool and mohair garments throughout the sticky summer but once I had banged out a few sweaters and cardigans for myself in the first half of the year, everything I tried to knit for myself ended up completely wrong and either needed to be frogged, or given away. It seemed I had completely used up my selfish knitting quota for the year. So around September time, I decided to focus my knitting time on Christmas gifts. Start early and feel the self-satisfied glow of having most of my Christmas gifts made and wrapped way before December hit *smug smile*.

But once January rolled around, I was definitely ready to get my selfish knitting mojo back! So below are some of the WIPS currently on my needles and their progress:

WIP 1: The “Into the Wild” sweater by Tania Barley. Yarn: Plötulopi by Istex.

This is Work in Progress no. 1. I am currently enjoying it so it gets a lot of my free time and attention but it was not always this way! This sweater has been on my needles since about March or April 2022. I think I completed half of the colour work yoke and then…got bored. Stranded colour work is just not my wheelhouse. I think once I had completed the foxes on the yoke, I hung it up in my office embarrassingly, for the remainder of the year. But it made an office pretty decoration for like 8 months, ha!

But I decided to pick the project up again this January. I worked slowly, yet consistently to finish the yoke and once I had, it was smooth sailing to finish the rest of the body in straight forward stockinette. As you can probably tell by the pic, the body are still on needles. This is because the body ends with a few rows of twisted rib and knitted any kind of ribbing, yet alone twisted ribbing with unspun roving, as Plötulopi is, is not the easiest feat! So I decided to take a break and start on the sleeves which to me, is more enjoyable as a mindless knit: going round and round in a smaller circumference, in stockinette is just what the doctor ordered, by the fire on cold and dark January evenings.

WIP 2: “Sassy Cat Socks” by Charlotte Stone, Stoneknits. Yarn: Blue faced leicester from stash (cream), Holst Garn Supersoft colour Ember and Rowan Baby Cashsoft Merino for the silver colour work.

Similarly to the project above, this sock has been on my needles for a while – I think I am learning that I just run out of steam with colour work patterns. To me it is a faff to organize the strands and not end up in a tangled mess. Yes, of course colour work can certainly be worth the effort, but knitting to me, is to relax. I want to watch tv, talk to my husband, drink tea, read or listen to music , all while knitting. I find this very difficult to do if I have to follow a colour work chart. I even simplified this knitting pattern so that I could be done with the colour work sooner. I have not finished this sock, but it is without its pair alas, it is still a WIP.

WIP 3: Ranunculus by Midori Hirose. Yarn: One strand of Woolly Knit Cone and one strand of Drops Kids silk Mohair colour black.

This WIP is a little sad and abandoned I am ashamed to say. I have not touched it in months, but as I retrieved it to take a photo, I feel I may return to it soon. If you are not familiar with this very popular pattern, it is a loose gauge sweater, top down construction, with a textured yoke. I have already knitted one for my mother-in-law for Christmas, so thought I would knit one for myself. The problem with the pattern is, it is not a mindless knit. You have to concentrate to knit the yoke as each round will have you knitting a different technique, and as we have already established above, I knit to relax so I really had to push myself to finish the yoke so that I could get to my favourite part – mindless stockinette knitting! I managed to finish the yoke finally and was about to separate for the sleeves, when to my horror, I had waaaay too many stitches on my needles. Damnit. Somewhere some rounds before, I had either repeated a round I should not have or simply made one too many extra stitiches which meant that on an already quite loose sweater, I would have a lot more extra fabric around my shoulders than perhaps would be flattering, for my shape.

I had a few options to fix it, but what I ended up doing, quite hastily, I admit was to knit 2 together in one or two rounds, so that I could get right down to the right number of stitches for my size. Now I have no idea what this will actually look like once the garment is finished, but the more I think about it, I imagine that the sweater will balloon out around the shoulders, but will rapidly cinch in, possibly creating a smocked look? I duly hope not! But I will knit on and see, and will document the process here. I could have, of course, ripped the garment back a few rounds until I seemed to have the right number of stitches for my size…but well, the idea of repeating rounds I do not take much enjoyment from knitting…well, you get the idea. This is how the garment is supposed to look, image taken from the designer’s page on Ravelry:

I am definitely looking forward to owning this item, especially in black, so I think I will persevere.

WIP 4: The No Frills Sweater by Petite Knit: Yarn Plötulopi held double

This is a work in progress that I very much want – but for winter and the weather is slowly getting warmer. Annnd, I made a very very stupid mistake with this project right at the beginning that I did not realise until quite a bit had been knitted. So this is a pattern I have knit successfully twice before. However, this time, I decided to use some of my favourite yarn: Plötulopi, which is an unspun, rustic roving which makes for a light, airy yet very warm fabric and once held double, obviously makes for a bigger gauge: the pattern calls for you to use a smaller needle size for the neck band ribbing that you will use for the rest of the sweater, so in the excitement to cast on, I forgot this very important fact and cast on using the main needle. This means that I have a neck band which is double the circumference it needs to be. Nooooo!

Yes. I am reluctant to rip it out though because unspun fibres readily grips to itself so I could probably discount the yarn being usable if I tried to frog. I am considering continuing and doing some doctoring of the neck band once the sweater is knitted up. This is a possibility. Watch this space.

So that concludes my active and non active WIPS.

What is currently on your needles?

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