We interrupt your regularly scheduled photo diary update, which was previously interrupted by me busy getting the house ready for a guest that Mr. K and I pick up a bit later today in Spokane (assuming her air travel does not go awry), to bring you crafting news. As seen in the last few weeks’ […]

Of course I meant to write here in August. And of course I meant to write here in September. But I did not write here in August or September. I have things to write about, certainly I do. And I like having written, as it helps me remember things I don’t want to forget. The […]

I’ve been struggling some recently. Nothing huge, nothing dire, just lack of motivation to do much besides play on my coloring book app and watch tv (we’ve somehow gotten up to three streaming services with the addition of a three-month trial of HBOMax to the Disney+ and Netflix we already had). But I couldn’t let […]

The pandemic has definitely been good for my knitting. Only a month after finishing the UFO socks, I’ve completed another project, this one from start to finish rather than picking up sometime in progress. I worked on it while watching baseball (Mr. and I decided that buying the MLB package from DirecTV was worth it […]

I felt so good finishing up the years-old work in progress baby blanket a couple months back, I picked up another one, a pair of socks with a long history. My mom bought the yarn with the idea that she’d make her brother some socks, but unfortunately her arthritis had progressed to a point where […]

When I shared the hat I knit earlier in the pandemic, I mentioned that my knitting stuff wasn’t in good order and had some ideas for the first steps in remedying that. I’m pleased to say I managed to find the motivation to make it so. I retrieved the things that were up in the […]

I finished a bit of knitting the other day, a simple cap that’s a sibling to the one I did last fall to donate to a charity drive. I don’t remember when I started this one, just that I had the pattern and yarn and needles still in a project bag together from doing the […]

I am so out of the habit of writing anything but trip reports here that I completely failed to mention something significant I did at home last month: I knitted something. Started it and finished it. A friend was having a charity drive for hats and gloves and mittens, and I used that as motivation […]

I finally finished an object, a scarf I started so long ago I couldn’t remember when that was. Thanks to Flickr, I could look it up. Apparently, it was about two years ago. Mid-February of 2016, I had three balls I’d wound by hand (because who knows where my ball winder was at that point, […]

I finally finished a knitting project. Two, actually. These are my first completed knit objects in almost two years. I’ve done some knitting in between, such as the not quite finished scarf in a basket on a shelf downstairs and part of a blanket I lost track of in the move (I don’t even remember […]

While I was on vacation earlier this month, I finished a knitting project. Preparing to do an entry about it today, I thought to myself “seems like it’s been a very long time since I wrote about knitting here” so checked the archives, finding it had been way longer than I expected: a post about […]

Between the beginning of January and mid-February, I knit two scarves. The one above is for me, the one below went into the Weetacon raffle. I used a free pattern from Maia Spins, which is really two patterns, one for a squared-end scarf with single rows of eyelets to break up the body, and one […]

I’ve been waiting to declare this scarf finished until after I’d blocked it, but today decided I’d just go ahead and take pictures and if I get around to blocking it later, great. As it is, I can’t quite remember when I started knitting this or when I finished. I’m 98% sure I was working […]

Mr. Karen and I went to Illinois for Thanksgiving weekend. On the day itself, the two of us celebrated with much food and many relatives—the extended family gathering this year was around 30 people. The rest of the weekend, we split up, Mr. Karen staying with his folks while I went to spend time with […]

My neglected Ravelry projects page tells me I started knitting this cap last August. I just finished it this morning, sewing in the last of the ends I’d left dangling when I set it aside to work on other things. If I didn’t have to get this done for a raffle this coming weekend, it […]

  What you see here is my latest knitting project, which I started over Thanksgiving weekend even though I hadn’t quite finished the project I had been working on most recently. It’s a pair of socks, and everything was going along quite nicely until I got to the heels. Can you see the problem? (With […]

This is the knitting project I started when I was coming out of my malaise some months back. It’s a wee blankie for the then-newborn daughter of a friend. Even though this blanket is quite small as blankets go (about two feet by a foot and a half), it took me four months to finish […]

I mentioned in my most recent “resurfacing from the pit of malaise” entry that I didn’t have anything on my needles. That’s still true, but I have unearthed two knitting projects I finished at the tail end of winter. I thought I still needed to weave in the ends, which I why I didn’t share […]

  I’m still not ready to do my Weetcon trip report, but here’s a scarf I made for the raffle. Like the scarflet I also donated, this one is from an Iris Schreier pattern I’d made before. It’s called Zig Zag Scarf, for obvious reasons. I used my entry about my first go ’round with […]

  I started this sunset colored scarflet on my way to Idaho last month and finished on my way home (well, finished except for weaving in of the ends, which I took my sweet time doing). The pattern is the Flying V Scarf by Iris Schreier. I made this pattern once before, about four years […]

Not too long before I left for my recent trip, I finished knitting these socks, which I started in September of 2009. I didn’t work on them steadily all that time, of course; indeed I didn’t even have them in my possession for all that time, as I left my whole project bag (a gallon-sized […]

Here I am, back from my traditional post-Holidailies break. I meant to post about this hat during Holidailies, as I finished it last Thanksgiving, but I only got around to taking pictures of it today. They could be better pictures, I realize; I decided not to use that as a reason to procrastinate any longer […]

Another week, another hat. This one is a Christmas present for Mr. Karen’s dad Dale, who’d said at Thanksgiving that he was thinking about getting a stocking cap. I couldn’t quite see him in what I picture when I hear the words “stocking cap”, namely a hat with a long, somewhat silly, tail on it […]

Here’s the hat I made for Mary, the one I mentioned I was starting the last time I posted a finished knitting project. More precisely, here’s the top of the hat, which is my favorite part; the swirl of decreases pleases me. It’s a simple knitted beanie very similar to one I made for the […]

I think the cooler weather has helped me get my knitting mojo back; after I’d ignored them for months, I excavated the emergency sock yarn socks I’d started on my trip in June from the dark recess of my knitting bag and finished them. They’re very simple socks, just a plain foot and a ribbed […]

Well lookee here, I finished a knitting project. That hasn’t happened in a while. This particular item, a baby blanket, was supposed to be a welcome to the world gift for my friend Harmony’s son. I got a bit of a late start on it, not casting on until the month he was due to […]

And now, the truth can be revealed. By “truth”, I mean the knitting projects I worked on in semi-secret starting late last year and finished in February (and which I teased in this entry). I got confirmation today that they reached the intended recipient, namely, my first grand-niece, so I can write about them without […]

Hey look, I finally completed a knitting project—one of six I had on the needles as of last week. This hat will be raffled off for charity next month, so that gave me added incentive to get it done. It’s a pattern I’ve used several times before, and fortunately I’d kept my notes about the […]

I am not yet ready to write about my infuriating and traumatic experience with the Bank of America mortgage department, so instead let’s look at some knitting I’ve done recently. Over there on the left is the one item I managed to complete for this year’s Michigan State vs. University of Michigan knitting challenge, which […]

The idea for this latest knitting project of mine was to make some simple socks from one of the Opal Harry Potter Collection yarns in my stash, ideally in time to wear them to see the latest HP movie. The first problem with this plan was that I did not come up with it until […]

After I finished my Slip Up Socks, I went into my yarn stash for another project and came out with the flydesigns Monarch I’d bought in Idaho this past winter, which I thought would be a good match for at least some of the patterns which had tempted me in Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn. […]

I had a new experience recently—a pair of socks I knit for myself started to wear out. The socks in question are the corn ones. I knew this would happen at some point, but I didn’t expect it to be so soon. I’d only worn them a handful of times, five or six I’d guess, […]

Over the weekend, I finished my winter travel project socks. These are the ones I started back in January. I did gauge swatches for them on my first flight of ski season, from Detroit to Salt Lake City. I decided on the Slip Up Socks because only one row in every four really required close […]

After I got back from Colorado, I put my travel project away and refocused my knitting time on this baby blanket for JenZ’s baby girl. The yarn is KnitPicks Swish; the pattern is the Children at Play Blanket from the book Babies & Toddlers: A Knitter’s Dozen. This pattern had a nice web extra: a […]

These are the socks I was whining about weekend before last. As you can see, they are now finished. I decided that since I was so close to having them done that it was better to keep knitting rather than set them aside and let them lurk in my bag for who knows how long. […]

Yesterday I turned in more items for the Michigan State vs. University of Michigan charity knitting challenge, to add to the hats I’d finished earlier this month. This hat is a slightly bigger version of the Hat Fit for a Boyfriend than I made last time. For this one, I cast on 80 stitches and […]

Some yarn stores in Ann Arbor challenged some yarn stores in East Lansing to see whose patrons could knit more items for charity in the six weeks or so leading up to the big football game between the University of Michigan and Michigan State University on October 25th. Having graduated from the latter institution (despite […]

This past weekend, in between running errands and doing laundry and watching football and jogging and walking and wondering if I have some odd type of flu that doesn’t involve feeling sick to my stomach but does involve a slight fever and abdominal pain, I finished a couple of small craft projects. First, I made […]

Because I generally don’t like to jump on bandwagons until they’ve been around the block a time or two, I didn’t try knitting dishcloths until last month. Perhaps if doing dishes were one of my jobs I would have been a less late adopter, but my big task is laundry, and I haven’t noticed any […]

I finished these socks yesterday, a mere five weeks and two days after I started them; that’s my fastest pair yet, beating my previous record by two whole days. Not that speed is the point; if it were I would have focused all my creative time and energy on them while they were in process, […]

The calendar tells me it’s been 12 days since my last entry. I wasn’t out of town or otherwise deprived of internet access; I was mostly just busy sniffling and hacking and moaning my way through a summer cold. I got up, dragged myself to work, battled brain fog to write code and answer questions, […]

Here’s my latest finished knitting project, a blanket for Jessamyn’s new daughter Annabel. I first saw the pattern last fall in a Ravelry thread about knitting patterns that look like quilting; it’s by Cindra from Knits and Pics and Favorite Things (PDF of pattern is here). I put it in my queue but didn’t cast […]

The finishing frenzy continues at my house; I cast off these socks last night. (Okay, maybe three projects in two weeks does not exactly constitute a frenzy, but it’s such a fun word.) They took significantly less calendar time than yesterday’s baby quilt or last week’s cardigan; I cast on at the beginning of March, […]

Hey look, I made a sweater. It even has arms that are of somewhat appropriate dimensions and thus I do not have to wear rubber bands on the wrists like I do with my Weasley. I got the idea to do a sweater with Fibonacci striping using Andean Silk Twist and coordinating colors of Andean […]

Last night, I cast off my second pair of socks. Given that I only had to make two to come up with a pair instead of three like the first time, I’m pleased. Good thing, too, since it feels like it’s been a long process, since I swatched for them back in August (I ended […]

Can it be? Another finished knitted object only about six weeks after the last one? Yes, indeed. This is the baby blanket I made for the daughter of a friend. Little Kate is only two months old, which I think might be a record for the youngest baby I’ve managed to finish a gift for. […]

I’m just back from a week’s vacation traveling around England and Scotland with Mr. Karen’s mom and dad. It’ll be a few days before I can do a proper trip report, as Mr. Karen did not come home with me (he’s spending a few days getting his parents oriented in Paris where they’ll finish out […]

Perhaps I tempted fate just a little to much when I said I couldn’t wait to see what problems I’d run into when I tried a hat pattern from Modular Knits. Perhaps I was just being realistic. Regardless, this Bull’s-Eye Hat gave me fits. I briefly, but more than once, considered whether putting out my […]

Here is my latest finished knitted object, the Zig Zag scarf from Modular Knits. It feels like this took a long time to make, because I started it back in March, when I was tired of making caps and not yet ready to tackle a sock again. But then I got back into caps and […]

Last night I finished another sock, which means I now have two made from the same yarn that pretty much fit, so I’m calling them a pair. This one is the reincarnation of my first-ever sock knitting attempt; it was so big and floppy. Because my second attempt, while much better, still resulted in something […]

Spending close to 18 hours in the car last weekend gave me plenty of time to knit, so I did. I made one of these caps on the way to Paducah and the other one on the way home. (In between I started the second sock which is as of now just a wee bit […]

Rather than cast on the second sock, I made this beanie for Charmed Knits Knit-along. It’s KnitPicks Swish superwash wool in Dark Navy and Copper from my stash. I chose to do this style rather than the beret for variety’s sake, and I pretty much followed the pattern as written, just fudging a bit on […]

Only a little over a month after finishing my first sock, I’ve managed to finish my second one. I’m happy to report that this new sock, unlike its predecessor, is not a huge, floppy, unwearable monstrosity. Though I have not yet tested this theory, I believe I could put this new sock on my foot […]

I’m now down to only two projects on the needles, as I finished this little Gryffindor beret last night for the Charmed Knits Knit-along. The knit-along pattern is house hats, with a choice of a beanie or a beret in either wide stripes (Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets style) or trapped bar (as in […]

The bag of shoes and boots is still riding around with me, but this morning I did get something else on my to do list done: I boxed up some knitting and shipped it off to its new home. Just about the time the Red Scarf Project was wrapping up for this year, a fellow […]

I have finished my first sock. That’s it over there, so fresh off the needles that the end of the yarn is not yet woven in. I started it on our flights out to Idaho in February–my first experience knitting on an airplane. I didn’t want to risk my pricey Addi Turbos being seized by […]

This is the scarf that almost wasn’t. While I was waiting for the extra blue yarn to arrive so I could finish Red Scarf Four, I figured I’d start another. After all, I still had close to three weeks before I needed to ship them off and plenty Fired Brick Swish on hand. Vision #1: […]

I did it. I mastered the pattern that was giving me trouble when I wrote about my third red scarf. Okay, “mastered” is an overstatement, but I did figure it out enough to finish a scarf that looks decent and bears some resemblance to the picture in the book. The book is Modular Knits by […]

I realize that “red” is not the first color that comes to mind when one looks at this scarf. Fortunately, the Red Scarf Project guidelines include the phrase “multicolor hues including red” and allow for many tones of red, so this variegated with a dark red alongside blues and greenish grays (or are they grayish […]

Introducing my second finished object for the Red Scarf Project. This is the Woven Pattern Scarf from the book Vogue Knitting Scarves Two, which I checked out from the library. I only started it a few weeks ago, so it worked up really quickly. No surprise there, I guess, since it calls for bulky yarn […]

Here’s my first finished object for the Red Scarf Project. It’s 3 x 3 rib, about 5 inches wide and 61 inches long. I would have had it done a few days earlier but for getting chomped on by Oreo. I’d just started the last red section before my hand swelled up, so it didn’t […]

So now that I’ve come down from my post-race high and had a chance to study the results online, I am somewhat chagrined to admit that it appears there were only 8 women in my age group, so finishing 7th there is maybe not as much of a success as all that. When I look […]

  The big news, as seen above: I finished my Weasley sweater, a mere five months since I got the yarn. The bigger news: it almost sorta kinda fits, unlike the sweater of shame. The sleeves on this one are a bit wide, as I feared, and a touch long, which I am cleverly disguising […]

  These are my Weasley sleeves so far. One more set of increases and it’s all straight sailing from then on. Since I departed from the pattern when it came to which end of the sleeves to start from, I figured I could change the increases as well and thus did more of them just […]

  And that, my friends, is the front of a sweater. The two sides of the neck really are about the same length; they just don’t look it in the picture because I haven’t yet blocked or pressed or done whatever I’m supposed to do to it next. I had enough trouble figuring out the […]

  Take a gander at that–it’s the bottom half of a K on the front of my Weasley sweater. I started the letter part early last week, and so far it’s going pretty well considering I’ve never done intarsia before. For the first few days, I had to check the pictures in Vogue Knitting every […]

  Look–progress! I finished the back of my Weasley! It’s sort of crunched up at the top because the stitch holder I bought isn’t as wide as the area being held, but it’s done. It’s not perfect–just before I got to the shoulder part, I found I was three stitches short. I would have sworn […]

  Most recent things first: I’ve been knitting away on my Weasley sweater–one ball of yarn down, lots more left to go. So far so, good. I’m finding purling is less awkward when it’s the whole row rather than alternated with knit stitches as in the ribbing I did on the hats. It was hard […]

  My Ravenclaw scarf has a new patch on it. I lost the original one when it fell off last month one very cold Saturday when I wore it out and about. Maybe the iron-on adhesive wasn’t tested in extreme weather conditions, or maybe I didn’t get a good bond. Since I’m not sure where […]

Yes, I knit another hat. (And no, I haven’t given up quilting; I’d hoped to be done with my latest baby quilt by now but my sewing machine and I are going through a rough patch in our relationship and it’s been slow going.) None of my previous hats are really warm enough for a […]

This hat is too small. I had planned to make another watch cap like my first hat (with fewer stitches around this time), but I wanted something to work on during the quilt guild meeting and hadn’t gotten around to buying smaller needles to do the ribbing part, so I printed out the London Beanie […]

As promised when I finished my Ravenclaw scarf, I tried knitting a hat to match with the leftover yarn, and darned if I didn’t end up with something very hat-like, shown here. This pattern was my starting point, but I didn’t exactly follow it very well. It calls for starting on 4.0 mm (US 6) […]

Last night I finished my second scarf, the PoA-style Ravenclaw in movie colors that I bought the yarn for before I even completed my first scarf. Unlike that first one, this one I did all by myself. It took a few–okay, four–tries to get it started properly. At least I managed to fail in a […]

I tried something new again this past weekend, and it went much better than the mountain biking of the weekend before–knitting, specifically knitting on a circular needle. I’ve knitted before, so it wasn’t entirely new to me, but it’s been twenty years, and I wasn’t exactly good at it. Quilting has proven to be a […]