What's on tap for 2016?

This year will involve major life changes so who knows how the crafting will go. Still, I will set some goals for the year.

1. I would like to complete 24 new projects this year. I will probably make a lot of hats but I don't want to set a specific number of hats.  
2. The only yarn that comes into the stash will be worsted or bulky as that I what I use the most. Also, I am only allowed to add 12 skeins of yarn to the stash. I hope that I don't add that many but I want to give myself a little wiggle room because I will be attending the SSK vendor market. 
3. I need to finish or frog all 10 WIPs that were on the needles at the beginning of 2016. Let's be honest, once a project goes in to timeout, it's basically dead to me. The projects are: 

• Baby Alpaca GAP-tastic Cowl cast on in August 2015
• Purple & Gray Striped Scarf cast on in August 2015
• Brewster's Multnomah Shawl cast on in July 2015
• Cascade Textured Cowl cast on in February 2015
• Felted Tweed Duotone Cowl cast on in November 2014
• Sausalito Smoky Cables-and-Lace Hat cast on in July 2014
• The Grind Mitten cast on in January 2014
• NW T9 Dissertation Project cast on in October 2013
• Savory Bay of Fundy cast on in August 2012
   

Did I meet 2015's goals?

In a word, no. However, I exceeded my expectations on the travel goal and came close on the knitting goals so I am fairly pleased.

1. Instead of visiting two new states this year, I visited five: Minnesota, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi. I planned on visiting Minnesota and North Carolina but when I looked at a map, I realized the spot I was going to in North Carolina was really close to the borders of South Carolina and Georgia so I made sure to plan excursions to those states while I was on vacation. I ended up taking a work trip that allowed me to travel through Mississippi so that state was an unexpected get at the end of the year.
2. I was a little short on my new projects goal: 21 projects instead of 24 and 10 hats instead of 12.
3. I didn't knowingly purchase any new fingering weight yarn but in the gift bag for ZK2015 there was a skein of fingering weight yarn so technically, I purchased it.
4. I frogged four of the WIPs that I had at the start of 2015 and I finished one WIP so I did meet that goal. I could have done better as I know there are some of the other projects that I will probably never finish so I should have just frogged them. Still 5 out of the 11 being gone is what I was shooting for.

Overall, it was not too poor of a showing for 2015.

Let's be reasonable

Okay, I just said that I wasn't going to make any goals for this year but after having been bombarded by the really excellent goals that I have seen today on the various social media platforms that I visit, I am succumbing to peer pressure and making a few goals.

1. Visit at least two states that I haven't been to so I can get closer to having visited all 50. I will get one new state when I attend the Zombie Knitpocalypse in June so one more should be attainable.
2. Knit at least twenty-four new projects (WIPs don't count), twelve of which should be hats. According to Ravelry, I completed twenty-two projects in 2014 so this will be an improvement. Two projects a month is completely reasonable.
3. No more fingering weight yarn should be added to the stash. If I need something for a specific project that I am casting on right away, that is fine. I have sixty-seven skeins of fingering weight yarn in the stash and I primarily knit hats and cowls out of worsted or bulky yarn. In fact, the only fingering weight projects that were started and finished in 2014 were hats that I made with the yarn tripled so it was knit at a bulky gauge.
4. Finish or frog at least five of the eleven WIPs that I have at the start of the year. The WIPs are: The Big Black & Grey (shawl), Felted Tweed Duotone (cowl), Cranberry INSULATE! (hat), Sausalito Cables and Lace (hat), T-Rex (dishcloth), The Grind (mittens), NW T9 Dissertation (afghan), Jade Twisted Rib (hat), SSK TGV (shawl), Savory Bay of Fundy (shawl), and Mira's Tern (cowl).

Year in Review

Wow, I really fell off the blogging wagon. Here is the knitting stuff that you missed.

I knit a lot of hats and a few cowls and one random pair of slippers for a Nerd Wars challenge. Nerd Wars doesn't exist any more so I am now just knitting whatever makes me happy. I have quiet a few works in progress that will hopefully be finished sometime in 2015 but who knows.

I have no knitting goals for 2015. I have made knitting goals in the past and haven't stuck with them so I am just going to play it by ear in the coming year.

Nerd Wars Tournament Ten, Round Two

I managed to finish three projects for this round of Nerd Wars. I think that my knitting would be more productive if I could figure out how to incorporate projects into Nerd Wars instead of using Nerd Wars to select projects. I currently read the Nerd Wars challenge prompts and then select projects based on the prompt. I sometimes have other projects that I want or need to make but I have a hard time making my brain find ways for those projects to answer a Nerd Wars challenge. I think that I am going to try harder to make those project fit which should make juggling my knitting projects a little easier and should give my brain a bit of a workout. I think it is good to find different ways to give your brain a challenge, even if it is something small like making your project work with a Nerd Wars challenge prompt.

Without further ado, here are the badges that I earned for round two and the projects that I knit.

Discovery
The challenge was to craft something inspired by the rocks that are studied by geologists. I knit a red hat inspired by rubies.  It is the Giving Comfort hat by Alicia Landi. It is a well-written pattern for a simple, bulky weight hat with a little bit of texture. I can see making a lot of these hats in my future for charity knitting. I used Malabrigo Mecha which is a lovely superwash bulky single that I purchased from my local yarn shop.


Encyclopedia


Please pardon the quality of the pictures. They were taken on a not so great camera and are a little blurry.

Leveling Up My Knitting Skills

I just love it when I learn a new knitting skill! Well, I don't know that it is actually a knitting skill so much as it is a yarn skill but since I use it in my knitting, I'm just calling it a knitting skill. I stumbled across this technique in the Haka pattern by Lee Meredith (you may know her as leethalknits) when she suggested using worsted weight yarn held triple to get a super bulky weight yarn. Now, I don't know about you but the thought of holding three strands together from three different balls of yarn was enough to give me hives. I sometimes get tangled up in one strand of yarn, let alone three! However, she mentioned a technique that allowed you to use one strand of yarn to get three strands held together and she linked to a video tutorial. Just one strand? I knew I had to give it a shot.

The video tutorial was created by Alex Tinsley, another fabulous designer, who can be found at her website, dull roar. The tutorial is genius! I am finally going to be able to use up the lace weight that I have in my stash along with all of the fingering weight. I don't mind knitting with fingering weight but I have so many single skeins of it that it will take me forever to knit through it all. Also, let's be honest, sometimes I get bored partway through a fingering weight project so it just gets shoved into a project bag and thrown in a corner, never to be seen again. Triple-stranded fingering weight will allow me to zip through a project without getting bored and now I will be able to use fingering weight for charity knitting since most of the places that I donate hats to prefer that they be made out of worsted or bulky weight yarns. Here is the video that has changed my knitting life.


It was a little fiddly when I first got started but if you are a spinner, it will probably come very easily to you since it is similar to chain plying. (At least that is what Lee Meredith said in her pattern. I don't spin so I neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of her statement.) Initially, I would chain up some yarn and leave it in a pile on the desk while I was knitting. I am sure no one is surprised to hear that led straight to tangle city. Then I started wrapping the chained yarn around the outside of the yarn cake and unwinding a little bit at a time to avoid tangles. Other than being annoyed at the interruptions to unwind the yarn, that method was working well until the yarn cake started to collapse. It was a center pull cake and I was pulling from the center so when it started to collapse, I worried about yarn tangles. This wouldn't have been a problem if I had worked from the outside of the cake but that's not how I roll. Inspiration struck in the form of a juice glass. I just wound the chained yarn around an upside down juice glass: no tangles, no collapsing the yarn cake, and no stopping to unwind the chained yarn as it just slipped nicely off the top of the glass as I knit. Here is a picture of my setup.

Since I wanted to test this technique on fingering weight yarn, I just knit a basic hat following the Giving Comfort hat pattern by Alicia Landi. I omitted the purl bumps in the body of the hat so I could focus on learning this new technique. The yarn that I was using as a test yarn was some leftover self-striping fingering weight yarn and it turns out, this technique is great for self-striping because you can preserve the striping sequence when would not happen if you held three different strands together! Look how great the finished product is:

Nerd Wars Tournament 10, Round One

I was a bit of a fail for this round of Nerd Wars. I only completed one project but I did manage to make sure that it was also fit in with the team unity for the round. I was very busy with work and I just wasn't feeling like knitting during February. Below are the badges that I earned during round one.

My amazing team captain always whips up awesome badges but I think the badges for this round are my favorite.

Discovery
The challenge was to craft something that resembles a real, non-extinct, living organism, be it plant, animal, fungus, or bacterium. I knit a maple leaf dishcloth in Hobby Lobby's I Love This Cotton. That yarn is so soft! I'm guessing the dishcloth won't hold up for very long but I will enjoy the softness & squishiness while it lasts. I tied the color of the dishcloth to a shirt that Stacey wears in the pilot episode of "Gavin & Stacey." I also tied the color and the fact that it was a leaf to the woods that the runners are taking bathroom breaks in during the Marathon for Incontinence that was part of Monty Python's Silly Olympics (the sketch that we used for Team Unity).

If you haven't seen it, here is the Silly Olympics sketch.

Bonus Knitting Time

The best part about traveling is the extra time that I have to knit. I don't have any distractions (I'm looking at you, internet.) so I get a fair bit of knitting done. I am knitting on a Monster Cowl out of yarn from Another Crafty Girl. If you haven't tried her worsted yarn, you should. It is a dream to work with.

Nerd Wars T9 R3 Recap

I had a very successful third round for Nerd Wars. I completed projects for every category which in Nerd Wars parlance means that I dwarfed the nebula. This is the first time in the three tournaments of Nerd Wars that I participated in that I managed to answer all of the challenges. One of the captains of Team Most Amused likes to recognize team members when they dwarf the nebula by making a humorous, quasi badge for them. Here is mine:

During this round, the team was a little less social but I think it is just the nature of the timing. December is a pretty busy month for most people with lots of family obligations and travel so there is just less time for knitting and internet shenanigans. We still ended up with 100% participation although we were one person short of having 100% participation for team unity this month. Our team unity for this round was to tie your project to Monty Python and, to extend the unity, our badges were all Monty Python related.

 

Giving Geeks:
This round of Giving Geeks was an end of the year special and you could answer the any of the challenges that had been done throughout the year. I went with the "donation inspired by weather" challenge and made a donation to the American Red Cross. I opted for this donation as the midwest had just been hit by several devastating tornadoes & the Philippines had just been hit by Typhoon Haiyan. My Britcom tie-in was the episode of The Vicar of Dibley when the vicar installs a plain window instead of a stained glass window in the church and donates the money she raised for a new stained glass window to earthquake relief.

Encyclopedia & Team Unity Project
The challenge for this round was to craft something inspired by some aspect of the European Medieval period. I took my inspiration from the Black Death, the largest pandemic in history, and crafted a black Thorpe hat. I crocheted the trim in red because I wanted to use the Black Knight from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail as my team tie-in and unity project. The Black Knight has a red symbol on his armor and he spouts quite a bit of blood over the course of his scene. I have a special fondness for that movie because I watched it several times with my Dad and brother when I was little. We still use it as a pop culture touch-point.

Discovery
For this round, we had to try something new. It was a pretty broad mandate and there is a lot that I haven't tried when it comes to knitting. I decided that I would try double knitting as my "something new." Although it was a little fiddly it is definitely a technique that I would use again. I went with a very basic potholder for my project so that I didn't have to worry too much about mistakes. I mean, an ugly potholder is still completely functional, right? I tied this project to the Britcom Mulberry as the titular character arrives in a long, brown coat.

 

Nerdology
The challenge was to craft something inspired by a pun. I found a hippopotamus pun about weight loss so I knit a hippo dishcloth. The pattern that I used suggested knitting with a size 6 needle instead of the size 8 that is often called for with dishcloths as the tighter gauge helps the pattern stand out. I tied the color of the dishcloth to an outfit that a character is wearing in the sketch show Little Britain.

Flexible Schedule
For the flexible schedule category you can submit two projects that you finished during the round, as long as you did at least two hours worth of crafting on the project during the round. If you completed an unfinished object, you need to provide a before and after picture to show how much work you completed. I finished a dishcloth that I had started for a previous tournament and I also knit a pair of slippers. I tied the color of the slippers to the opening credit colors of the Britcom Good Neighbors.

Team Most Amused First Place T9 R1

You can't see me but I am doing a little happy dance at my computer. Team Most Amused was in first place at the end of Round One of this, the Ninth Tournament of Nerd Wars. I'm sure that we won't end up in first place at the end of the tournament because other teams seem to focus on getting dissertation points which don't factor in until rounds two and three. That being said, I am pretty proud of my team. Moving on the my summary of round two...

First up, another picture collage of all the badges I earned from Team Most Amused.

Giving Geeks
Our prompt for this round was to "show the smallest among us that you care." To fulfill the challenge, I made a monetary donation to Crisis Nursery, a wonderful organization that provides respite care for children birth to age 6 when the family is in the midst of a crisis. In addition to respite care, the Crisis Nursery also provides parenting classes, support groups, postpartum depression services, play groups, and referrals to other community service providers to help the family to get through whatever crisis they are facing. Did I mention that the Crisis Nursery is staffed 24hours a day, all year long? They are never closed because they are aware that a crisis can happen at any time. If you have some spare money and are looking for a great place to donate it, I would recommend Crisis Nursery. Don't live if the area? See if your community has a similar organization and support it.

Discovery
For this round we had to craft a project in the colors of carotenoids and anthocyanins, the chemicals that are revealed during fall when the leaves change colors. I knit a brown Haka (a hat by Lee Meredith) and tied it to the brown outfit that Mrs. Doyle wears on the show Father Ted. The hat is a super quick knit and I will probably make more in the future for charity knitting. This hat is headed to the charity Wool-Aid as it is made of a bulky wool yarn and it has ear flaps for extra warmth.

Nerdology & Team Unity
The prompt for this round was to raise your nerd flag high and craft something inspired by another teams nerdery.  I knit a Nibbler dishcloth inspired by the cartoon Futurama. I am really sad that it is being cancelled. This project was also my team unity project. Our team unity for this round was a cross team unity so we had to craft something that was inspired by Team Space Alliance and they crafted something inspired by Team Most Amused. Futurama is one of the shows covered in their scope. I didn't know it at the time but Futurama is also covered by Team Shady cells so I got to be an honorary member of their team for this round. What does that mean? Another badge for my collection.

I hope that you are having fun with your knitting!

Summer plans

Hopefully this will be a summer chock full of knitting. I am participating in Stash Dash and Nerd Wars as well as attending the second SSK retreat. Here is a little glimps at a project that I am working on.

Today there was knitting and family time

This blog is a bit of a test. I am trying to blog from my phone while sitting in a hotel room. I am traveling with my parents to see family but I opted to stay in a hotel instead of staying with my family. I managed to get some knitting done while at the hotel.
 

I spent the afternoon and evening with my aunt, uncle, mother and father. We watched a home movie, which normally would be a little boring. However, this movie is from the trip he took in 1959 and 1960. He hitchhiked to New York, stayed there for a week until he could find a job on ship. He worked his way across the Atlantic until they arrived in Sweden. Once there, he hitchhiked across Europe and then made it to the Holy Land. He then hitched to Italy and found work on another ship & worked on the ship for several month before returning to the US. He was gone for 9 months. It was quite the home movie. I can safely say that my uncle amazing!!!

SSK Meet-up

On Monday, I was lucky enough to be able to share a visit with my SSK roommate, Hannah. You may know her from her podcast, Traveling Sock Knitter. I actually had Monday and Tuesday off of work for a trip to Indianapolis that fell through so when Hannah let me know that she was going to be in town, I was very happy that I didn't cancel my vacation days!!

We had lunch at Farrens Pub and we were able to hang out and knit there for four and a half hours! It was a little like being back at SSK. It is so strange that we lived in the same town for years and never met and now she lives half way across the country! We definitely lamented all of the time that we could have been hanging out and knitting! We talked about the exciting announcement that there will be another SSK. We are both putting our names in and we are planning on rooming together again if we both get in. We also talked about maybe having a VKN (virtual knit-night) some time in the future with Denise, another fabulous woman from SSK. So Denise, if your ears were burning on Monday afternoon, it was because we were talking about you!

As I said, we knit for quite a while but I knew from experience that if I wanted any actual knitting to get done, I would have to cast on a new project. My current project, the Bay of Fundy Scarf in Sweet Georgia's Tough Sock is just not suitable because of the of the cabling in it. I picked up the Sweet Georgia yarn at SSK from Rebecca Danger's booth but she does have an online shop or you can pick some up at The Loopy Ewe.



So I cast on for a Sockhead hat using a Zauberball while I was in the parking garage waiting to go into the pub. The Zauberball has been in my stash for a while and I think the hat is going to be kind of fun since it will be striped in some lovely neutral colors.



Our lunch flew by far too quickly and I realized that I need to make an effort to get out to local knit nights so I can have some knitting friends that don't live far away. I'm so thankful that I got a chance to see Hannah and I look forward to the next time I am able to hang out with an awesome knitter/friend.

Missing SSK

At the end of June, I was lucky enough to attend SSK (Super Summer Knitogether). This was my first time attending a knitting retreat & I was a bit nervous about going since it involved 150 strangers and staying in a dorm room. Remember dorm rooms?

However, I pulled on my big girls pants and didn't let my apprehension hold me back, and you know what? It was AWESOME!!!!!

I took a colorwork class from Kirsten Kapur that nearly melted by brain. In a three hours class, I learned to: knit continential, do two-handed colorwork, follow a colorwork chart, make a latvian braid and how to catch long floats on the back of the work so they are less apt to snag during use. By the end of the class, I really could have used a massage as my shoulders felt like they were permanently stuck up by my ears. Thankfully, Kirsten Kapur is a very patient teacher. If you get a chance to take a class from her in the future, I would highly recommend it.

I took one hours classes from each of the three wonderful women who organized SSK. Carin taught a class on what it means to pick up stitches versus pick up and knit stitches. It was interesting to hear when I should use one versus the other. Now, I feel ready to conquer one of the Log Cabin blankets that I have been drooling over. Laura taught a class on different cast-ons and bind-offs. I learned quite a bit, including that when doing a long-tail cast-on, it counts as you first row of knitting. No wonder some of my projects have had a weird edge at the bottom, I have basically been adding in an extra knit row. Oops. Leslie taught a class on backwards knitting. It was pretty easy to pick up the skill but I don't see myself using it a whole lot. A few people in the class really noticed a difference in their knitting because the tension between their knit stitches and their purl stitches is really uneven and knitting backwards remedies that. However, I don't seem to have tension issues so this will just be a specialized skill that gets deployed every once in a while. Jessica, a woman in the class who was sitting at my table, mentioned that it would be really useful when a pattern calls for nupps so you don't have to turn your work when you purl back a couple of stitches.

As much as I enjoyed the classes, the best part of SSK was just hanging out with a bunch of people who share a common interest. It was so nice to be knitting in a room full of people who would ask questions about your project or yarn and they were genuinely interested. There were no sideways stares from people who were trying to figure out what you were doing, no whispered conversations about how you could just buy whatever you were making at a store. It was bliss. Thanks to the get to know your fellow SSKers bingo game that was handed out at the opening ceremony, I got to enjoy a little fame as someone who has never knit a pair of socks. Evidently, non-sock knitters were in short supply at SSK so my fail at sock knitting made me popular. In a nice coincidence, a lovely woman that I met has also never knit a pair of socks. Our conversation started at that jumping off point and by the end of the conference, I am happy to report that I have made a new friend. Denise is funny & fun & awesome and I never would have met her if it weren't for SSK!

I also lucked out in the roommate department. My roomie was awesome and a very talented knitter. She let me scope out the beautiful shawls that she brought. If you want to see her in action, she has a video podcast called Traveling Sock Knitter. I think it is Hannah's mission to convert Denise and I into sock knitters. I enjoyed the irony of Hannah and I living in the same town for years & never bumping into each other. Then, after she has moved halfway across the country to take a teaching position, we meet at SSK. When I was sharing my SSK stories with my mom, it turns out that she rode to the Spring Fling with Hannah when Hannah still lived in Illinois. The knitting world is big & small at the same time.

There was a lot of amazing food at SSK but two places really stood out for me. If I got back to Nashville, I will definitely be hitting these places up again.

 

The first place is Rotier's which is a small neighborhood type bar that served possibly the best cheeseburger I have ever eaten. It as served on french bread and I will be forever grateful to the waitress for recommending it. The waitress also happened to be a member of the family that owns the business. It was started by her grandfather and it is still in the family. So, if you are in Nashville, please make this place a priority stop. Not only is the food amazing but you will be supporting a local, family-owned business.

The second place with the amazing food was Noshville. It is a New York style deli that serves amazing food. I had a really good reuben which is impossible to find in my home town. The service was friendly, the portions were large, and I think about that sandwich in my sleep.

Lastly, on Saturday there was a vendor market. Was there yarn to be had at the vendor market? Did I come home with seven skeins of yarn from Another Crafty Girl? Maybe. I'll never tell.

I could go on and on and on about SSK. There are more amazing women that I got to meet, more fun stories to tell, and I can't wait to do something like this again. However, this blog post if officially a novella so I am out!

Using Deep Stash

I am working on, you guessed it, another cowl. It is the Incus cowl, which is part of the Trio of Cowls ebook by Kirsten Kapur. I am looking forward to this finished cowl because it should be big and cuddly, even though I am a little short on yardage so I will probably only be able to do nine cable repeats instead of the ten called for in the pattern.



I am using Socks that Rocks Heavyweight in the Star Sapphire colorway. I have had this yarn kicking around my stash since May of 2008 so I thought it was high time that I used it for something. The downside of having a stash is that I am often distracted by the lovely, new yarns that I buy and I forget that I have some awesome yarns hiding in my yarn cabinet. So, fellow crafters, remember to show a little love to the deep stash ever now and then!

Let's keep the FO train going

I finished another cowl. I made a Donner Pass cowl in Another Crafty Girl's Squishy Aran base in the Punky Brewster colorway. You may be wondering if I have other yarns in my stash, and I do, but right now I am just very inspired by the stuff from Another Crafty Girl.



It doesn't photograph very well but here is the best closeup I could get of all the gorgeous colors.



Any suggestions on my next project? Do you find yourself getting stuck in project phases repeating one type of item over and over until the phase burns out and you move on to something else?

I'm on a roll!

I finished another KAL!!! I'm on fire. Not actual fire, but just as exciting...but you know, way less painful. I finished a Single Men Cowl by Laura Linneman or as you may know her, LaLa of The KnitGirllls. I made it out of Another Crafty Girl's Squishy Aran in the Kermit the Frog inspired colorway. It is fabulous and lives up to its name: squishy! I think the bright greens will look fantastic with the brown corduroy coat that I sometimes wear in the winter. The brown coat is a little tatty on the cuffs but I've had it since college and I just can't seem to let it go.




The KAL is for the Super Summer Knitogether (SSK) retreat that I will be attending this summer. 

Now I just have to figure out what to knit next. It seems like cowls are working out well for me so I'm off to look through patterns on Ravelry.

FO FTW

...or for those not into acronyms, finished object for the win! I finally finished a KAL. I completed the Herringbone Cowl that I was knitting as part of Another Crafty Girl's Muppet KAL.



I used the recommended bind-off and it makes the bound off edge a little floppy and ruffly. I probably could have done a regular bind-off since I cast on more stitches than the pattern called for to make sure that it wouldn't be too snug so I didn't need a lot of stretch in the bound-off edge. Oh well, it was my first time using Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off so I have added a new skill to my knitting arsenal.

Now, what to cast on next?

Happy Doldrums

I just love a project that offers near instant gratification and the Doldrums Cowl by Laura Linneman (co-host of TheKnitGirllls video podcast) fit the bill nicely.



It only took a couple of hours to knit & I'm actually looking forward to winter so I can wear it. I used two skeins of Mirasol Sulka, a bulky weight yarn that have been kicking around in the stash since March of 2008. I decided that I needed to find a quick project to kick-start my knitting mojo which stalled when I ran out of time to finish the scarf I was making for the March KAL.

While I was poking around trying to find a project, I discovered a couple of knitting books that need to go to a good home.





I  just don't see myself making any projects out of the books. So here is the deal, if you would like either book (or both), just leave a comment by April 25th letting me know which book(s) you are interested in. If there is more than one person that wants a book, I'll draw for a winner. If no one leaves a comment by April 25th, the books will be donated to the Books to Prisoners charity.

Are you an innie or an outie?

I am still working on my scarf for the Knitting Blooms March Madness Challenge. The scarf is about 22 inches long (unblocked) and I still have 60 grams of yarn left in ball so I am less than halfway through the yarn and I have until Friday night to finish it. I really would like to finish this KAL on time but I don't know if I will. I was hoping to spend a lot of time knitting on the scarf while I was on vacation but that didn't happen. I took my knitting with me but failed to knit even one stitch and I'm okay with that.



I think the feather and fan stitch was a good choice for this yarn. I haven't decided if I am going to do a hard block on the scarf to open the stitch up as much as possible or if I'm just going to let it dry naturally which will emphasize the ridges. I'm leaning toward the ridges. You can find all the scarf details on my Ravelry project page.

Now that I've talked a bit about the project, I'll get to the point of this post. When you wind your yarn into a center-pull cake, do you pull the yarn from the center (innie) or pull the yarn from the outside of the cake (outie). Normally, I pull from the center but for some reason I decided to pull from the outside when I started knitting on this project. Here's the thing...it doesn't feel like I am making any sort of progress when I look at the ball of yarn.



I started off with 108 grams and the ball is down to 60 grams but it just doesn't seem to be smaller. I know that if I put this ball next to a 100 gram ball it will look smaller but without a point of reference, it seems like I am knitting and knitting and knitting and the ball isn't getting any smaller. I had no idea how much I relied on visual cues to feel a sense of knitting accomplishment. I know the scarf is getting longer but unless I start using stitch markers to track my progress I won't be getting visual feedback every time I knit because it takes several knitting sessions before the scarfs looks longer.

However, there are some definite pluses to being an outie. I haven't had the yarn tangle at all which happens occasionally when I use the yarn from the middle. Also, when the project is finished, any leftover yarn is will still be in a nice yarn cake instead of being collapsed into a pile that has to be wound into a ball.

So, my fellow knitters, are you an innie or an outie? Do you have a definite opinion one way or the other? Shout it out in the comments.