Hello all, Happy New Year! I can’t believe we’re already in 2023. I’m happy I can show my FINALLY finished object, a Christmas present I actually started making for Christmas 2021. As has happened in previous years, it got to roughly the 23rd of December and I realised I wasn’t going to finish it in time. So, despondently, I put away the yarn, the hook and the crocheted pieces, half-hoping I would do it for the next Christmas, and I actually managed it! I’d done about half of the project, and I didn’t restart it until the 15th of December 2022. I had been putting it off, like I do with most things. But I was determined to finish it. This was a big project, for me anyway, so it meant getting a little less sleep until Christmas. I finally finished it on Christmas Eve. It’s the Polar Book by @zenknit
_toys and it really is a brilliant pattern which is explained very clearly and includes video tutorials.
This is a sensory book with moving parts. I put bits of baking paper and bubble wrap inside some of the features like the whale tail, the fox tail etc. It’s not perfect because it was half a destash project, getting rid of yarn, so the yarn wasn’t all the same weight, but I am pretty proud of it. I only learnt amigurumi in 2020. I was so glad to finally offload this and gift it to my intended recipient, a lovely little girl. This project really helped me get the hang of colourwork and it has helped me with my current knitting project, the Noro Magazine Knitalong “A Voyage East”.
I will show my current progress on that in my next blog post, but for now I just wanted to share that it is challenging but I am enjoying it. Noro yarns are in very limited supply at the moment, possibly due to the knitalong. So I have substituted some of the colours. For Noro Solo 01 I am using Malabrigo’s 398 Rosalinda – 100% merino yarn – and it looks and feels absolutely gorgeous. It came vacuum-packed. Don’t you just love it when yarn comes vacuum-packed so when you cut it open you can see and feel it “puff up”? 😀
It came in a skein/hank which meant I had to wind it into a ball, and this was the first time I successfully managed it. BY MYSELF!
I actually fell asleep on my sofa while doing it and I must say, what a lovely way to fall asleep.
Yes I have another skein of it to wind but it’ll take me a while to get through this one, so I am happy to save the pleasure of that for later on in the project. I found Lia Griffith’s tutorial on YouTube realy helpful. By the way, I was wondering why yarn sometimes comes in skeins, so I went on Google and all I had typed was “why does yarn” and it immediately finished the question for me “…come in skeins”. Fascinating!
I am still working on my knitting needle holder. I cut out the fusible fleece for it. I had no idea which way to lay the fleece for cutting out and neither the pattern instructions nor Google were any help. So I did it all by laying out the fabric I am going to fuse it to, and putting the fleece on top of it, glue side down, as that is how I’ll be ironing it, and hopefully that’s correct.
Later today I am hoping to get on my sewing machine for the first time in 2023 to do some more of the sewing!
Hope you all have a better 2023 than 2022!
SheePearls 