The first thing I noticed is that the goal I set—to knit only from my stash—may not have been the right one. What I really wanted was to stop buying new yarn so that I could focus on knitting the yarn I already had; to favor the experience of knitting over the experience of acquiring. But I’m also a firm believer that goals should be quantifiable (you can much more objectively assess your progress toward a goal like “Lose 10 pounds” than toward fuzzy goals like “Lose weight” or “Get healthier”). The way I quantified my goal was to set limits on what I was knitting. But in hindsight, knitting only from my stash doesn’t really preclude me from buying a bunch of pretty yarn and just stashing it and not knitting with it. Which is kind of the behavior I was trying to curtail in the first place, right? My problem isn’t that I buy new yarn and use it right away; my problem is that I buy yarn that I don’t immediately knit with, and then it just sits around and accumulates.

Remember these pretties from last year? Yeah, I still haven’t knit any of them.

Interestingly, the goal I actually tracked progress toward during the year was yardage in vs. yardage out: to end the year with fewer yards of yarn than I started with. One could argue that this goal is somewhat problematic, since 1000 yards of aran weight is quite different than 1000 yards of laceweight; but you gotta start somewhere, and I joined this great stashbusting group that maintains a spreadsheet where you can track quarterly yardage in/out, so that’s what I did. I think this method ultimately gets me closer to what I wanted, since knitting more and buying less both contribute to this goal.

In the first half of the year I was killing it. I traded or gave away over 2700 yards of yarn that I didn’t really like, and knit up 2600 more yards, including a sweater. I acquired a few skeins of sock yarn as souvenirs at Stitches West (OMG THAT MARKETPLACE IS AMAZING) and the Edinburgh Yarn Festival, but I was still solidly net negative in yardage. Then over the summer I had some crafting angst—it seemed like everything I was working on became challenging and frustrating—and I retreated into the safety of some mindless crochet. For which I purchased 2100 yards of crochet thread. It’s tempting to tell myself that didn’t count, since it’s only three balls and they take up so little space; but whatever. I bought them.

Knit Picks Curio crochet thread

Then in Q4 I just got splurge-y, buying some Tolt Washington Targhee (“It was limited edition!”), 1250 yards of sock yarn that I still haven’t knit up (“They were donating a percentage to Standing Rock!”), and winning a 2000 yard gradient kit during the #knitterspayitforward wave of giveaways after the presidential election. (That one I don’t regret at all. It felt so good, at a time when many of us needed something to feel good about.)

This Targhee yarn is soooo buttery and squooshy. (Have I knit with it yet? No.)

So, all told: 6500 yds out, 9500 yds in, for a net gain of 3000 yds in 2016. Sigh. Of the 13 projects I completed, 9 were knit from stash (yarn I’d owned at the beginning of the year). I guess that’s not a home run, but it’s at least second base, right?

And did I learn anything? Well, that it’s harder than it looks. I learned that sometimes it feels good just to knit some random thing (to use up yarn) even if I don’t immediately know who or what it’s for. It’s hard to be super emotionally invested in the outcome of every project, especially when they go wrong. I definitely strengthened my “resisting temptation” muscles. And I think that destashing is an ongoing skill/mindset one can build, not just a one-time event. So I’ll continue to look for ways to incorporate it into my life.

Fun fact: You can make a pinhole camera out of just about anything, including your hand. This is last weekend’s eclipse, as experienced in Port Townsend, WA.

There’s a good argument to be made that this week is the first time I’ve really had “down time” in 2017. As I mentioned in January, my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in late 2016. Just a couple days after writing that, I flew back to Wisconsin to be with him during a medical procedure, and basically stayed there until he died in June. I came back to Seattle in July and immediately went to work on a couple tech editing projects, including a pattern collection for Tolt Yarn and Wool‘s fourth anniversary (presumably this isn’t a spoiler, since they’ve published an anniversary collection for the last two years. Mark your calendars: their anniversary party is on October 28!). When that was done, there was last-minute planning to be done for a party/retreat my husband and I hosted last weekend in the Olympic Peninsula to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. We got back home on Monday afternoon, and this week… I finally just got to breathe, and relax, and reflect a bit without constantly having to look forward to the next task.

Throughout it all, of course, my knitting has been with me. It has brought me comfort, and it has brought me angst. My dad was in the hospital for three weeks in January, and I spent a lot of time sitting by his bedside, so naturally I brought a project. I knit two sleeves and three panels (back + two fronts) of a cardigan from that lovely YOTH Yarns gradient kit I have, and it became my Cancer Dad Sweater: I swatched assiduously and CustomFit the pattern and, despite my past struggles with sweaters, was determined that it would come out beautifully and would always be a memento of that time spent with my dad.

Then I blocked it, and this happened:

The dark yarn bled across the sky blue gradient, on all the pieces. I was devastated. Even moreso because I should have known; I know about Shout Color Catchers, and I probably let it soak for too long, and I should have known (I do know!) that indie-dyed yarn has a tendency to do this, especially with dark colors. But it happened, and there was no going back (I couldn’t recapture those weeks spent in the hospital), so I put it in a drawer and tried to forget it ever happened and spent a week being really angry about hand knitting. I shouldn’t have to deal with this crap. I should be able to buy a color and expect that it stays that color. I shouldn’t have to worry about wearing a white t-shirt under a hand-dyed sweater because it’s likely to “crock” and stain the shirt. Why do I spend all this time and love on projects that demand so much of me, that require such fastidious treatment? This is clearly a stupid hobby and a waste of my time. I should just buy store-bought clothes that I can wash and wear and not worry about.

For the rest of my time in Wisconsin, I retreated into sock knitting. Tolt Yarn and Wool is promoting sock knitting this year, and I was thrilled to be featured on their blog this spring answering a few questions about my sock knitting habit. As I mentioned there, socks are—for me—the “comfort food” of knitting. They ask very little of me, and provide reliable satisfaction. So I took a field trip to the KnitCircus studio and cranked out three pairs of socks in Wisconsin, another one in July, and have three more in progress as we speak. Clearly I’m feeling a need for things to go right in my life, and sock knitting is the way to make that happen.

Improvised pattern in White Birch Fiber Arts self-striping 80/20; Vinnland and Zigzagular Socks in KnitCircus Trampoline.

I can tell I’m feeling a bit more equilibrium lately, though, because this week I cast on something other than a sock: Jared Flood’s classic Rock Island shawl, which I’ve admired for years. We’ll see how it goes.

After my dad died, my brother and I took a road trip to spread some of his ashes in Lake Superior. My dad was born on Lake Huron and always loved camping and traveling around the Great Lakes. We drove up to one of his favorite campgrounds in the UP, sprinkled him in the lake, and it felt very right to watch him slowly dissolve into the waves. Although I would’ve loved to have had him around for twenty more years, I feel really at peace with his death, and it’s nice to imagine him up there in his “comfort zone.” Now I have some time to work on refinding my own.

We overnighted at Trout Lake in the Upper Peninsula, just south of Lake Superior. It’s in the middle of nowhere, but I highly recommend the Birch Lodge for its tranquility and homemade muffins.

Dad’s ashes on the lakeshore before their dispersal. His can fit perfectly in the car’s cupholder and I tried to convince my brother that maybe we should just let him hang out in the car with us for a few years—the man did love a road trip—but Joe wasn’t having any of it.

2016 was, in many ways, one of the best years of my life. I continue to be retired / unemployed / self-employed / a housewife (none of those labels seem quite right!), which has been an amazing gift and privilege. I finally have the time and energy to not just dream longingly about what I want to do and who I want to be, but to actually put it into practice. One of my big focuses in 2016 was on doing tangible things to help those around me and to make the world a better place, and I felt really fulfilled by that work. I continued my volunteer work with the Threshold Choir and my correspondence with prison inmates; became a volunteer driver for the American Cancer Society; and sang in two Street Requiem benefit concerts (Seattle and NYC) to raise awareness and funds to help homeless people. I traveled the country to take care of family members, including a 1300 mile road trip from Michigan to Florida with my snowbird grandma, and (what will probably be the first of many) trips to Wisconsin to help my dad through his recent cancer diagnosis. I also took an Arabic class, became a godmother, continued my tech editing work for Tolt Yarn and Wool, and got my first editing contract for Interweave. Throw in near-monthly traveling, and by the end of the year I was exhausted, but also very fulfilled. I feel like I’ve found my niche, and I basically want to keep doing what I’m doing.

Obligatory photo of my goddaughter, Ada!

Ironically, when I look back at my resolutions for 2016, I didn’t accomplish most of them. Finish three sweaters? Only finished one. Lose 20 lbs? Nope. Blog more often? Ha! But those didn’t end up being the things that mattered. And in thinking about resolutions for this year, I realized that the purpose of New Year’s resolutions is to steer yourself from the life you currently have toward the life you want to have. They’re about change. So what do you do if you already have the life you want? Just resolve to be grateful and stay the course?

One area where I do see room for improvement is in my knitting. 2016 felt full of knitting frustration: seemingly every project ran into a roadblock, had to be frogged, or I found myself avoiding it because I was at a decision point that required active thought, research, trial-and-error. I never had anything mindless to bring to knit group, and every time I traveled I struggled with which project to pack, feeling certain that I would come to a stumbling point halfway through the week and would then be knitting-less until I could get back home to my full set of tools.

Frogging was a pretty common feature of 2016.

After some reflection, I think this is because I went off-script a lot. I felt confident enough in my knitting skills that I was knitting a lot of things without a pattern, or making significant modifications to the patterns, or re-trying things that I’d been unable to make work in the past (like trying to modify a short-row heel to fit my high instep). 11 of the roughly 21 projects I worked on were either improvised (no pattern), or I modified the pattern. Sometimes I succeeded, but often I struggled. I’m not ready to say that it’s because I lack the skills, but going into 2017, I’m going to keep that in mind: if I do choose to go off-book, I may be opening myself up for some frustration. With that lopapeysa sleeve, for example, I was trying to modify a yoke pattern that was written for Álafoss Lopi (bulky weight) into a sweater knit with Léttlopi (aran weight). I’ve frogged it twice now, so I think I need to accept that it’s not working and just choose a yoke pattern written for Léttlopi. Luckily there are approximately a billion, so I should be able to find one I like.  

So here’s to 2017: may it bring me stress-free knitting, and insight and fulfillment to all of us.  <3

My top Instagram photos from 2015

If you’ve followed my blog for any amount of time you know that I love the new year, as a time of personal reflection and of fresh starts. Today I’m reflecting on my 2015 crafting, looking at what I liked and what I wish I’d done differently, to help me plan for a fun and productive 2016.

The first thing that strikes me when I look at the knitting I completed in 2015 is how few projects there were. Only 13??! And two of them are hats that only took a couple days? I have it in my head that I knit way more than this (no wonder my stash is growing!). I did spend most of the summer quilting, so that accounts for some “lost time,” but this is a useful thing to know given that I have a knitting queue with 20+ items in it (all of which I already have the yarn for, many of which are sweaters). Probably not going to accomplish all of that in 2016…

Summer seemed like the perfect time for piecing this baby quilt.

Looking at dates, it seems I also spent a lot of time on my Wellwood sweater, which is no surprise since it’s knit in fingering-weight yarn on US 2.5 (3 mm) needles. I signed up for Amy Herzog’s October sweater retreat and swore I would finish one sweater by then, and by gosh I did, although I was still weaving in some ends during the retreat. I’m really proud of the workmanship on this sweater, although there are some things I’m not thrilled with about the fit; which is why the next sweater I make will use Amy’s CustomFit system, since I don’t want to put another four months into a sweater I’m not thrilled with. #lessonlearned

Don’t tell anyone, but I clipped this sweater in the back while taking photos so that the waist would look more fitted!

One project I was really proud of was finally finishing this sweater. I started it in 2012 and was never quite happy with the waist shaping or the way it fit around the hips. So after years of it sitting awkwardly in a drawer with the idea that “someday I’d fix it,” I finally frogged it up to the armpits and re-knit it. It feels really good to have fixed something that I was never really happy with, instead of either wearing it and continuing to be unhappy with it, or letting it sit around unworn. I have another sweater in a similar situation—problematic collar and button bands—and I’m sure it would feel great to fix it in 2016.

I finally dismembered this sweater after 3+ years. It was pretty good (and I wore it), but the waist shaping always bothered me, and I’m finally ready to fix it. Wish me luck!

photo posted by Susan Moskwa (@susanmoskwa) on Aug 31, 2015 at 1:06pm PDT

Quilting-wise, my biggest accomplishment was finishing a roughly queen-sized quilt. I made it as a gift for a friend and it’s by far the most ambitious thing I’ve sewn so far. I did send it out for quilting because of its size, which I don’t regret, but it did make me think about how I’d like to get more quilting practice next year on my own machine. The baby quilt above should be manageable, and I’ve got a few placemats on the back burner that I may practice some free-motion quilting on.

Finally finished! Full bed size. Quilted by @itsjustsewing (West Seattle Fabric Co). Biggest quilt I’ve ever made; going in the mail tomorrow. #quilt #quilting #handmade

photo posted by Susan Moskwa (@susanmoskwa) on Jul 16, 2015 at 7:44pm PDT

So what should I take away from all this? One thing is that I’d like to be more intentional about how I spend my free time. I should be able to finish more than 13 knitting projects in a year, especially if I spent less time doing forgettable things like playing solitaire. I also want to build my handmade sweater wardrobe, so I’m hoping that trying CustomFit will help in that arena; and I’ve learned that if I’m not wearing a sweater, there’s probably a reason why, and I should either fix it or learn from it. For example, I don’t wear most of my pullovers because I change temperature too much during the day (I’m constantly taking them off and on and off again), so I’m learning to only queue cardigans.

Lastly, this was my first year on Instagram, and I’ve really enjoyed seeing everyone’s crafty photos and trying to be better about documenting my own projects. (The photography is still my least favorite part.) So thanks for all your likes, and for inspiring me with your work, and I can’t wait to see what y’all make in 2016!

Knit Picks Stroll (Duchess Heather & White), Felici (Surf’s Up & Countess), and Capretta (Regal, Cream, Platinum & Thicket)

A trend that’s really caught my fancy this year is gradient yarns and kits. For the last several years there were just a handful of people dyeing slow-change gradient yarns in single skeins; but this year it seems like tons of indie dyers are selling kits with mini-skeins of several solids that you can put together to form a gradient. I’ve been coveting them for some time, and finally splurged on a set of gradient “puppies” from YOTH Yarns at the Knit Fit marketplace. Danny (YOTH’s “little brother”) made the excellent recommendation of pairing the ‘Cracked Pepper’ colorway with my blues, and all of a sudden I had a sweater’s quantity in my bag. Oops, how did that happen?!    I’m thinking of making something similar to Dorie’s gradient sweater, although I’m open to suggestions.

Big Sister yarn from YOTH Yarns

So I’m plump with yarn for the new year. But I’ve also been cranking out Christmas gifts, so there should be some space for the new arrivals. Since they’re a surprise until the 25th, all you get is a sneak peek for now:

I’ve got exciting colors. I’ve got cashmere blends and silk blends and nice rustic wools. I’ve got sweater quantities that I can’t wait to see knit up.

Marrakesh (70% silk, 30% camel); Bonnie’s Bamboo (100% bamboo); Spirit (55% Cormo wool, 45% alpaca. I can’t tell you how wonderfully squishable this yarn is!)

And yet I’ve had some of these things for years. Why haven’t I used them? Certainly not because I don’t love them. I wouldn’t say I’m a crazy yarn hoarder, but somehow I pick up a skein here and a skein there often enough that I’m accumulating (a.k.a. stashing) as much as I’m knitting. So I’ve decided, in 2016, to knit only from my stash.

I’ve already learned a few things about yarn buying since I started knitting. For one, there will always be more yarn on sale. I used to always fall for sales because it seemed smart to buy yarn preemptively, when it was on sale, instead of later finding that I needed something and having to buy it at full price. But it turns out that my purchases rarely matched up with what I actually wanted at that hypothetical later date; so these days I try not to buy anything without having a specific project in mind for it. The takeaway: buy for projects, not for stash.

This series on stashing less also articulated a lot of my current thoughts about buying yarn (and fabric). She talks a lot about being more mindful and intentional about what one buys and uses, which are skills I’d like to practice. My goal is to favor the experience of knitting over the experience of acquiring, at least for a year. (If I were really strict I would start immediately, but I like the symmetry of starting in the new year. Plus I’m too consumed with Christmas gift knitting.) So for now I’m laying the groundwork:

• I joined this Stashdown group. They say that having people to hold you accountable is a good way to stick with a goal, right? There are several different stashbusting groups on Ravelry, but I picked this one because I liked the prompts they use (“Q3: Refocus & recommit.” “Q4: Finish strong!”), and the fact that they maintain a spreadsheet where you can track and compare your yardage in vs. yardage out with other stashbusters.
• I unsubscribed from 14 Ravelry boards that I basically never look at. This isn’t directly related to yarn stashing, but it felt like a way of clearing away old clutter, refocusing on the things that matter to me, and being more intentional about how I spend my time online.
• I also unsubscribed from the Little Knits email newsletter. They have such good deals that it’s one of the hardest emails to resist; I haven’t bought from them in awhile, but I open every email prepared to see a sale that I can’t say no to. So I decided to remove the temptation. I’ll admit, though, that I’m not yet ready to unsubscribe from the Knit Picks newsletter.  :-\

I wouldn’t have gotten this cute project bag if I weren’t getting the Knit Picks newsletter…

For the record, here’s my stash as of today. Let’s see how much I can chip away by this time next year!

I’ve been using the icons that came with my website theme, but they didn’t have a Ravelry icon so I had to make my own, which was pretty ghetto if you looked at it up close. (Manipulating images is not my strong point.) I also wanted to add an email subscription link, and a Pinterest link since I’ve started using Pinterest for quilt stuff. So this week I spent an inordinate amount of time looking for icon sets that would look good with my website, and that included the services I use.

The three finalists were this icon set by Kirsten of Craftiments, this icon set by HB Design, and this set by Pancake Ninja. In the end I went with the Pancake Ninja icons because I liked their aesthetic—somewhere between polished and handmade—and because the color goes perfectly with my site design.

The set includes a blank icon, so I was even able to make my own Google+ icon with the help of this tutorial. If you have a favorite set of icons for crafty folks—y’know, Ravelry, Pinterest, Etsy, that sort of thing—let me know in the comments!

1. The Great Big Stitched Postcard Swap

I just signed up for this. This site (Do What You Love) will assign you a partner, and you’ll each make a handmade postcard and send them to each other. The card should include some sort of stitching, and this year’s theme is “Create.” You can see postcards from previous years to get your ideas flowing. Here are a couple cute ones on the theme “Celebrate”:

by Ursula

by Shannon

2. Writers are the worst procrastinators.

This article in The Atlantic really resonated with me. If you’ve ever experienced “imposter syndrome”—the idea that you’re not as good as your peers, and it’s only a matter of time before you’re found out—it may resonate with you, too. It’s not actually about the act of writing, but about the types of people who tend to become writers, and what we can learn from writer’s block:

The article talks about having a “fixed mind-set” vs. a “growth mind-set.” Developing a growth mind-set sounds key to feeling confident while learning new things. Which is important for us crafty types, right?

3. Responding to challenges with mindfulness

A conference presentation on mindfulness was interrupted by protestors. So what did the presenters do? They invited the audience to be mindful about what had just happened and how the protest had affected them. (Protest that!) I found this anecdote particularly interesting:

So here’s your challenge for the week: Take action on one of these things. Meditate for two minutes; learn more about the growth mind-set; practice a skill outside your area of expertise; or sign up to make a crafty postcard!

Prairie Stitches Quilt Shoppe

Our first stop was Prairie Stitches, a cute little storefront on an old-timey-looking Main Street in Oswego. I was kind overwhelmed because they had so much fabric. My local quilt shop is fairly small, but it’s cute and friendly and they carry the types of fabric I like (crisp modern prints in bold colors). Prairie Stitches had rooms and rooms of fabric and I kind of wandered around in an overwhelmed daze. (Becky kept saying, “Why aren’t you picking anything up? Pick some fabric!”) They had the Downton Abbey fabric collection on display, which I really liked, and an entire room full of Civil War era reproduction fabric in those muted vintage blues, creams, browns, reds. Eventually I picked a couple fat quarters from a “fabric with words” display (they had a vintage typewriter on the table, which is probably what sold me) and a couple black-and-white fat quarters.

A Quilter’s Paradise

Quilter’s Paradise, a.k.a. Roberts Sewing Center (I have no idea why they have two websites), had an even bigger selection of fabric than Prairie Stitches. They also had a ton of different types of thread, and lots of rulers and notions. Becky talked me into the cutters below, which are spring loaded so that it takes less exertion to cut than with a classic pair of scissors. I’ve also been hearing a lot about Aurifil thread (since I started following Alex Veronelli on Google+), so I picked up a couple spools to quilt a lap quilt I’m working on.

I got sucked into the black-and-white prints section, where I basically wanted to buy everything, but limited myself to three fat quarters. I’ve been dreaming about ideas for a black-and-white quilt ever since, maybe with some pops of red or yellow.

Quilter’s Quest

Our final stop was Quilter’s Quest. They had a really amazing selection of big, bold, bright prints (just what I like). I was afraid I’d get totally carried away given so much selection, so I decided to just shop their pre-cut fat quarters. But I guess my self control was waning, because I ended up buying 18 fat quarters. To make matters worse, I fell in love with this cute little print of eggs and chicks from the Locally Grown collection, and they had six different fat quarters from that same collection, all of which my aunt and her friend talked me into buying. They’re excellent enablers.  

Locally Grown fabric

So I basically doubled the size of my stash in one day. But it’s okay, because I love all my new fabric. This week I picked up a book of fat quarter quilt patterns, and I’m definitely on the lookout for more since I love buying quarters. Do you have any favorite patterns that use fat quarters?

photo by BazaarBizarreSF

Every year I make a few personal resolutions and a few knitting resolutions. In 2013 I only had one: To knit 10 projects from stash. I love my stash, but I felt like I was buying lovely yarn and then just letting it sit there, so I really wanted to get it out and use it. I define “stash” as anything I’ve owned for more than a year. And I met my resolution: I knit 11 projects from stash, which you can see here. I think my favorites were the Happypotamus, the Feather In My Cap hat (which I’ve wanted to make for ages), and this hat for my husband.

This year I have a few more resolutions:

• Knit 10 projects from stash. It worked so well last year…
• Finish 3 sweaters.
• Fix 2 projects that I’m unhappy with.
  I have a few projects—mostly sweaters—that have a small detail out of place, like the collar or the button band. It bugs me every time I wear them, so I want to finally bite the bullet and re-knit these sections.
• Enter something in a county or state fair.
  Who enters stuff in fairs? Have you ever entered something in a fair? It never occurred to me to do so, but I think I knit just as well as those grandmothers (or whoever these county-fair-submitters are). I’d like to see what the whole process is like, and see how my projects match up against others’.

What are your resolutions for 2014?