No lie, last week WIPED ME OUT. Publishing and promoting my Merry Un-Birthday Hat was most of my week. I had been working on Merry Un-Birthday since JULY of 2020, I’m so happy that its been released into the wild. This also makes 17 YOP items completed since August!
Get the pattern FREE (rav link) until 11:59 EST on February 11th 2021 (using the code MerryUnbirthday on Ravelry)!! Just a small way I can help you celebrate your Un-Birthday!! There are video hyperlinks in the pattern, also a blog post with the links (here). And my very own YouTube channel, with videos of my hands and me saying “SO” A LOT. “So” is my filler word (as opposed to UMMM). Video creation and editing is something I DO NOT excel at; editing my tubular cast-on video was frustrating and tedious. But the original is over 16 minutes long with 11 of those minutes being even more repetitive and tedious than the editing. Through trial and error I was able to cut it down to just over 5!
In other exciting developments, I am starting the year with some destash projects (besides my long-brim Merry Un-Birthday Hat). My goal of using 100 balls of Stash Yarn for 2021 requires me to use 8.33 balls of yarn each month. I used 7 in January, slightly short of my goal, BUT I finished a shawl this morning that used 2. I’m at 9/100 for the year. I haven’t counted yarn from the pom-poms my daughter made this year, without weighing the finished pom-poms, I’m going to guess she used another 2-3 balls. I had a truly productive year last year, and I hope this year is much the same.
Yesterday I took a much needed day to do NOTHING except lounge around and knit/crochet. It snowed, so my plan of getting the rest of my daughter’s Girl Scout Cookies delivered didn’t happen. This LAZY day did afford me the opportunity to finish 2 hats.
Those hats are for a friend (and her toddler), the yarn I used (Premier Chunky) is somewhat bulkier than the StyleCraft Chunky I had based all my numbers off of. The external measurements are a bit larger, the interior measurements a touch smaller, and the stretch slightly diminished. HOWEVER, the recipients have head sizes on the the small end of the sizing range, so this is inconsequential. The hats will be EXTRA WARM for winter walks and general chilly weather cavorting. I’ll be adding faux-fur pom-poms once I get the hats washed. I also plan on making ANOTHER iteration of this hat in a yarns-held-double stash-busting possible fade style. I like super quick knits, and my community has people in need of cold weather gear EVERY year. Cold weather closets exist in most every school, please consider reaching out to your district’s community liaison, social worker, or school nurse to donate warm items to vulnerable members of your community.
In other news, I finished a crochet project!! I’ve made so few fingering weight crochet items, that this one is a big deal to me. I got myself a new Furls Odyssey Hook in a D(3.25 mm) recently, and wanted to make something really special. Enter STASH: The main body is Livin Vivid Yarn in the MCN fingering base colorway: Trance. Its a Merino, Cashmere, Nylon blend. Its really soft with a slight halo. My contrast is MadelineTosh Tosh Sock in Lepidoptra. Its a merino yarn with a PHENOMENAL stitch definition. The pattern is really simple, I’ll be adding to my free website patterns this month. I’ll be blocking this beauty once my new drying rack shows up.
Oh, and I finished these socks too. Not a YOP project, but a stash-busting project! They are warm and thick, perfect for around the house. Or inside your slightly too big winter boots. I don’t have a pattern for them, yet.
Ok. That’s it. I think that’s all the creating I did last week. That really was quite a lot. Until next time!
Miscellaneous Design Studio 
9 responses to “Year of Projects: Week 24”
A very merry unbirthday to you!
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OH thank you for the hat pattern!! I love it! Love your goal of knitting 100 balls of stash yarn. My goals have been item specific for the most part but I find your focus on stash balls interesting. You have some great speckle projects. I love speckle yarn.
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I’m not good with specific goals sometimes. I have a handful of specific things, but having an open-ended goal allows me to not need to constrain my creativity!
Unexpected splashes of color make my day, in knitting and in life. I tend to make a LOT of bright knits, hoping that maybe I’ll make some random person smile with my outlandish color choices against a stark winter backdrop.
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Oh, all the lovelies!! I am glad you were able to take a break after releasing your hat pattern. I think that is so important. Kind of like a mental palette cleanser. Don’t worry about saying ‘so’ a lot in your videos. I would rather that than some of the hyper-edited videos that I have watched. Keep at it and it will become more natural.
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Never fear, I have new patterns coming up. Not all of them are as interesting, texturally speaking.
Thank you for the confidence booster! My videos definitely have an amateur quality, and my perfectionist nature sometimes gets the best of my confidence. The reminder that practice makes proficient is timely!!
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Congratulations on the release of your new pattern. Now my husband is working from home I hear him saying ‘you know’ a lot, I do wonder what my go to phrase is. Feel free to add things to your YOP list as the year goes on, we all do. The 100 ball challenge sounds good. What did your daughter do with all the pom-poms?
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I didn’t realize my go to phrase was “So” until recently! I think I use it a lot in my causal writing as well. I guess its better than ummm or like? My YOP goals will get revised as soon as I hit 20 projects off my list and I re-write the whole thing to make it look “neater” (I am a notorious list re-writer). A lot of the projects are design pipeline projects, I have a head full of ideas…. which is annoying because I mentally create faster than I can physically make a tangible object.
My daughter is going to make a pom-pom wreath for her Granny. I am toying with the idea of crocheting a squirrel to add to it (my MIL really likes their yard squirrels).
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I have my YOP list page a a future project list too…I too can’t keep up with my ideas 😂
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The curse of a creative mind!
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