Category: knitwear design

Summing up 2022

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I know that there are many people who doesn’t like new year’s resolutions but as for me, they keep me focused on my goals, so I always do a year-in-review post in January. Here is the one to sum up this past year.

I have written about my resolutions for 2022 in details in this post, but here they are in bullet points:

  1. Clear yarn stash
  2. Buy new yarn thoughtfully
  3. Keep consistency in posting content
  4. Keep learning
  5. Publish designs that are half-ready

And this is how I managed:

Clear yarn stash

With this one I was quite successful. I have written a post about it when I started. Since then I progressed, and I even managed to select even more yarn that I would like to clear from my stash – these were all superwash merino yarns and anything heavier than sport weight (my true aim was to eliminate needles 3.75 mm / US 5 and above).

I started with the bulkiest yarn in my stash, which was the leftovers from Drops Andes. Originally I wanted to knit two sweaters for my two kids but then I realized that probably I don’t have enough yarn for two smaller sweaters so I knitted a third Autumn sweater (pattern by Nazilia Zemdikhanova) in my size:

I know that my color choices are not the best but I have had to work with what I had:

… and at least I have cleared every last bit of the leftovers. With this I managed to clear all super bulky yarn from my stash, so I am very happy. I still need to hide yarn ends and wet block this one.

Next ones on my list were the Drops Big Merino leftovers. I separated them by color: I made a group of mostly pinks and another of greens, blues and greys. I chose a free sweater pattern from the Garnstudio website (RAV link to pattern is Little Missy) for the first group in my daughter’s size. I had to make a few modifications to the pattern, but it turned out well:

This one needs the finishing touches, too. I still have to figure it out what to do with the other group of Big Merinos. They are not enough to knit a sweater so I will have to find a suitable hat and/or scarf pattern for them, but I am on it.

I had a ton of Drops Cotton Merinos too, which I wanted to clear, and I decided to knit sweaters for myself with them:

Both of these are La Maison Rililie’s patterns, the first one is La GeKka, the second one is Rhombing Around. I don’t have much to say about these, perfect patterns from Rililie as they usually are, I really enjoyed knitting. As to my own color choices: again, I have had to work with what I had, so if we take this into account, they are fine and I wear them at home really often because they are so comfy (they are too colorful for me to wear them outside of my home – but that is my only concern).

I also used up a bunch of leftovers for my Summer of Socks project, in which I knitted quite a few pairs of socks as farewell gifts for the teachers in my son’s kindergarten.

There was a yarn swap in November in Budapest, organized by Kis Kos Műhely, and I also managed to sell/exchange a few unneeded skeins of yarn there, so that was a success, too.

Buy new yarn thoughtfully

This was a success, too. I have purchased a few skeins of yarns this year, but all of them with a special project in mind, most of them have already been used up:

I purchased sweater quantities of Holst Garn Coast for some Hyggestrik T-shirt patterns, one of them is already finished:

The name of the pattern is Hor11. The pattern and the yarn both are fantastic, but I was swearing quite a lot while knitting. I will never choose a black yarn for such a huge project again (I had to knit the 5XL size to get my size, since the yarn was much lighter than the one used in the pattern originally).

Later I purchased some Rosarios4 Balada for another version of La Maison Rililie’s La GeKka (actually this was the first one, but I liked it so much that I decided to knit another from the Cotton Merino leftovers…).

Then I had to order some Cumbria Fingering from The Fibre Co. to be able to finish my Congrats sweater by Ankestrick. The colorway I was knitting the body was discontinued (of course…) by the time I got to the sleeves, so i had to order a different color but I like it anyways…

I bought a sweater quantity of Retrosaria Mondim yarn, which I haven’t used up yet, but I will need them for my Design #2 project for the second Module of the TKGA Knitwear Designer Course. I should not knit a sample but I have never designed an adult size sweater and I am sure it would be fun to wear my own design, so I think I will knit one for myself as soon as I am ready with the pattern.

I also shouldn’t have knitted a sample for Design #1 -which is a pair of socks for me- but I had the same thoughts, so I ordered some skeins of Filcolana Arwetta and knitted a pair from my own sock pattern:

And at last but not least I have swapped a few skeins of sock and sweater yarns at the yarn swap, and I have already knitted up the sweater quantity yarn:

This one is Smoke by Ankestrick. Again, this was a project that took me a long time because of the black yarn… but it was worth every minute, because I love this sweater. By the way, the yarn is Barka Malom, which is already discontinued.

Now I am now down to 6 small boxes of yarn stash compared to 7 small boxes and 4 large boxes (which are double the size of the small ones – so it was about the size of 15 small boxes altogether) that I was at by the end of 2021. In a year, I managed to reduce my stash almost to its third, which is good, but I will continue stash busting in 2023 because I have further reducing plans – I will share them in the next post.

From the yarn that I exchanged for money at the yarn swap, I purchased a Chiaogoo Twist Interchangeable Small Set, and for Christmas I got a MUUD Stockholm case to hold the interchangeable needles, so all in all I am very proud of myself of not spending a fortune on knitting.

As to the other 3 resolutions (to keep consistency in posting, keep learning and to publish my half-ready designs), I was not at all successful, but that is because of personal reasons. A lot have happened in my personal life in 2022 that turned my life upside down again and again (I had to face that I have ADHD, we had to make a lot of work around the house that we hadn’t been planning on, I got married, I had my first and last name changed officially which is causing me a whole lot of troubles right now and we are in the process of finding a school for our daughter with ASD, which seems to be a much complicated job than I was hoping for…), so I had to put my study and work plans on hold for a while. Hopefully I can deal with them in 2023. Anyways, what I have learned in 2022 was that I shouldn’t be expecting too much of myself and I have to accept that I can’t do designing as a full time job. I am able to publish only 1-2 designs per year.

There is one more thing I would like to share with you in this post, and it is that I have finally earned the “Star Seller” badge on Etsy in December, so I couldn’t be more proud! I would like to thank all of you, who purchased a pattern from me because it is you who made it happen! You mean the world to me and I hope you stay with me here for my future knitwear design adventures as well!

I wish you a wonderful 2023 full of knitting and yarn!

Mici

A summer of socks

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I wasn’t considering myself as a sock-knitter until this summer (I have knitted a few pairs over the years but I gifted them all), honestly, now I don’t know why. It is probably the second sock syndrome, as they call it… but I think I have a more possible explanation.

I am a really anxious person, even the simplest things can make me very nervous (like answering phone calls or going to a hair dresser for a hair cut – and I could continue all day long with the weird things…) but I have a way to overcome these worries: I am overstimulating them until they are gone. For example when I got my first company car, I had a fear about parking in reverse speed. So I decided that I would park in reverse every morning for 30 days (that was so successful, I still park like that anytime I can ever since). This method is obviously not working with all my fears (like the hair cut -thing…) but it is a good way to cope with most of them. And I realized over the years that overstimulating helps not only with my fears but any other things that I don’t particularly like or understand. Practicing, doing things over and over help me obtain a deeper knowledge, a better understanding, which can result in changing my mind about certain topics that I formerly didn’t like.

I believe this could be the case with sock knitting, too. That is why I went from not being a huge fan of hand knitted socks to reading books about them and designing my own sock pattern in 2 months. But let’s not jump that far ahead.

It all started this spring when I realized that my son goes to 1st grade of school in September, and we urgently needed a few special farewell gifts to his teachers in kindergarten. So I thought it would be a great idea to knit a pair of socks for each of them. I considered this as a chance to immerse myself in the world of socks. I was also lucky enough to have a local yarn fair organized in Budapest in May, where I could meet with awesome Hungarian indie dyers and manage to get my hands on a few skeins for my project.

My first project was the “Kávés zokni”, which is a fantastic Hungarian cooperation by Szila (@szilacreativedesign on Instagram) as the designer, and Adri (@yarndreamstextiles on Instagram) the yarn dyer. I really love how these socks turned out:

Then I started to knit another pair designed also by a Hungarian designer, Zsuzsa (@zsuzsanna.orthodoxou on Instagram), called Melissa Socks (available on Ravelry: by clicking here) with using another one of Adri’s yarns.

I soon realized that I may not have enough yarn for 2 pairs of these socks (I wanted to make 2 pairs for some reason) but I really liked how the color changes of the yarn affect the stitch pattern, so I decided to rip it out and revert the pattern to toe-up (the Melissa Socks are originally cuff-down). Now, this challenge meant some exploration in the world of socks… which resulted in me ordering and reading books about sock knitting… :

But at the end it was all worth it, I was very satisfied with the result (yes, they are knitted with different size needles, and one pair is a tiny bit smaller than the other but it was on purpose…):

The next project was very exciting, too, because I have never used self-striping yarn before. I have met Dóri (@dodekadyeworks on Instagram) at the yarn fair in May, too. I wanted to purchase some Lykke circulars from her but as we were talking, my eyes kept on focusing on a skein of yarn dyed by her, because I really liked the colors. So this one came home with me too. The project was quick and simple but very satisfying (I have added some dark brown color as contrast of a leftover Cascade Heritage Sock yarn to the toes, heel and cuff):

Actually I liked these ones so much, I knitted another pair, which became my first pair of socks knitted for myself.

The next 2 pairs were Rye by Tin Can Knits (pattern available from here) and A Good Nights Work by Bitta Mikkelborg (pattern available from here), both knitted with some hand dyed leftover yarn (all three colors are the same sport weight – and discontinued – yarn, which I don’t remember what they are called because I seem to have lost the labels):

And the last ones were the Woodland Walk Socks by Olivia from This Handmade Life (her pattern available here), knitted with some Schoeller+Stahl sock yarn:

My Summer of Socks project would have been over with this one as I now had a pair of socks for each teacher and even one for myself. But it would have been a denial of myself not to try to design a pair of child socks as a closure for this project… so this is what I came up with (the model on the second photo is my 6 year old daughter):

The yarn I used was Cascade Heritage Silk.

Summing up this project: I am really happy that I have created this little challenge for myself, as I learnt a lot about sock knitting and designing. I still don’t think I will be designing socks for GK in the near future, but I have definitely learnt how to love to knit them, and I am sure I will knit some more for myself. Until then, I return to designing garments for children, and by next time I will be able to show you what I am working on right now!

Happy Knitting!

Mici

A rock falling from my shoulders

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Finally I have submitted the material for Module 1 of the TKGA Knitwear Designer Course. It was a hard decision. I was about ready for a while but each time I went through the documents, I found something that I didn’t like, so I had to rewrite and change things over and over. Finally I reached a point where I had to admit to myself that I am running in circles and I need fresh eyes to tell me if things need further improvement or correction… so I took a deep breath and sent all materials in. I didn’t have to wait long until my instructor, Donna Estin reviewed the documents and sent her suggestions back to me.

She is fantastic, by the way. I am quite an introvert person, I hardly ever ask for help and haven’t got any self-confidence, but she made me feel safe all through Module 1 – I hope it makes sense, I try and explain it further. Raising a child with ASD is not easy. Top that with all the madness happening around us nowadays with the pandemic, the war, the collapse of the economy and the constant fear of the future, and you get that designing (and knitting) is my only happy place, where I can return to anytime I need a few hours to get away from the world (and I am sure I am not the only one designer in this shoe…). But this also means that it is very fragile. Every negative comment or critic can hurt (even if they are justifiable). What I like the most about Donna (apart from her high level of knowledge and enthusiasm) is that she corrects me without hurting me. This is why I feel safe to be myself and make mistakes.

I am really glad I started to take this course, I have learnt so many things already, and most of it was about myself. I have a clear vision about where I want to head with GK, now I only have to figure out how I am going to achieve that. It will be a slow process for sure, but I am starting now.

The hardest part was time management and dealing with procrastinating. The research for the material was very interesting but also very time consuming, especially compared to the progress that I visibly made with the material. Sometimes I felt I am working on my research night and day but I am not making any progress, so from time to time I set everything course-related aside to be able to concentrate on other things as well. But obviously this meant that I haven’t made any progress at all during these pauses, and it was really hard to convince myself to return to work on the research later. And the longer I was ignoring my research, the harder it was to pick up the thread again, so I quickly found myself in a vicious circle.

When I got the final letter about passing Module 1, I was relieved and excited at the same time. It is a sign to me that sometimes I have to take the courage and break my own limits. I enrolled immediately in Module 2 before this energy boost goes away and I sink back into self doubt… 🙂

In the meantime, I was working on quite a number of WIPs, too, which I am planning to show you in my next post. Until then:

Happy Knitting!

Mici