Hello everyone. Hope everyone’s had a great weekend – maybe in the US it’s not over yet for you if you have Indigenous People’s Day off – I don’t so I’ll be back to work tomorrow. Since it’s Sunday, I’m blogging about my Year of Projects updates. YoP is a Ravelry group of bloggers who plan their projects for the year and then blog about them. You can find my plans here.
FYI, a little later in this post I do have a spoiler for the WestKnits MKAL – the slipstravaganza shawl. If you’re following along, feel free to skip this post!
I had a pretty good week, capped off by an awesome birthday celebration for my best friend/ roommate yesterday. We went over to my other friend’s house and had an awesome outdoor fall-themed feast with apple cider mules, pumpkin dip, turkey chili, apple crisp, and hot apple cider. It was such a great time. My friend is the last of us to turn 30, and even though 2020 has somewhat limited the 30th celebrations we can have, the important part is that we are together for it, which we have been able to do.
Project wise, a lot of work was done on the Plush Sweater test knit. I finished the right back and have 20 more rows on the left back. This construction is so cool, I really love how the brioche will be going horizontally across the sweater. The City Tweed is super soft and I love the combo of the dark maroon and tweed. I think this will be a really awesome sweater.
Since this is a test knit with a deadline, I wanted to be able to be sure I was finishing on time, and so I made a slight enhancement to my normal sweater knitting Excel template. I added a few formulas to first determine the average # of stitches per day I needed when I started the sweater. And then I created a moving average, so each day as I fill in how many stitches I completed, it will tell me the new # stitches per day that I need. My goal is to hit at least that moving average every day. You can see I’ve done pretty well, I’ve already reduced the # of stitches I need per day by almost 200. I seriously love the nerdiness of this!
| Overall | Moving Avg | |||
| Days | 52 | Days left | 41 | |
| Total | 68,952 | Total left | 48,590 | |
| St pr day goal | 1,326 | St pr day goal | 1,185 | |
| % per day goal | 1.9% | % per day goal | 1.7% |
I’m also working on the Slipstravaganza MKAL by Stephen West, the first clue of which was released Friday. Stephen West has NO CHILL (150 st icord cast on?!) but I’m really liking how this is looking so far. I went back on forth on my color choices a few times but I think my final choices will look cool. I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep up week to week, as my focus will continue to be on the sweater, but if I can hit that moving average stitch goal I’ll probably put in a little work on it each day.
The other project I’ve been working on is a baking challenge put together by my friend from knitting club. We’re doing Great British Bake Off “weeks” with a recipe selected by her each week. The first week was pistachio rasberry custard cremes, last week was Sticky Toffee Apple Caramel Cakes, and this week I get to make foccacia! I’ve never considered myself much of a baker, but this challenge has been fun to expand my skills. For cake week, I made cupcakes and basically made apple pie filling to put inside them, so I still did a bit of improv which is what I love about cooking and why I generally don’t really bake!
We’re definitely entering a time where there won’t be too much to blog about because I will just slowly and steadily be making progress in these two big WIPs. I guess that’s the problem with sweaters and 5 skein shawls lol! Have a good week everyone.
Everything looks wonderful!
Well, we’ll enjoy watching as you work on these two lovely projects. I agree with you that this tweedy yarn will make a beautiful sweater. Along with your beautiful knitting. 🙂
I like watching the progress on big projects. So please, don’t stop posting photos of your progress.
Your baking looks and sounds so yummy. Let me know if you need a taste tester lol.
He wants you to cast on HOWMANYSTITCHES?!?!? …. Whoah. Erm, yeah, okay, but you chose beautiful colours! 🙂 It will looks fantastic in the end, I’m very sure. 🙂
I love how squishy your sweater looks! You can almost feel the plush through the screen.
I will cheer your on for the baking challenge and I hope that you will blog at least a little bit about both WIPs, they are really beautiful. 🙂 Have a fantastic Monday!!
Wow that’s a long cordial cast on…and a brioche project, beyond me at the moment. The baking sounds delicious. I’ve put more weight on since bake off started, hopeless, but who doesn’t love baked goods lol
I love your Stephen West knit along! I looked at some of the posts on IG and it is AWESOME!! I can’t wait to follow along with your progress.
And you and your friends are doing a baking challenge??! I love that! I’m so happy that the GBBS is back on this year… I was so worried that they’d skip 2020 because of the pandemic, but whew!! They didn’t!
I love the precision of baking, I’m definitely not the “just toss a handful of this and that in” type of cook. Similarly, I like to follow a pattern with my knitting and not just make something up myself to suit; although in both cases I’m happy to vary things to my own taste so long as I have a set of rules to ensure I get a decent product at the end.
You know it’s really interesting – I tend to follow patterns very exactly in knitting but love the improv of cooking so i don’t know what I am lol!
I love how the terminology is so diffrent from the UK- I have no idea what they mean but I love looking at the pctures and seeing progress. What a great way to celebrate turning 30!
haha I know – there was much googling to figure out what certain ingredients were.
OMG – a math nut like me!!! LOVE your idea of calculating target number of stitches per day. When I created this year’s knitting plan I did use estimated months to finish to create the plan (and thus make it more realistic vs wishful thinking). But drilling down to stitches per project and thus setting a target per day. Oh Oh Oh, I’m loving it. My local knitting friends will really think I’ve gone crazy!!
Ohh yeah I love that idea! It’s definitely good to understand what you can do. If you’d like to see my Excel file that I use, send me a private message in Ravelry (Backstagekatknits) with you’re email and I can share it with you 🙂
These are looking great! I love the colors you chose for the shawl.
I have always loved baking, I think partly because of the precision. I like not having to wing it when I cook—and though sometimes I do improvise, that’s usually the exception for me, not the rule. I have a focaccia recipe I’ve been meaning to try, and maybe seeing pics of yours (if you decide to share them) will inspire me to finally make it. 🙂
great way to keep tabs on your progress! I agree, that maroon tweedy yarn is gorgeous, your sweater already looks incredibly soft!
Sounds like a wonderful party – happy birthday to your bestie! Your knitting projects and bakes look wonderful 🙂 Love your bake off project. We love that show, and your recipes sound amazing!
Love your stitch count chart per day. Math nerds unite!
I really like city tweed as well, I used a similar colour for a Joji knit a year ago, its lovely. I’m enjoying seeing the west kal progress as always!