Thursday, January 19, 2017

Happy New Year, yeah, I know I'm late

Hope 2017 is treating everyone well so far.

I'll start with a roundup of 2016 in knitting:
I completed 27 projects!! That's a personal best that I don't see happening again too soon. Needless to say my stash is more than a little busted after that lol

2016 saw the publishing of three new patterns via my Ravelry shop. And the designing of three more that I hope to release this year (also the seeds of 4 others are currently germinating; stay tuned).

And what's on the go for 2017, you might be asking.

First and foremost, I have those three as yet unpublished patterns and their four friends to introduce to the world. I'm trying to find a charting system that will play nice with Google Docs, which is where I type up my written instructions and all the important information (gauge, size, yarn, etc). I'm trying to cut down the number of files a person needs to download for one of my patterns. Currently my patterns have a file of the written stuff and another for the charts. I'd love to combine them as I think that'll make my ebook easier for knitters rather having to find which chart they need for which design. That's my goal anyway. Once I have that figured out, I'll be putting out a call for test knitters via the Ravelry Test Pool group. Hoping to have the first three patterns up and running before June.

What else am I up to? In my personal knitting, I've decided to focus on color this year. My stranded colorwork is abysmal at best. With that in mind I went looking for something to ease my way into the twisted strands of multicolored projects. Then someone, I'm not remembering who, tweeted the link to an MKAL (mystery knit along). A different kind of an MKAL as it's a "quest" format. And it's being done in double-knitting.

Are you familiar with the technique of double-knitting?  I had learned it some time ago but hadn't thought about it in ages. It's a twist on ribbing or possibly brioche where you're knitting a two sided fabric that mirrors itself. Let me insert a picture to show what I mean:


As you can see, the colors and designs are reversed in both color and facing.  This is done at the same time while knitting in rows. Isn't that neat? I had forgotten about the technique completely until I started reading the thread for the MKAL. This also resulted in me searching for the designer (Tania Richter) and adding a "few" more projects to my queue ;) Do take a look at her designs on Ravelry. She's also on Instagram as @aetherfang

So I've gone down a bit of a rabbit-hole with the Yarn Quest and double-knitting. In my defense, I had to wait for more wool to arrive to start on the next patterns for the series.

So that catches me up on what's going on with my knitting :)

On to health news! And happily there is news to report: I finally got into physio!!! 19 months after injury, 12.5 months after the referral, I finally got in!

I've had two sessions so far and I have a short list of exercises to do at home as well as a list of things not to be doing (looking at you bending forward and sitting longer than 15 minutes at a go). I'm just happy to be moving forward and hopefully getting back to myself sooner rather than never.

And on that happy note, I'm gonna call this post complete :)

TTFN

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