☆ 07

[maushold]

Craft focused post about my current works-in-progress (three knitting, one cross stitch) and some rabbiting on about them. 

Recently crafting has truly been my happy place. Work has been kind of shitty, I've been feeling more anxious as a result, and it's nice to have the chance to do something with my hands that's productive and brings me joy in my downtime. :3 I was fortunate enough to get the day off work tomorrow (we were overstaffed, and my colleague who's in charge of the shift gave me the go ahead to take it off), so tomorrow I think will be cleaning to get the flat nice and tidy for the week ahead, then recharging before I go on another run of shifts before the weekend.

	My Long Dog Sampler (The Templar Prophecy) has finally hit 70%! I went ahead and stitched the year on it to motivate me to finish it this year, which is absolutely doable if I manage an average of about 130 stitches a day? I think the backstitching might mean it stretches into 2026, but if I can complete the crosses, I'll be happy with that. I love it so much, even though there's one section that needs ripped back and fixed. There are a LOT of mistakes that I've fudged, don't get me wrong, but this one bit will potentially throw off more stuff if I don't catch and fix it now (it's the gear/deer on the right hand side), so I need to just commit to doing that.
	My Pressed Flowers shawl is looking so cute, but man is it monotonous to knit. Actually, most rows are pretty fun. The tedious part is the one row of the repeat in particular which requires a lot of flipping the yarn from back to front practically every second stitch - everything else is pretty nice, satisfying, easy knitting for watching TV. This is one of the first patterns I saw while considering learning to knit that had me thinking "I really want to make that". So it's exciting to actually be making it! It's been an annoying warm and muggy summer, but I'm hoping to get it finished in time for late September/October. The yarn is an acrylic blend (Stylecraft ReCreate, 40% wool 30% acrylic 30% polyester). I'm not overly excited about using it, but it does look cute. The photo makes it look a lot darker than it is - the green shade is Avocado and much lighter IRL.
	I decided I wanted to knit a garment, so I started this vest. It's a free pattern from Drops.  It's fine? It was very good as a "I'm going to take my knitting out with me" project when I was in the trenches of knitting the body, then I moved on to the chest and shoulders, and I'm preeeeeetty sure they're uneven, but I can always lengthen the left one if need be. I am so emotionally unattached to this project that it's not funny. It's like how I knit my first socks with shitty acrylic with no intention of ever wearing them. This, too, is knit in shitty acrylic I had to hand and I'll probably never wear it. It's very much something I'm doing so that I can make a first attempt without any pressure to actually be happy  with the final result. (FWIW, my shitty first socks are still in my sock drawer, and this too will probably remain in my home forever out of sentimentality, but we are under no illusions that it will actually be good, okay?)
	I don't know why I'm including it. This is nothing. Look at it. I love a free sock pattern baybee. Knitting ankle socks to use up some sock yarn that probably won't be enough for a full pair. Both the solid yellow and the variegated yarn are Drops, Fable I think? No clue of the colourway, the label is long gone. The rolling stockinette cuff is cute but my god, did it get in the way of knitting for the first few rounds. I'm definitely going to try ankle socks again after this, mostly because it is the fastest route to knitting the most fun part of a sock (heel turn), but yeah. I'm not sure I dig the curly cuff.