I’ve been wanting to get back to the blog for weeks and here I finally am, well into the new year. I hope everybody had a wonderful end to 2024 and happy holidays. I was more than ready to say good riddance to 2024 and am looking ahead to a brighter 2025. With the presidential inauguration yesterday that’s proving a little difficult – I’m trying to walk that fine line between paying attention because it’s important to be aware of what is happening while also caring for myself, my mental health, and focusing my energy on things that are under my control. I would also be remiss if I didn’t say that my heart goes out to everybody in southern California dealing with the destruction and recovery from the Palisades Fire. It was all too familiar seeing that type of loss so soon after Hurricane Helene and I think everybody in WNC’s heart aches a little harder every time they see coverage of what CA is dealing with; I know mine does.
It is a cold cold cold week here in Spring Creek and it feels like keeping the wood stove going is a full-time job. I’m really hoping the worst of this lets up soon because our wood pile is shrinking at an alarming rate. A number of people who have lived here in Spring Creek for decades have remarked that this is the coldest winter they can remember. As a Minnesota native, I tend to think of winter in the North Carolina mountains as relatively mild, but the cold this winter has been persistent and our old 1898 farmhouse is neither properly insulated nor draft-free. You just have to layer on the handknits, pile on the blankets, and keep those embers burning. (Oh, and keep that faucet dripping so the pipes don’t freeze.)
This is the time of year when I really start to feel like knitting still has a place in my life. I know I’ve mentioned several times here throughout the years that, since moving to North Carolina, it has been hard to see the value of knitting because warm woolens are so infrequently needed. But this week, and this winter, there’s no question!
I finished Kyle’s socks in December, but it took me a while to get around to photographing them. Even still, the photos aren’t great, but they’re done! And he has now happily added another pair of handknit socks to his arsenal. Kyle is always freezing cold and frequently wears multiple pairs of socks to keep his feet warm (especially while at work), so I know these will be well-loved.
The yarn base is Mockingbird from MUSE2320 Fiber Co. (80% wool, 20% nylon) in the colorway “Pyramid of Skulls”. It came with its own mini-skein of a contrast color to use for the toes and heels. I like a good toe/heel/cuff combo and, despite knowing I wouldn’t have enough yardage of the contrast color to do the cuffs as well, I forged ahead with this plan anyway. I had to substitute a similar color for half of the heel and the whole cuff on the second sock, but you can barely tell in the photos.
In real life, the yarn I used to substitute is also sparkly, so it’s a dead giveaway. Somebody asked about me referring to this pattern as ribbing-adjacent in my last post. I call it that because of the little “blips” you can see in the pattern. The underlying structure is a 3×1 rib, but it’s offset every 4 or 6 rows (I can’t remember) so it’s not a continuous rib. You still get the benefit of some elasticity, but with a little more visual interest. Knit 3, purl 1 for 4 rounds, then purl 1, knit 3 for 4 rounds. Easy peasy!
Once Kyle’s socks were off the needles I immediately launched into knitting another pair before the momentum dissipated. Even with Kyle’s socks finished at the beginning of December, and a hat bound off right before Christmas (more on that later), that still only brought my grand total of knitting projects for 2024 up to a measly FOUR. I am determined to not let that happen again this year.
The yarn I’m using for this pair is Butternut Sock from Northwoods Fibers in the colorway “Take Me to the Mountains”. This was yet another purchase from The Yarnery when I was in Minnesota back in August for my brother’s wedding. A trip to the Twin Cities is never complete without stopping in to see what’s new; they always have a perfectly curated selection of yarn available. In an amazing feat, I am actually knitting with recently purchased yarn rather than letting it sit in my stash for so long that it is no longer available. This colorway is sold out, but check the link above to see what other colorways the Yarnery has on offer! My usual disclaimer stands that I am in no way compensated for talking about this shop so much. I did used to work there, but that was a decade ago, and I truly just think it’s one of the best shops around. And they have moved to a fantastic new location since my visit! I can’t wait to check it out.
I have one sock done and just cast on for the second one last night. The variegation is such that you can’t really see much of the pattern which, if I’m honest, is completely fine because I made it up on a whim in real time as I was knitting the sock and it is nothing to write home about. The top/front of the sock is in stockinette divided by occasional purl rows, the back of the leg is 2×1 rib for built-in elasticity, and there are a few small cables running up either side. This is all just as much for my own interest while I knit the socks as it is for functionality/visual interest. I have a month left to finish the second sock, which will be plenty of time to have the pair ready to gift. I have the yarn picked out for the next pair of socks to go on the needles once these are done, and this pair will be all for me.
Each new year, I do a thorough review of my yarn stash for several reasons. 1. To make sure there are no disastrous critters lurking in all that valuable wool (there aren’t). 2. To remind myself of the fantastic treasures I’ve likely forgotten about, and 3. To rehome the yarn I continue to ignore, or which may not appeal to me as much as it used to. I also keep a spreadsheet of all of the yarn in my stash, and the beginning of January is the time to bring it up to date so I can start fresh and see where I’m at. I love seeing how much yardage I’ve used in the past year and what projects I’ve worked on. I have a number of rules when it comes to my spreadsheet that even I admit make absolutely no sense, and I’ve caught myself up in a few of them this year.
The first rule is that handspun yarn doesn’t count toward my stash total. On the surface, this seemed great! I can spin yarn as much as I want without adding to my stash. On the flip side, this also means that when I complete a knitting project with handspun yarn, it doesn’t reduce the total yardage in my stash. Last year, two of my four finished projects were made with handspun, one of them being a sweater, so that was a significant amount of knitting done without making a dent in “the stash”. I’ve decided that, for the time being at least, this rule still applies and I haven’t yet amended the spreadsheet to include handspun yarn. I may have to rethink that decision later on. Up until a year or two ago, I almost never knit with my handspun yarn and so it felt like a net-positive to just tuck it away and say it doesn’t count, but now that I’ve been more intentional about actually using it I think I have to face the facts.
The second rule is that yarn I’ve used for natural dyeing, or that I intend to use for natural dyeing, doesn’t count as stash yarn. I don’t know why I made this rule. Honestly, I think I really wanted to see my stash fall under the 100,000 yard threshold. I’ve been so close to that line for years, and though it is completely arbitrary and made up, it will feel like an accomplishment when I get there. But I realized this year that I can’t set aside yarn just because it was used for a specific purpose. It’s still taking up space, it still has potential, and it should be counted in the total. So as painful as it was to add significant yardage to my stash at the end of the year, I made myself do it.
The third rule, and the one I like the most and will continue to carry forward, is that no matter how yarn leaves the stash, it counts as being used. Did I knit it into a project? Check. Donate it? Bingo. Give it away? Still counts! Toss it? Bye-bye. This is my favorite because even in years like 2024 where I only knit a few projects, I can still “use up” a lot of stash if I get creative about what counts. What that meant this year is that I gathered up a lot of yarn that was ready to depart into a bin and forced it upon my friends at a recent knit night. Thank you, friends, for getting me one step closer to that 100k mark!
All told, I began 2024 with 101,152 yards of yarn in my stash. Remember, this didn’t count handspun or anything flagged for natural dyeing. I ended the year having used or given away 8,928 yards which should have put me well under 100k, but with a few small purchases throughout the year and the addition of almost 10,000 yards I had set aside as yarn for dyeing, I ended the year with 102,592 yards. I went in the wrong direction! But only just. I think this year, if I’m diligent and if I’m creative, I can finally meet my goal. Maybe not if I add my handspun yarn into the mix, but we’ll see what this year brings. Wish me luck!
Speaking of handspun yarn, my final finished project for 2024 was a Musselburgh Hat. I haven’t talked about this project since August, and it really has been a slog to complete, but it is finally done and has actually come in very handy the past few weeks.
I began this hat using some handspun Shetland wool that I processed myself from a raw fleece I was gifted. The sheep was raised on the mountain behind my house and I loved how connected I felt to the process of creating this yarn. What I didn’t anticipate is that I would run out of yarn well before the project was finished and, with it being handspun, I couldn’t simply buy more. I do have more fleece and I could have washed it, combed it, spun it, and hoped it would turn out similar to what I had already completed, but that would have been a crapshoot. Instead I dove into the stash and came out with a partial ball of some lovely Woolfolk Tynd. I figured I would give myself some bonus points for using up leftovers from a previous project, and it created a nice contrast and provided incredible softness to the inside of this hat. It is knit as one long tube and then doubled over and it just so happens that when the brim is folded up, the join between the handspun and the Tynd is perfectly concealed and makes a nice “design element” as it were. Imagine my surprise, then, when I ran out of blue and still didn’t have a finished hat. So I went back into the stash, found a second ball of leftover Tynd in a different color and carried on knowing that it would be hidden on the inside anyway.
But I ran out of that color, too. So in the end I just grabbed whatever was within arm’s reach to get the job done. In this case, I finished the decreases using some MadTosh Sock that I had on hand for the toe/heel/cuff of the gift socks I’m making and called it a day. Waste not, want not, right? The finished hat is cozy and comfortable, and I will likely never knit another one of these again because it took so long!
After doing my annual stash toss, I did realize I needed to start making use of some of the single skeins I have laying around. That may mean knitting things that I have no intention of wearing myself, and which I may not even have a recipient in mind for either. When I first started knitting around 2007, and for several years thereafter, I was wholeheartedly a “process” knitter. I didn’t care how many projects I had on the needles, I didn’t care how long it took to make, I just enjoyed the activity of knitting. Playing around with different stitch patterns, learning new skills, knitting projects because they looked fun to make, even if I had no desire to wear the finished item. Sometime around 2010 I very quickly and firmly shifted to becoming a “product” knitter. This was around the same time I started taking up sample knitting for knitwear designers and yarn companies, and so it made more sense to knit only one thing at a time, to be as efficient as possible, and to have an eye on the finished item rather than the process of making it. This mentality has stuck with me over the years as I continued to work as a sample maker for well over a decade. I feel like I’m slooooowly getting back to the idea of knitting for the enjoyment of it rather than to produce something.
I’ve been holding onto this yarn for several years as one of those “special” skeins that you don’t want to use because a) then it will be gone and b) what if it doesn’t reach its full potential? Well, I had a firm talking with myself and finally convinced myself to just USE IT. So much of my stash falls into this category, and I really need to just start using it because it really is going to be such a joy to knit with. And it’s time to enjoy the process again. I got this yarn from the Woolly Thistle, my other favorite yarn shop, in a special “selection box” they put together around the holidays a few years ago. This shop specializes in sourcing yarns from the UK, and Europe as a whole, often made locally in small batches with lovely backstories and breed-specific wools. I love the boxes they put together because you get skeins of yarn you otherwise would likely never come across, and this shop really understands the love of what I call “woolly wools”. The rustic, crunchy, right-off-the-sheep wools that are often overlooked for soft merino, easy care superwash, and the sleek and slender. Tamar DK is a blend of wool from sheep categorized as “long wools” – Teeswater, Cotswold, Wensleydale, and Leicester Longwool. Longwool breeds, as the name would suggest, produce longer fibers than other breeds, but they also have less crimp and more sheen than other well-known breeds (merino, rambouillet, targhee, etc.) In practical terms, this results in a yarn that has more drape, luster and density, but also a little less elasticity due to a looser crimp structure. Oh boy I’m just realizing that I am talking your ear off instead of just showing you what I’m making. Long story short, I had this skein in my stash, it’s beautiful, and I decided to knit something with it for no other reason than because it’s beautiful.
The pattern I’m using is Purslowe, and is intended to be a very slouchy hat. I think this may even be the pattern that the Woolly Thistle recommended for this yarn. The slouchy quality works with the inherent nature of the yarn rather than trying to make it something that it’s not, and the slight luster helps the stitch pattern pop. The knitting is now done, and if I ever get around to blocking the hat and making a pompom, it will be my first official knit of 2025. It’s feeling good to use my stash, and I hope I can keep this momentum going of knitting because I like to, not because I have to. I think the fact that my “production” attention has shifted to weaving means that knitting really is settling into its place as a relaxing craft that I pick up in the evenings when I have down time, and it feels like a comfortable place for it to be.
Weaving continues along as ever with my first warp for 2025. This is another big one and I’m hoping I’ll be able to squeeze out about 40 towels with this yardage. I love the look of a full warp beam, and the fresh promise of pure white just waiting to be transformed. It matches all the snow we’ve been getting outside lately.
I quickly got to work on the first towels once this warp was wound on. This time around I am using one design to make 10 towels each of four different colors. I have already finished weaving the magenta, emerald, and navy.
This was a really fun pattern to design and is perhaps the most complicated one I’ve come up with so far. I love where I took it, but one thing I didn’t consider during the design process was the ease of weaving. There are no true repeats in this pattern aside from the fact that it mirrors itself at the center, which means I have to follow a 720-pick treadling sequence to complete one towel. It has taken a lot of concentration to not get lost in the process, but by towel 30 I have the pattern mostly memorized.
The final color is a gray/blue and once these are off the loom it’ll be time to start all of the finishing work – trimming ends, weaving in broken warp threads, securing the edges, washing, pressing, hemming, labeling… there’s still a lot to do even once the weaving is finished. I’ll have these up in the shop soon, though, so keep an eye out if you’re interested. I have my next two warps all planned out, the first of which is another return to one of my most popular designs, which will keep me busy for the next few months. If you recognize these colors, you’ll know what’s going on the loom next.
Stay warm, and happy crafting.
Spring Creek Textiles 
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