(Please excuse the fuzz and pilling, these are OLD)

Ok these are definitely not the most "impressive" cabling project I've done, but they are by far the most special to me so I'm going with them for cables month! A few reasons I love them so:

• I won this yarn in a knitting group on Google+ (RIP), about a month after I'd started knitting in 2013. It was my first ever fancy yarn and I was so incredibly excited!

• Because I was such a new knitter, these gloves were my first ever cables, and also my first time using DPNs. Felt like too many extra hands, I still don't like DPNs to this day!

• And because I like to jump in at the deep end, when one of them went wrong I decided to drop stitches down and figure out how to rebuild the cables as I picked the stitches back up. Worked pretty flawlessly and I was SO proud of myself!

• Last but not least, they always remind me of a friend who sadly passed away a year or so later. She helped me a lot with my first few projects, shoutout to Bernie ❤

Pattern is Roundabout Fingerless Gloves, and here's a bonus pic of the other side where the left one is looking weirdly baggy but I swear they do actually fit irl 😄

!

Started a shawl in late January, and it needs to be finished by July. Which, for most people I'm sure that's nothing but I am a very slow knitter, really!

The pattern is lacy and complicated and mistakes will be really visible, so it's no good to work on while watching TV or doing anything else and I'd just not been putting time aside to properly concentrate on it.

The solution: A spreadsheet to keep track of how far behind I am, and a graph so I can watch myself (hopefully) catch up.

There are very few problems in life that can't at least be a bit improved with a spreadsheet, and I reckon that applies to knitting just the same 🤓

Ok I missed WIP Wednesday but honestly my week is just an absolute mess of days running into each other so that's no surprise.

Here's my main WIP for this week, as you can see I'm somewhat leaning into the recent pixel-art-style design urge. I'm also leaning into my preference for doing half stitches first and then completing them later, even though it's kind of ugly in the progress photos.

It'll just make the final piece seem prettier by comparison! At least, that's one theory.

(It's going to be a smol garden scene)

Try it before you dismiss it, that's all I'm saying!

Edit: I have found my people.

Like the stitch says, NO RULES! 🇫🇮

Finished my mysterious little project, as teased last week.

Congrats to @ChexMax@lemmy.world, @exocrinous@lemm.ee and @nulluser@programming.dev for correctly identifying what would soon become a pair of cutoff shorts, but alas the full context was too niche even for Lemmy nerds to get right.

It is, of course, an homage to this year's fabulous Eurovision entry from Finland, which you can watch here if you have three minutes free and want your life to change forever.

I've also made it a free pattern on the off-chance any other cross stitching Finland nerds are about, although I admit that's unlikely 😄

https://ko-fi.com/s/64fafb4849

Now I just need to figure out which of the multiple Eurovision communities is the right one to crosspost this to...

It’s somehow been three months since @IoSapsai@lemm.ee and I agreed to take over moderation of this community, and we’ve not really had to do anything other than keep an eye out for reports. It’s not exactly been a taxing job, so firstly thank you stitchers for being so undramatic!

But that all happened while I was still super ill and to be honest most of November and December is like a weird fever dream. So I kind of did not do the one thing I said I’d do at the time: post some prospective community rules.

Basically what I’m thinking is we want to have something written down that we can point to just on the off-chance of misbehaviour, but at the same time we don’t need anything draconian or super specific while we’re so small.

Since I’ve already been through this process with !knitting@lemmy.world and there are even quite a lot of people here who are in there too, I think it makes sense to maybe start off with similar rules to the ones the knitters agreed and then diverge if we need to.

Main concerns over there were:

• encouraging people to add pattern info to their posts and
• making sure we have a rule in place to allow removal of ads

On that second point, it was generally agreed that active members of the community should be free to advertise their shops and products in context, but a complete stranger barging in to post a straight-up ad and then leave should be removed. Basically kind of vibe-based, depending on if you look like a spammer or not, which works fine for a small community tbh.

I’d love to hear from community members on this. Are you ok just following the template from /c/knitting for now? Is there something more specific to us you’d also like to see included in the official rules? Or do you maybe disagree with one of those two things above and want us to rethink?

Input very much welcome, thank you!

—

And for a bit more of a fun thing, we have a random community banner and icon that I guess the original owner just googled on the day and never thought about again. In /c/knitting I made a banner featuring some recent FOs that had been posted by the most active members, and that was pretty popular.

I’d be happy to knock up something similar for here, but also want to throw it open in case anyone else would like to give banner design a go! Maybe we’ll say if nobody else comes up with something by the end of March I’ll go full collage mode with our FOs, that gives time for a few entries if you fancy it?

We'll also need an icon and I did not make the knitting one so am officially looking for ideas of what we could use. Actual images, vague concepts, all assistance welcome!

Thank you for bearing with this wall of text. Now get back to stitching!

I've been happily posting away here on two accounts since just before the Great Migration, and have no problem being openly a woman on the internet. Up to and including correcting people who assume I'm a guy, and even occasionally acknowledging the existence of periods.

Which, honestly that was a bad tactic back on Reddit, my inbox was a nightmare. But here it's gone much better, so thank you to anyone who ever received one of my corrections with good grace!

It's also brought quite a few DMs my way from other women who try to stay more anonymous with their posts, a choice I can completely understand.

So today on International Women's Day I just want to wave hello to the other women out there, even if you don't want to break cover and wave back. Anonymous or not, cis or trans, I see you out there and you're killing it.

This may break the community rule on encouraging discussion, if nobody wants to out themselves to say hello back. So I guess I should also ask a question.

Um...anyone else using it as an excuse to treat themselves today? I've given myself the day (mostly) off work and am doing some fun gamedev all afternoon instead, then we're planning a takeaway tonight. Easily pleased, perhaps, but sounds good to me 😄

I was on such a sock knitting THING last year and have really lost my mojo lately.

This second sock, I posted it two weeks ago maybe and since then all that's happened is I made a mess of the gusset. Not enough to bother frogging it but definitely enough to be grumpy about it.

Anyway hopefully showing off my woeful level of progress will humiliate me into getting a wriggle on, because I really do love this yarn and it deserves to be a cool pair of socks!

I'm going with no. No you can't.

But it's going to be a very quick stitch so watch this space for my next stupid niche FO 😅

If there's one design feature that is quintessentially knitting, it's got to be cables! Chonky ones, intricate ones, symmetrical ones or weird ones, almost every knitter has tried them and found out the biggest secret of our craft: cables are a lot easier than they look 🤫

For once, I know exactly which project to post for this one. Just have to actually take proper photos, approximately eleven years after finishing the knitting part.

Cables are so squishy and fun, I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else has to show!

---

Anyway. Normally I announce a winner of the previous month but "winner" might not apply this time around!

Congratulations @kurobita@feddit.cl on the dubious honour of having the most highly upvoted knitting fail 😂

Very much appreciate everyone who shared, and it just goes to show crafting doesn't always go to plan.

---

Ok, off with you. Go find your cable-est thing to show us!

(I need to come up with some new themes before next month so if anyone wants to make a suggestion, do feel free)

This meme brought to you by my spiralling anxiety and some slight bickering when I packed a sock project into the car last night despite it being dark already 😅

(I will update the monthly theme tomorrow I promise, it's been a busy few days!)

Finished this one up last week, it's actually designed by myself as I've been trying to learn a bit more about pixel art and specifically working in isometric. It definitely could've done with being darker under the bench but whatever! Proud of it anyway.

Husband is obsessed with pixel art as a medium and he thinks this is just about the coolest project ever, so it can go on display in his office where I don't have to look at that glaring lack of bench shadow 😄

Ok I wasn't sure what to post as a knitting fail. Tbh, there've been a lot, because that's how you learn!

There was the lace shawl I made after just a month of learning to knit, out of completely unsuitable cotton yarn that did the finished piece no favours at all (never mind all the actual knitting mistakes I made, too).

There was the summer top I frantically knitted for a holiday and finished literally in the car on the way to the airport, only to find out it was about three sizes too small because I'm nothing if not optimistic.

But these were forgivable, for I was just a newbie.

Not so with the time I decided to jump on the trend of everyone knitting the Find Your Fade shawl. I went through the stash, picked out a combo of yarns that could definitely not be described as a "fade" but I quite liked anyway, and got to work.

!

Unfortunately I'm crap at knitting shawls, and it took a year to get through the first two sections. So I've now been knitting in general for about 7 years, and on this specifically for 1.

THEN, and only then, I go to start the third colour and realise I've just sort of...completely mixed and matched yarn weights and this was never going to work? Honestly no idea how it never occurred to me until that point.

So, long story short, absolute fail, frogged it and was very salty about it. This may or may not have been when I decided a ban on shawl knitting was in order, a ban which has served me well.

Ok it's not the most exciting stitchy mail in the world, but I don't get to afford things in bulk very often and that's quite a big wallop of plain white aida that'll probably last me at least a year!

Since I needed to order this anyway, I also took the chance to grab the last few colours needed for Errol. Just have to get them on floss drops and I'll be all set! But this brings me to my question...

Our local craft shop sells their skeins for £1.40 ($1.77 per single skein for the US folks). It really really adds up.

I used to buy all my floss online from https://www.enchanted-needle.co.uk which for a long time sold them at £0.69 (nice) and that obviously made a huge difference.

Unfortunately nowadays their pricing has gone up to £0.99 in line with the other big online options, which is still a lot better than £1.40, but when you take postage into account it's no longer really saving much if anything on small orders.

So, after all that rambling, my question is where are other UK stitchers getting your floss? Is there a trick to finding it at the old prices? Or are we just all completely out of luck?

Slow progress, as per, but it'll do.

On the left is the start of my Big Damn Heroes shawl, honestly not sure if I've posted this here yet but it's been at least a couple of weeks since cast-on which should tell you all you need to know about rate of completion 😅

Definitely requires a bit more concentration than I've been able to give lately, so I just keep defaulting to the socks instead.

Speaking of, that's the second sock of a pair using the Show Off Stranded pattern.

The weird heel construction (knit the gusset along with the heel flap) resulted in a slightly different fit than I'm used to, but I think it feels ok. Will only really know once I'm wearing them as a pair, so fingers crossed, but the yarn is so happy right now I don't care about the perfect fit 😄

What's everyone else been up to? Feel free to humiliate me with your productivity levels, I don't mind at all...

If you will insist on all making separate threads for your projects, at least get weird with it 😄

For once I actually got some stitching time this weekend! Treated myself to some of the missing floss for Errol as a reward for making it through multiple dentist trips, and so this looks pretty much the same as last time I posted him here but in reality there's about 300 stitches of filled-in gaps that were dotted around his torso and tail!

Not the most satisfying progress but it's all gotta be done sometime.

Letting myself work on his lil claws now as a hopefully quick win. I'm maybe 40% of the way through the actual stitching (his head is massive) and already starting to dread all the backstitch 😅

Full disclosure before I say anything else, I’m asking this out of personal curiosity and a desire to help friends out but also because I plan on making a video about it so yes it’s kind of a research question too.

Ok. So personally I use Pattern Keeper, and it’s been great. But I find myself wondering what other apps have popped up in the couple of years since I first discovered PK. The other day someone tagged me in a Mastodon question about alternatives, and then a similar convo coincidentally broke out on Discord too, so clearly other people are asking the same question.

Now, I know about a few apps already. Markup R-XP has a devoted following. CrossStitchSaga I apparently need to try because I hear it supports backstitch. And resident app developer @ClickStitch@sh.itjust.works posts here regularly with updates on their new contender.

But I thought I’d cast a wider net and see what everyone else is using.

Do you use one of the ones I listed? Do you use another specialised cross stitch app? Do you use something that was originally designed for a totally different purpose but turns out to work great for stitching? Or do you prefer to keep things analog and mark off printed patterns with a pen?

Would love to hear what you like and dislike about your current solution, and I’m hoping to get to test a load of them out and do a proper comparison of them all.

I promise to do a writeup of the conclusions here too so it’s not just stuck in video form!

These were supposed to be the first of two pairs for a Discworld makealong but it didn't quite work out that way with the whole illness thing.

Also, couldn't take proper pics yet so you get me lying on my back on the bed wiggling my feet in the air instead, which actually might be better than real photos!

Pattern is Eskarina Socks by Rachel Coopey and the yarn is Socks Yeah! also (coincidentally) by Rachel Coopey!

I knit the size M which is way bigger than I normally go but another knitter who usually does my size advised it. Honestly, I could totally have gone with small, they're ever-so-slightly baggy.

They are also very awesome though so idc I'll just wear them over warm tights 😄

#SkipTagginator

It was 24 Hours of Cross Stitch again this weekend and one of my 2024 craft goals was to take part in more stuff like that. So I cleared the calendar and went for it!

We ended up with a few people in my Discord doing it, and a few people on Mastodon threatening to but not quite getting there. Still, maybe next time lol.

Normally I regret joining this challenge by the Friday night but honestly this time it flew by. Possibly because I had to stay up until 4am Sunday morning anyway to watch the Packers get knocked out of the playoffs, so there was a lot of extra stitching time!

Really happy with progress here especially since Errol was the real victim of me getting so sick for the last bit of 2023. This is more like it!

p.s. @MrJameGumb@lemmy.world for reference this is 2 over 2 on 36ct.

p.p.s 19-21st April next, for anyone thinking of giving it a whirl ;)

Not even a knockoff or anything, an actual Lowery! Like the real fancy stitchers have! 😮

Pretty sure you're not supposed to clamp things in at an angle like this, but on the other hand I can't use it sideways until I save up for the extension bar (or more likely fashion something that makes the whole thing a lot less fancy all of a sudden). But for now, this works fine 😁

Will do a proper review at some point, right now I'm mostly just still excited to own one lol.

(This post shamelessly duplicated from Mastodon because cross-posting is temporarily broken)