Apparently People are still here!

 Firstly, let me say that I am sorry that apparently there is something wrong with being able to comment on my posts.  I haven't looked into what setting I have wrong, yet, but will so that you can talk to me here, rather than hunting me down on other social media platforms to say "Yay, glad to see you back!  Can't wait to see more from you!  More pictures, please!"

 

You want pictures, I've got pictures.

 

This year we started a whole bunch of seeds early in the year to take to our local libraries plant exchange, cat not included! (Say hello to Pinto, an FIV positive cat who joined my family in 2025.) I plan on doing it again this next year, and hopefully dropping off (again) more than I bring home with me.

 

As I said before, we upgraded our "lazy gardener" raised beds with actual raised beds, and I updated the deck to have a whole bunch of raised planters in the hopes that the rabbits/chipmunks wouldn't find my leafy greens. 

 

You can see how well that worked out, and entire bed of various kale and all the leaves eaten and just the stems remain!

 

New toys!  I got an electric pressure canner and now want to pressure can all the things. (If you have only used, or been scared to use, a regular pressure cooker, this is a game changer!  I got mine because Frida, my induction range, doesn't like pressure canners.)

There has also been a ton of knitting.  I am leaning heavily into my Skill Builder patterns, and while I had a disappointing set back in my "all the short rows"  pattern/tutorial I have so many (with punny names) planned that I hope you follow along!

 

 

Then there are the cats!

 

They look like siblings, but are not.  There is at least a year difference between them and Pinto (on the right) was a Humane Society 

Sadly this year we had to say goodbye to Skittles.  She was an unusual cat in that she had a type of cancer that is more commonly seen in dogs, and by the time we realized what was going on (through multiple vet visits and tests) it had already affected her liver.  (One of two organs that no mammal has a "back up plan for")  But, Pinto and Toast are now best friends.

Toast was dropped off by the cat distribution society and Pinto was a "I had been here a really long time" Humane Society Adoption.  Both are very much loved and love each other, although Pinto does have this really bad habit of walking up to people and nipping their legs!

This upcoming week will be all about photo tutorials for knitting for me, and possibly giving you some tips if you want to be a designer for how to write things (or things not to forget) in your patterns.

 

But tell me, (once I get the commenting figured out) what do you want to know?

 

Until next time....

 

Happy Knitting, Gardening, Cooking!

 

~Mary 

 

 

 

 

 

It's been a while and so much has changed!

Hey there!  Did you miss me?  I'm guessing not, because the people who know and love me, in general, know me in other venues that blogger.

 

But it has been suggested I try journaling for a while, and this was, once upon a time, my journal.  But, mostly about my knitting life only.  Now, for more life, I guess.

 

The changes were all started with little, tiny things, most of them tracking back to 2020.  A pot of tomatoes here, a jar of sour dough there, and suddenly...I am that person.

 

The person with 6 raised veggie beds,  5 raised planters on my deck, so many pots of various squash!

 

The person who decided to put her flour and sugar in mason jars when a certain (adorable) cat decided that scratching open the flour and sugar bags was So, Much, Fun.  And created so much mess, which led to putting more and more in mason jars.

 

A dryer that was making a horrible noise, so the kids and I took it apart.  It doesn't make the horrible noise any more, but it also doesn't dry as efficiently, so we have been line drying our clothes.

 

One adult child doing an elimination diet to see what her migraine triggers were, making me make more of our "easy to pull off the shelf and eat" goods because MSG is everywhere!

 

I am not a trad wife!  Lack of a husband would be your first clue.  But, the world out there is a scary place and I am leaning more and more into being self sufficient where I can.

 

And....still knitting up a storm!

Want to join me on my journey?  Stay tuned, or I can keep talking to the void. 

 

It's Socktober,  so this month I will be releasing a sock pattern with a heel/toe that has a bit of a twist?

 

If you have it in you to put some good vibes into the universe, DD has *another* biopsy today, hoping that this one comes back "a-typical, benign" like the last one.

 

Until next time.

 

Happy Knitting/Growing

 

~Mary 

 

 

 

 

Let's Stop Doom Scrolling for a Moment

I get it, I can't get away from it either.  

My usual "happy, yarn filled" social media accounts, because I paused too long on a political or "bad news" posts is now filled with all kinds of doom and gloom, when all I want is five minutes away from the real world.

There is nothing wrong with staying informed and knowing what is going on in the world around you, but...let's take a breath, and pause for a few minutes and talk about yarn, knitting, (I would talk about crochet, too, but I know nothing about it other than how to use it to provisionally cast on, pick up run away knit stitches, and get myself out of a shawl using a fancy chain bind off), gardening, maybe even cooking and pets!

 Ready?

 

Over the past 5 weeks, I have spent some time every Saturday and Sunday trying to get all the yarn I own to fit into a single room.

 

 

A reasonable person would de-stash/sell/give away the yarn that didn't fit (in an entire room!), but I opted to instead remove the air from the yarn to create more space.  

Today I started in on taking the air out of the yarn that didn't even make it as far as "in boxes on the floor" of the yarn room.

Do I think that even with removing all of the air, the yarn will all fit in the space I have allocated for it?  No, but if I wasn't saving an entire wall of drawers for The Drama Queen's Fabric stash, maybe. (More about that later)

That probably didn't take you five minutes to read, so do me, and yourself a favor, think about three good things that happened, or you made happen this week, and tell me what they were.

Until next time...

Try and knit happy!

~M

A WiP Wednesday and Symmetry

 A little while ago I posted on Instagram and Bluesky a photo of a pair of socks, asking people if, when working a directional stitch pattern, it was important to them that the pattern is mirrored in each sock.

A pair of striped socks, on sock blockers

The difference, in this particular stitch pattern is very subtle, maybe a closer look?

Detail of the stitch pattern

Overwhelmingly, people commenting on the Bluesky post felt that a non-knitter wouldn't notice and that it probably didn't matter.  But, people on Instagram said things like "If the pattern doesn't mirror the stitch pattern I would do it for myself."

 

I believe that, while the knitter is definitely the person in control of  their own knitting, that including the instructions for mirroring, even when as subtle as this, is the right thing for me to do.  It would bother me if the socks weren't mirror images of each other. (I am also a stickler for the stripes matching, as you can see!)

 I will be putting these socks up for test knitting soon in my group on Ravelry, but first, the reason those finished socks count as a WiP post, I want to write up a tutorial for a "new to me" way of picking up stitches for the heel gusset. 

Which brings me to a question for you.  If you are a sock knitter, how do you do your pick ups along a heel flap?

Do you :

Slip the working needle under both legs of a slipped stitch edge?

Slip the working needle under one of the legs of a slipped stitch edge?

Work it some other way?

Leave me a comment with  your answer, all comments are moderated, so if you don't want to make your answer public just say so!

Until Next Time...hopefully soon...Knit Happy!

~Mary

Do People Still Read Blogs?

 Wow, talk about long time no see!  How have you been?  And where have I been?

While I was very active on Ravelry this year, my other social media outlets all fell by the wayside.  Hardly any Instagram posts, nothing here and just the very occasional newsletter was sent to my subscribers announcing new pattern releases and sales.

Should I get back into blogging?  Will you read it, if I do?  What would you like to hear about?

In general 2024 was a horrible, no good, definitely bad, year for me and mine, but a little ray of sunshine joined us in late November.

Meet Toast, Toasty, Toaster Strudel, our little Cheetah!

She isn't quite sure yet if she wants to be a lap cat or not,  and would like you to know that interactive cat toys that make noise and flap their little wings are one of the best things ever!

Would you like to hear more about her in the future?

Or perhaps just knitting content?  Like putting words in lace?

Gardening adventures, cooking, tutorials?  (No pics for those, yet.)

Let me know by leaving a comment

~M

The Big Sale means

 Knit Picks Big Sale will mean that lots of yarn is headed my way as I have been designing lots more doilies to go on hula hoops! (That's an affiliate link, that won't cost you anything to use, but will help keep the lights on at Chez YarnDiet.)

Speaking of which, Love Is and a Home for James are both available in my Ravelry Store.

I have slightly less than 108 hula hoops, waiting to be covered in knitted fabric, beads and possibly lights.

I'll show you all the yarn I ordered for them, when it gets here!

Until then,

Knit Happy!

~M

Here we are...a Month Later

 A while back, some knit and crochet designers and I were having a conversation about the "state of the pattern creating industry".  While the pandemic and "stay at home" orders that we all lived through in 2020 created a huge influx of beginner knitters/crocheters, and a significant increase (in some designers cases) of pattern sales, through the first half of 2023 many, if not most, are seeing a decline in those sales.

We asked each other for opinions of why? Why were pattern sales numbers for many of us declining the way they were?

We had guesses, but of course, no reliable data to base our assumptions on.

What we came up with was the pandemic meant that many people were simply bored and needed something to do with all the hours that had previously been devoted to commuting to and from a day job (for those lucky enough to be able to work remotely) and the hours that had been devoted to that day job for those who could not work remotely but still had to "stay home".

2023 has the world acting like we are back to normal, people no longer have those extra few (or many) hours in their day to learn a new hobby.

The conversation from there went on to how to attract more, new knitters and create more easy to make beginner patterns, with my lone dissent of "Who takes care of the intermediate knitter?".

 My point, which was quite soundly put aside was designers already have people who can knit, purl, cast on, bind off and who are ready for something a little more challenging but don't have those same few (or many) additional hours in each day to devote to a hobby they came to enjoy when they did.  Surely what they need, if they know it or not, is a way to build skills from making a one size doesn't quite fit but is good enough hat, to a perfectly fitting sweater, but in smaller bite size projects that won't take years to finish. 

In the meantime I went on to design some rather complicated shawls and "easy" socks that still assume that the knitter knows how to do things like pick up stitches evenly, or pick their favorite cast on, but the thought was niggling in the back of my mind and my inner muse (I call her Minnie Mouse) kept asking "What about this, what about that?"

So I've decided to put my money, and time, where my mouth is and create that series of skill builder patterns.  Each will include two or more projects devoted to a specific skill, a small practice project (some would call it a swatch but I know how much people, in general, would prefer not to swatch) and then a larger "level up" project, that is still smaller than a sweater. Possibly some could be used by Yarn Stores for a teaching opportunity like the My First Lace, My First Cable classes the yarn store I worked at during my teens would occasionally offer.

As someone who has been knitting for cough50pluscough years, I don't remember what the techniques were that tripped me up the first time I knit a sweater, but I do know that in the past 15 or 20 years I have learned new and better ways of doing things than I did for the longest time and there is always something new to learn about knitting. For everyone one way of doing something there seems to be 3 or more other ways of achieving the same ends and each one is either best suited to a particular type of project or an individual knitter.

 Which is the very long way around of my asking you, if there is still anyone checking in on this sadly neglected blog, what techniques would you like to "Level Up" ?

I am already working on I-cord (which will include 3 different I-cord cast on options, an I-cord bind off, integrated and applied I-cord edges) with three patterns, Picking Up Stitches on Garter Edges, Cast On's and Bind Off's with two patterns, and Shadow/Illusion knitting with two patterns.

You'll never swatch, just jump right into a pattern for a useful object, because a slightly wonky coaster or dish cloth can still be used.

Please leave a comment with what you would like to learn/level up.

Until next time, whenever that may be...Knit Happy!

~M

PS, I am loving my Induction Range!  The Power Boost function to boil a large pot of water in next to no time will never cease to amuse me!