Daisy knitting and spring cleaning

For the last few weeks I’ve been knitting a hat and mittens. It might seem like exactly the wrong time of year here to do that, but I’m working my way through some long-delayed projects.

Last summer I had an idea for a pair of mittens. There was a woman in a Poirot episode (The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman) wearing a fabulous dress:

I just learned that the character played by Anna Mazzotti is called Margherita Fabbri – how appropriate! I have to think the pattern choice was not a coincidence.

The allover daisy pattern was beautiful, and I wanted to see if I could stretch and do something a little less geometric and regular than usual. You will of course understand that despite that goal, there is still some regularity (only 3 kinds of flowers) and I used some rules used for placement. It’s hard to let go completely! I knit up the mittens with some Brooklyn Tweed Loft that I just happened to have on hand in the right colours.

Something was missing. I revisited the idea a few months later and designed a hat. This month I finally got around to making it. This time around I used Regia for the background and Manos del Uruguay Alegria to turn the flowers into brown-eyed susans.

Right now there is a small army of test knitters working on these project, and I love what I’m seeing. Anja made a double knit version of the hat with a yarn that changes colours. Francine is working with a colour scheme that turns the flowers into poppies. Jo’s talking about using beads for the middles of the flowers because going back and doing duplicate stitch later doesn’t appeal. This pattern is very close to release!

Next up was spring cleaning. I’m thankful that I don’t have a picture of the before situation, but yarn that I’d got recently (in the last year or two) or brought out recently because I thought I’d knit it soon was accumulating on the window box in our bedroom. It was out of control. I have lots of ideas of things that I want to get started on, but I felt disorganized. I didn’t feel like I had a clear picture of where I was and what was next.

After several bouts of checking the physical yarn was checked into my Ravelry stash, I had it all sorted by weight. I have a sock yarn bin and a lace weight bin. Now I have a worsted weight bin, and bags for the other weights *in* the window boxes. It’s all tidied away, but the pictures in Ravelry let me look at all the yarn. I also got rid of yarn that I’ll never knit with, and I put a bunch of my stash up for sale. Aaah, that feels better.

And though it’s not even May yet, I used this opportunity to stash dive for prizes for my annual Tour de France KAL in July. I’ve got a bag full of pretty yarn to tempt you and to reward you! The next major task for me in knitting is to start swatching some of the ideas I have for this shawl. I haven’t settled on anything yet, and I’m excited to get knitting!

This weekend, though, I’m heading to Toronto for the annual Toronto Knitters Frolic. I’ll be helping Debbie out at the Sheeps Ahoy booth as usual. If you’re in town, stop by and say hello!