Casa de Berry

“we’re one third of the way through!”

No, she never said that, but we are one third done with this insane year and I figured a recap of my knit achievements would be a good thing to document.

Here are some highlights of this year’s knitting:

It seems that a) this year is going to be mostly garments, and b) while it may not be clear in this grid above, this will be the year of pink. Much to my own surprise and that of everyone who has known me for more than three days, I am in the middle of a complete pink-fest. I have bought more pink yarn in the last two months than I have in the past forty-eight years. Before February, I had no pink yarn other than yarn I’d bought for baby knits.

What’s next on the needles? Another pink top, a couple of colorwork projects, and uh, another pink top. No, really. I’ve been a burgundy-and-black girl for decades so this pink addiction is very much a reality I am still getting used to.

I am super thrilled with what I have made so far, and I am making my peace with the fact that, maybe due to my arthritis, or maybe due to age, my gauge has changed. I am knitting way looser than I have ever knitted. Not a problem, I just make a smaller size. I am not willing to fight the new way I’m knitting because that will just end up hurting my hands. Accepting and moving forward.

And now murder hornets – excellent.

Ah, Dorothy Parker, if only you were around now.

My Easter was spent in a delightful quarant-storm of Schitt’s Creek, knitting, and Dungeons & Dragons. I bought a Schitt-load of candy despite the fact that the Easter Bunny (and Santa, and the Tooth Fairy) stop bringing presents and/or money when kids turn 13.

My husband and I decided on that a long time ago, about the time we bought 20 rolls of Christmas wrapping paper so we could wrap “Santa’s gifts” in the same paper every year for thirteen years.

Remember the old days, when we could make plans for years in the future?

I have, rather surprisingly, been at my full-time job for ten months now, and since we deal with people’s money, I am going to work as usual.

I’ve also been on a major reading kick, with Fantasy YA fiction (what?) my favorite genre, and historical fiction a close second.

But the knitting, oh the knitting. It continues, undeterred, from my early-stage arthritic hands, my feverish, Ravelry-addicted brain, and any well-meaning intentions of curbing my stash or paring down my queue just don’t stand a chance.

My choices have mostly been work-appropriate tops like the recently-finished Zweig I wore today.

My next FO (finished object for the uninitiated) is a deliciously warm sweater and since I live in Wisconsin, that means I still have some time to wear it. Here it is before I finished the first sleeve.

For some reason, this is the year of pink for my knitting. I am obsessing over every pink yarn I see – not too blue, though – and I want to make all the pink and rose tops. My 90s self is probably cringing right now.

January is my selfish month – I’ve usually been knitting and making for others during the traditional holiday months, so on January 1 I usually cast on something for myself, and take the month to indulge in casting on various items on my list.

The first item I cast on was the Cabled Leaf Pullover by Alana Dakos. I meant to cast this on last year but I never got around to it, and I’ve had the yarn for it for a while.

The pattern is lovely and the yarn is in my color crush for the year – burgundy. I have finished the front and am halfway done with the back, but as usual, I cannot have just one project of my needles, which brings me to my second cast-on of the year, and my first finished object.

The Exploration Station shawl by Stephen West is one of the most well known shawl patterns on Ravelry. I named it Parisian Exploration – I lived in Paris for a while after Uni, and have visited several times since, and the colors were my interpretation of a delicious chocolat chaud from Angelina enjoyed during a Parisian morning.

This is another indulgence I am enjoying this year – I am naming my projects after whatever inspired me to make them, not just after the pattern name itself.

My LYS is hosting designer Marie Greene in March, and I decided to make one of her pieces to wear to the event. I had been eyeing the color Eel from Hedgehog Fibres for a long time and it was perfect for the accent color of Marie’s Brunswick Tee.

As I type this, I have just begun the bottom colorwork section using the Eel color, and I absolutely love it. I will have a lot of leftover from this color and I am thinking of how I can best use it. Maybe a cowl to wear with the Tee?

I discovered a very talented dyer, Onyx Fiber Arts, and I saw a sock weight skein she had in the most stunning shade of burgundy. I was looking to make a DK weight top, though, and she was kind enough to make a custom sweater-quantity in that same burgundy color, in the DK weight.

With January almost over, I am hoping to finish these projects in the next few weeks, and I will also begin working on a blanket that a friend asked me to finish for her.

I am sure I will be casting on a bunch more projects in February. I can’t help it, it makes me happy to start new pieces and it makes me just as happy to work on them and finish them. I wear what I make all the time, I love wearing my sweaters and my hats and mittens, and I am so lucky to work in a yarn shop with amazing coworkers who are so incredibly talented and generous in sharing their knowledge.

See you at the end of February!

It was about a year ago that I began thinking of what I would make the following year.

Yeah, I’m like that.

This is what I came up with:

Let me sit back and laugh, heartily, at my attempt to control the fact that I have the attention span of a gnat, because I have finished a grand total of TWO of these projects.

TWO.

The bottom left and the bottom right.  That’s it.  C’est tout.  In my defense I did mean to make all these; in my defense I did start two others, the mittens in middle row right, and the sweater in top row left.  And in my defense, I did make two of the bottom right cardigans, one for me, and one for a friend.

That said, I can confirm my complete and utter failure to follow a plan.

However!  Check this out!

I set a challenge on Ravelry to complete 30 items this year.  Technically, I have made more than 30 because I’ve made random hats here and there, but per the tally on Ravelry I have one more item to finish before I fulfill my self-set challenge.

Not bad, I would say.

The 29 items I have made include the most difficult knit I’ve completed, the Liguria brioche hat Alex requested when he visited me at work (I work part time at a . . . wait for it . . . yarn store) because the child just had to choose the hardest thing for mom to make.  Had it not been by my awesome coworker, there is no way I would have finished the hat, and I’ve discovered brioche knitting is not for me, I even attempted an easier style and failed at that as well, and as I prefer my knitting to be fun, I decided this is a technique I will not attempt again, at least not in the near future.

But look at him:

He was so happy and that makes the frustration worth it.  That’s parenting in a nutshell.

So I will probably not make a plan for 2019 because let’s face it, mama ain’t gonna follow the plan so why fricking bother.  But for the rest of this year I do have a few must-makes, which include a cabled sweater for Steve, a super secret something also for Steve made out of the yummiest yarn EVER, a v-neck red sweater for me that is actually looking more and more like a project to cast on next year because OH YEAH my tradition, after months of knitting for others during the holidays, is to cast on something for me on January 1.

That alone tells you how much I party on December 31st.

So, despite my less than 50% success rate in making what I thought I would make last year, this has been a great year knitting wise.  I made a cowl as a sample for the store, tried a new and difficult technique, and have met lots of amazing knitty friends.

I’m on Ravelry as claudiaberry and on Instagram as casadeberry – I ‘gram almost daily and love seeing other people’s knits.  I hope to post again before the end of the year but who am I kidding?

It took me a few months after we lost Foxy to even consider getting a new dog.  Oh, I was always torturing myself by looking at the Humane Society pages, but to actually get to the point where I would go in and look at the dogs . . . nope, that didn’t happen for a while.

Finally, at the end of this past winter, Aidan and I headed over – we’d seen a dog named Cherry (for her cherry eyes) on the website, and we wanted to meet her.  She was a Southern lady, one of the many dogs that have little chance for adoption in some Southern states and get sent up here in hopes of finding a forever family.

Cherry was very sweet from the first moment, we don’t know what her background was, but she has been a loving girl and constant companion.  She does have separation anxiety and when I got a part-time job during the summer, she made her feelings known every time I would leave, even though Steve and the boys were home.  Having made the commitment of being with her, I felt that I needed to honor that and I quit my job (where I spent more than I made, so probably not a bad thing) and she is much happier now.

She puts up with modeling the dog sweater I made for her and keeps me company while I knit, do laundry, clean house, etc.  She just wants to be with her mama.

If you come visit us she will greet you with lots of barking until she sniffs you – she just wants to make sure you’re not a meanie and once she gets to know you, she’ll bring you her toy to play.

She was described as a puggle – a mix of beagle and pug – but some people with more dog knowledge believe she also has some Mountain Cur or Boxer in her makeup.

We are happy to have welcomed Cherry – her official name is Cherry Cherry Bo Berry – into our family and hope she knows how much she is loved.  She recently went through some surgery to remove some teeth and fix a little bump on her eyelid that kept irritating her eye – our local vet staff is amazing and our girl is more comfortable than ever, we hope.  We just want her to have a good life with us.