And then… everything changes.
Crafting through the seasons.
INSIDE: seasonal making, learnings, yarn winding fun, crochet curiosities, nature-inspired tracks, street art + flowers.
As the leaves take on their autumnal hues in the northern hemisphere, many of us are signaled to try something different in our crafting journey.
If you're in the southern hemisphere, like me, you're going to be welcoming the warmth, as we’re experiencing Spring and then Summer will be upon us.
I wanted to dive into how changing seasons affect our yarn choices and project types and also our crafting mood.
For people in the northern hemisphere, this is the busiest time of the year for crafting. Because if you're getting towards the colder months, you're looking forward to wearing all those beautiful handmade knits or crochet items.
Or, you might be a gift knitter, so you're getting organized to ensure the gifts you want to share will be ready in time.
Autumn or fall is the beginning of the cozy making season and apart from favorites like chunky blankets and sweaters, we can't forget the smaller items like mittens, cowls and boot toppers.
There are fabulous designs for colorwork boot toppers that look stunning on and add that special something to your winter wardrobe. They make perfect ideas for gift giving!
Through the summer months you might have used linen, cotton, or blends, and in winter, they give way to comforting and insulating fibers like wool, alpaca and bulkier weight yarns. They provide us with such warmth! The textures these fibers give us are sensational and they offer a different look too.
Autumn colors are inspirational, but we can’t limit ourselves to just the golden hues or the reds, browns, and russets! Don't forget there's the jewel colors that we experience on those crisp fall days with sun and blue skies.
Emerald and sapphires add a richness to your project.
If you're looking for inspiration and you need visuals, Pinterest boards dedicated to Fall Crafting are a wonderful resource and a treasure trove of ideas.
Have you ever tried to add visual interest to your projects like with ribbon yarns? Or seen the yarns that are recycled saris plied together for an accent detail, or embellishing your knits with embroidery?
This might be the perfect time to experiment with those techniques.
I'm going to try embroidering a store bought merino wool and cashmere sweater that has holes, with embroidery stitches
uses for her designs. The Star Stitch is one of her favorites, so I'll start with that.I also admire visible mending and one of the stars of that particular art is the designs of Flora Collingwood-Norris. She’s a sensational visible mender.
I've got some other tips for crafting in the fall and winter season.
As you rotate your seasonal clothes and you get out cooler weather items, putting away your summer ones, consider doing that for your yarns too.
Ensure you’ve got yarns you're no longer going to be crafting with either in vacuum sealed bags or cedar blocks in your storage containers. This protects your yarns from moths, the cold, and dampness.
At this time of year, it's a great time to finish the winter items for charity, gifts, or things you've got on the needles for yourself. If you working hard now, you'll have a better chance of getting your projects ready to wear for the end of the year.
Another idea is create projects that work in multiple seasons. A shawl is a great idea for any time of the year: a chilly evening or a sunny autumn day, just to add that extra warmth.
Now for a project update.
After ripping out the first attempt I made on my True Nature Tee, I'm taking things slowly and counting the stitches every few rows.
I've tried a new technique for slip slip knit, which I learned from Patty Lyons.
It's a slip slip knit all in one move. You insert your right hand needle into the first stitch of the left hand needle as if to knit.
You insert the tip of your needle around the back of the second stitch into the back loop. Then you wrap the yarn and pull it through.
It creates a neater and smaller slip slip knit that mirrors the knit two together.
Though it's slow going because I'm new to this technique, I'm a big fan of how it's turning out. It's much neater than what I was doing before (slipping the two stitches, putting my needle in front, wrapping the yarn and taking it through.)
That's been a good find for a new technique!
I'm yet to try another swatch for my other project that uses the Alba organic cotton yarn where I need to get more rows per inch.
Something I've learned this week is I'm potentially adding more twist to the yarn by knitting the English style and wrapping my yarn counterclockwise.
What I've noticed in that swatch is the loops at the end have twisted up on each other. The fabric I've created looks like corduroy!
I learned from Julia Farewell Clay in one of her videos about whether you wrap your yarn clockwise or counterclockwise matters when you knit.
The corduroy effect is created when the one leg of your stitch is dominant.
That's been fascinating!
I'm going to knit a second swatch using the English style method, but wrap my yarn clockwise. Then I'll see how that affects the fabric.
I'm also going to try another swatch using the Continental method and again, wrapping the yarn clockwise. That's going to be hard going because I'm not a Continental knitter. It takes me a lot longer!
I'll share my results with you next week.
The other thing I noticed with that yarn is the strand is plied in what looks like a heavy twist. Maybe a different way of wrapping won't make a difference!
We will see.
I love learning, it’s just so good for the brain. I'm excited to have this knowledge and grateful to the experts in knitting who share these tips.
I've got another question for you. Do you change your yarn with the seasons?
A trip down memory lane…
In early 2020 I came back to Australia and visited Adelaide in South Australia. I found a shop called Yarn Trader in Port Adelaide. It was such a fantastic find!
I bought a lovely blue and white handmade drawstring project bag, a pair of red lace circular needles and a hank of self-striping sock yarn from Hedgehog Fibers.
It was in the most gorgeous colorway!
Interestingly, it was called Kimono then.
With the creators acknowledging there’s appropriation from other cultures they’re not entitled to use, Hedgehog Fibers renamed the colorway to Firefly.
I asked the staff of yarn trader what they recommended as a an easy sock pattern and they suggested Hermoine's Everyday Socks by Erica Lueder.
The advantage of going into a yarn store was they offered to wind the yarn.
I asked if I could wind it myself, with some supervision from them. They were happy for me to do that! I'd never used a wooden yarn winder or swift before.
It was quite exciting and it didn't take long at all to turn the hank into a beautiful neat yarn cake.
My youngest took a video of me winding the yarn. Doesn't it go fast?
Yarn shops are so lovely to visit.
If you have a local yarn store, please share what you enjoy about it.
What I’ve loved this week: reads, listens, visuals and gratitudes…
It's getting warmer here, so I was fascinated to find an article by Alyssa Fowers from the Washington Post that talked about the statistics of seasonal crochet.
She sourced her data from Ravelry, and I learned some fascinating things.
Frogging is called that because chanting “rip it, rip it” sounds like a frog.
Another fact is that a lot of projects, like goal setting, started in January.
The interesting fact was crocheting a jacket is one of the projects that's most likely to be abandoned.
Perhaps you're better off making a dishcloth or a washcloth, which is a much simpler project, and they also have the highest rates of completion.
I'd love you to give it a read and tell me what you found.
If you're interested in seasonal living, there's a wonderful substack by
called .She's got so many ideas of how this affects your life and your home. She's just written a post on Ancient Halloween Traditions, which was fascinating!
If you're like me and love to listen to calm music when crafting, fall seems like the perfect time for some instrumental, nature-inspired tracks.
Matt from
has published a monthly composition for the last two years. He lives in the Pacific Northwest in North America and his music captures the changing seasons and the beauty of the area.It's a region of the world I'd love to visit one day. It looks simply stunning.
His music is also available on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and other places.
Now I'm back in Australia, when I was visiting Melbourne, I decided to explore two things. The city is famous for coffee, which I can safely say is excellent, and the local street art.
There's a famous laneway in the center of the city called Hosier Lane. That was my first stop off and I did see some amazing work! The beauty of street art is it's always changing, so you never know what to expect when you visit.
When I did, there were two artists hard at work painting murals.
One was using a classic collection of spray cans and the other was using an airbrush, which I'm told is excellent for detailed works.
Of course, there's plenty of other pieces of art hiding in the cityscape, you just have to keep your eyes wide open.
I'm grateful for spring. The beautiful combination of cool mornings and warm afternoons, flowers blooming, the birds becoming more active, and the deciduous trees bursting into life.
Here's a beautiful flowering arch I saw when I walked through Kings Domain, in Melbourne. It's a grassy parkland just outside the Royal Botanical Gardens.
A thought for you to ponder this coming week…
As the seasons change, let it be a reminder to pause and reflect on your crafting journey. The turn of the leaves or the bloom of spring flowers can be as much a marker of personal change as they are of nature's.
So, may you find warmth in your stitches this winter or sweet relief in your craft this summer.
How’s your crafting going? Leave a comment or press reply!
(Disclosure: Any purchases made through links may earn me a commission.)
Before you go…
I do try and visit a yarn store whenever my family is traveling. I am lucky to be living near one for the past couple years. Whether you visit frequently or rarely, yarn store is a joyful place for a little community gathering and cozying up. :) Love the bursting Wisteria in your last picture.
I learned the very basics of knitting (aka all I know) from my great grandmother. She was born in 1907, so she knit differently than another lady I met a few years later in my childhood. Unfortunately, I get their knitting techniques confused, but from reading your article today, I think my great grandmother taught me to put my yarn counter clockwise. Her family was French Canadian, so it makes sense that she’d know the British method.
As far as I’m aware, I don’t think there’s anything difference between the two methods except the amount of time it takes to hook your yarn over the needle (the British method is ever so slightly faster, I think I’ve been told). However, as I said, I only know the absolute basics of how to knit, so it’s very likely I’m wrong! I’m interested to hear your findings as you experiment with both methods.