What Are We Making This Time of Year?

I’ve been writing about knitting for a long time (on this site and others, more than 15 years!), so I can tell you that it seems like people don’t knit as much when it’s hot outside. This based on pageviews, which tend to be higher in the winter months than in the summer (except this year, y’all have been friendly and I so appreciate it!).

A story in The Washington Post looked at Ravelry’s data since 2019 to determine when crocheters are starting more projects and how long they tend to take. I assume the data would be similar for knitters.

The month when the most projects are started? January. Though that could be all the crafters who have “use Ravelry better” as one of their new year’s resolutions.

The exception to that was the spring of 2020, when more people took up yarn crafts, are were probably making more, when they were home during the pandemic.

The month projects are most likely to be finished? December. Probably a combination of holiday crafting and “I’ve got to finish this before the end of the year!”

The data showed that projects started in the summer (in the Northern Hemisphere) tend to take the longest. Because who wants to work with yarn in this heat?

But what kinds of projects are we making at different times of year? Again this is crochet, but I imagine it’s similar for knitters:

Blankets are most popular in January
Tops and bags are started most in the summer months
People start making hats in August
September is when scarves become popular
More people are making sweaters in October

They also looked at the projects most likely to remain unfinished and found that more than half of the crochet coat and jacket projects listed as started on Ravelry haven’t been finished. But people who use Ravelry to keep track of their projects are, in general, finishers: 75 percent of all projects on Ravelry have been completed.

This is not my life. I use Ravelry as a project tracker in fits and starts and have plenty of projects that look abandoned because I never bothered to update them.

What about you? Do you use Ravelry to keep track of projects? How good are you at keeping up with it? Do you agree with these notions of what’s popular each month?

If you want to look at the article I’ve got a gift link for you here.

[Photo via The Washington Post.]

I guess I must have had this pattern on my mind, because I had chosen this log cabin blanket recipe to write about, promptly forgot about it and a couple of weeks later started knitting a log cabin blanket using all my pink yarn.

It might stay pink if it makes it to baby blanket sized, or I might add in some pastel green and blue, too, to make a bigger blanket. We’ll see. I’m also holding several strands of yarn together to make a kind of bulky yarn, which means it’s deeply satisfying how much yarn is used even as the project is still relatively small.

In Kristen Finlay’s version, DK weight yarn scraps (or fingering/sock yarn held double) are used to make a simple scrappy log cabin blanket that’s lighter weight than my version. Log cabin is a great technique for knitters of any skill level because it’s worked in garter stitch. The only not completely basic technique you need for log cabin knitting is picking up stitches.

If you’ve never worked a log cabin knitting project before, this is a good introduction, and it is really nice to use all your yarn scraps in one big project you’ll use for years to come.

If you use a lot of DK weight yarn you can keep building on it whenever you finish a project, or if you use more worsted weight you can do the same thing with it, it will just be a little bigger starting out than the pattern calls for. How big it gets is totally up to you.

I have really been enjoying working on my log cabin project, and it’s my current sitting at my desk and need a break knit (do you have one of those or is it just me?).

Ready to start your own log cabin blanket knitting project? You can grab the free pattern from Kristen Finlay on Ravelry.

Need more log cabin inspiration? Check out more log cabin knitting patterns.

[Photo: Kristen Finlay]

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