Before finishing the mittens and sweater, I made a couple of beanies out of a single skein of closeout ($3) acrylic yarn. (The hat on the left in the photo is Snap by Tin Can Knits which I made as a beta tester for their new app)

While in the car I cast on for a second hat: the Sockhead Slouch Hat by Kelly McClure. It is a slouchy stockinette cap meant to be done with a single skein of sock yarn. I chose the Tiger Lily sock yarn because its turquoise and rust colors remind me of the Southwest.

I worked on the hat several nights in my tent during a 4-day, 70-mile hike on the Arizona Trail, more on the drive back through New Mexico, and finally finished the day we arrived home.

Winter hiking in Arizona is nice, except the sun sets so early that we were at camp for many hours before bed every night. It was nice to have a project to work on. I highly recommend something portable and stockinette like this pattern for winter hiking.

Unfortunately I didn’t take any photos of it while working on the trail, but my sister was kind enough to model it when we got home. Despite it having no pom pom, this has become my most-worn hat I’ve made…​ but even the superwash merino sock yarn can become quite itchy to me!

Kelly also has a Sockhead Cowl pattern to match the hat which looks like it could work like a neck gator (I wear my Buffs all the time), so I am definitely planning on making one of those.

While I think the Embrace Octopus sweater is the most visually striking project of the year, once I calculated the gauge to work with lighter yarn (including some modifications to the charts), the actual knitting went pretty quickly. I did finish three projects that took significant amounts of time.

I haven’t crocheted (except for Tunisian) since completing some simple crochet beanies back in 2019, so I decided to do some small projects to remind myself how.

One thing I discovered after completing most of the projects below is that I had been crocheting wrong! I was creating the new stitch to the left of the stitch below (with the right side facing). But the usual way is to create the stitch to the right of the stitch in the previous row. My way not only introduces more left-leaning bias when worked in the round, but it can be more difficult especially right before chains that tend to be very tight. I don’t know if I always crocheted that way, or if I only just recently re-taught myself wrong 🤷

For reference, Shelley Husband has a blog post on where to insert when creating stitches (think of rightside stitches as a capital letter P, “The circley bit of the P is where you poke your hook if you’re working into the stitch”): How to work into a stitch (and around, and between and…)

Just before Christmas a friend gave me a 3D printer he no longer has time to use (an Ender 3 Pro)!

I have zero prior experience with 3d printing, but my very first print was successful: a little BMO character from Adventure Time (I scaled it to 25% before printing, so it is only about 1" across).

But my attempts at printing were not always immediately successful. In particular any model with small-diameter features on the first layer would often not adhere. After spending hours leveling and re-leveling, I found that the most effective thing was usually to wash the build surface with soap and water (and not merely wipe it with isopropyl).

To increase the ratio of my time spent printing vs leveling, I replaced the build surface with a PEI surface (which is great because once the bed cools down the prints pop right off), replaced the bed-leveling springs with stiff silicone spacers (as recommended in several reddit threads), and installed a CR Touch “auto bed leveling” sensor which replaces the Z-axis limit switch with a sensor that can always zero to the surface of the print bed. To take full advantage of the CR Touch I upgraded the printer’s firmware to a version of Marlin that supports mesh-based auto leveling (I used the pre-built firmware by Shiny Upgrades; they also have a good general guide here: Ender 3 Pro Starter Guide).

I still have tons to learn, but I am now getting reliable first layer adhesion even for models with tiny circles. Overall, hobby 3d printing feels closely adjacent to yarn crafts. Except it is cheaper ($20/kg of PLA filament vs $200/kg of wool yarn) and faster (a large print can take 24 hours plus some setup time, while a large knitting project can take 24 weeks or more, all of it labor intensive).

There are currently several competing model/project database websites (Thingiverse, Printables, Thangs, …​), though none of them are as feature-complete as Ravelry is for yarn crafts. I like the look-and-feel of Printables best, but Thingiverse has more models and its database of makes (“projects” in Ravelry terms) prompts for more metadata which I like. For now I’m using both.

 — Thingiverse Make: Adventure Time BMO

In 2024 I hope to focus even more on knitting. Most immediately that means probably making a pair of Cookie A’s Monkey Socks, but more long term I intend to complete at least Level 1 of The Knitting Guild Association’s Master Hand Knitter program. I haven’t signed up yet, but I just registered as a TKGA member while writing this post!

I also hope to dedicate time to creating some knitting CAD tools.

In addition to knitting and crochet, I have a growing queue of sewing projects. I already have all of the materials for the Fremont tote bag, so that will probably be first up!