2015-Week 8

In week 8 of 2015 I refocus on my February must finish projects and hide from all my WIPS as I get ready for the last push towards the end of the month and the start of Sock Madness.

Packing My Bags

In preparation for several projects I hope to start in late March/April I placed an order with Abstract Fiber for a kids sweater's worth of Calder in the Hydrangea colorway (which K picked out herself via text) and some super sock in the Solid Clover colorway for Aprils solid sock challenge. I also ordered my cotton bamboo fingering for the Knit Eco Chic Solar Flare MKAL from The Unique Sheep in the beautiful gradient Sunset Road colorway. While I was there I decided to try out their Sip 'n Stitch yarn club for 6 months and I couldnt resist getting 772 yds of Sushi Sock in Doctor Blue for a certain someone (and maybe me too).

I received my package from Unplanned Peacock with the lovely Peacock Sock yarn dyed special tonal blue and variegated purple hydrangea colorways just for Sock Madness 9. I got one of each and might be placing another order to get my hands on the newly added tonal purple soon.

First Steps

Last week I had just finished the first sock of my Purless Monkeys on Fire sock and cast on sock 2. I didn't get any time to put into it this week but I'm planning to focus in as soon as my His Golden Lair is complete.

Morning Stroll/Uphill Path

My His Golden Lair continues to be an extremely intuitive knit. I've made a few mistakes by not counting my initial set of pattern repeat carefully on one row and ended up noticing on the next right side row and having dropping down two rows to tink about half the width of the pattern row to move it back one stitch and re-knit it up. It went surprisingly well and even though it's a pain I felt really good knowing that I have the skills to do that without thoroughly buggering the rest of the project.
I'm knitting it in my Blue Moon Fiber Arts Targhee Worsted in the Hadia colorway so at that weight it moves quickly but you add stitches every row and now that I'm in the scales charts each row requires a different count of the increasing/decreasing pattern repeats so I have to re-count each row before I start to make sure I don't make the same mistake again. All that to say that, while easy and fun to knit, each row feels like it takes longer than the last and even with long stretches of knit repeats it seems to take a long time to get to the end of the row. At times it feels like slogging along but I cant wait to finish the last 10 rows and see the finished shawl. I'll bet it looks awesome.

Final Destination

No FOs this week but hopefully I'll have two or three next week.

Back Porch

My three jars of canned locally grown white beans came out great. I'm looking forward to doing other beans throughout the year. The leftover beans that didn't fit in the jars were just perfect to add to a massive batch of crockpot Minestrone Soup that I found through Pinterest and let cook during one of our snow days. It was just the thing to warm and nourish my family on that cold day and the leftovers were even better for several days more.