This was a week of gratitude. While my local group of knitting friends are anxiously awaiting meeting in person (got my second shot this week so the countdown is down to 2 weeks), we all expressed how grateful we were that we had met via taking classes at our LYS. We could not imagine getting through this lockdown without our Zoom sessions each week and knitting for something positive to do each day. Even my daughter commented on how I could never have imaged when I decided to take up knitting 4+ years ago that it would lead to making such wonderful and strong friendships. I was not one who had many friends while I was working and raising kids but instead had “acquaintances” that mostly ended after the kids grew up and I retired. Now I truly feel I have friends both in my hometown and in my snowbird town.
Sailormoon Sweater
I did complete the body of my Sailormoon this week. Lesson learned this week – I wanted to make the stripe prior to the lace bottom the contrast color. What I didn’t consider was that since the first row of the lace panel was a purl row then the contrast color would display on the purl bump. I do not like this as it creates a “messy” row of mixed color between the main color and the contrast color that is inconsistent with the 4 row stripes preceding it. So I’m going to rip out the lace pattern (fortunately only 3 rows but at 300 stitches per row it’s still a lot) and start the panel with a stockinette row so that the purl row has a MC purl bump.
Christmas Mitts
I’m back on track with a right handed and left handed mitt. 🙂 I like the basic cable that is creating a “V” on the back of the hand just to add a little visual something to go with the colorwork stripes. I’m also doing 7 sets of K1P1 on the palm to help make sure the mitt fits snuggly on the hand. I should get these finished this week so that I’ll finally have my third FO of the year. Did I mention I’m a slow (i.e. easily distracted) knitter?!!
Yarn Buying??
Managed to behave myself with yarn purchases despite Turtlepurl has a 10% discount via Very Pink and Lollipop yarns had a shop restock (sells out in a day usually). One of my local knitter friends is pulling together a spreadsheet of “all” the yarn advent calendars. It will be on Google sheets so that we can all add to it. She will be screening out some of the most expensive ones as there is a limit to how much we want to spend. Frequently we don’t want the “trinkets” that get included by dyers to make their calendars more “valuable”. Course my friends don’t know that I’ve already arranged with our local friend that dyes yarn to restock their advent kit I gave them last year.
Knitting Calendar
I’m very happy with my excel based knitting calendar. I like that the calendar is an easy way to “see” all my WIPs on a daily basis so that I can decide if a project needs some love. Excel makes it easy to link pages so that I can see what my goals are and if I’m meeting them. Plus it’s easy to track my daily knitting stitches and calculate a monthly average since that’s one of my 2021 goals. So I’ve already abandoned my plan to use a second calendar app.
This is a year of projects (YOP) update. YOP is a Ravelry Group – make a plan for the year ahead for all your fiber activities, then update your blog every week. Plans can be calendar year (like mine) or mid-year start (like many). Following the plan is optional and creates some of the fun of posts. YOP is in it’s 10th year although I’m in my first in the group.
Knitting Is So Fun 