On the WIP Side – 4.8.2020

As always, I hope you are still all staying safe, happy and sane. Thank you for reading my blog and I hope it brings you some joy during this tumultuous time. I’m happy to distract you with some fun crafty projects. Definitely check out my YouTube channel to see any projects “in person.”

Total: 5 WIPs (4 active)
Knitting: 3 projects – 1 shawl, 1 pair of socks and 1 blanket
Crochet: 1 project – 1 blanket
Spinning: 1 project
Finished: 0 projects
2020 Total Finished: 11

Drachenfels Shawl
Pattern: Drachenfels / Melanie Berg
Yarn: Suburban Stitcher / Single Sock / Darkest Hour, Clementine and Sweet Adeline
Needles: Size 4 Needles
Gauge: IDK
Cast on: 3/18/2020
Cast off goal: None

This is still my reading project. I’ve been really great about giving myself 30 minutes to myself in the morning where I just sip a cup of coffee, read and work on this shawl. It’s a slow going shawl because I really am mostly just knitting on it for that 30 minutes, but it’s just what I need for that time. I’m really glad that I’m enjoying reading again and will start to look for more time as well. I’m still mostly knitting with the dark blue and should finish up this first section soon. I’ll then move onto some striping and include the 3rd colorway soon.

Honey Bee Dance Socks – NEW!
Pattern: Honey Bee Dance Socks / Helen Stewart / Curious Handmade
Yarn: One Twisted Tree / Prime / Rare Woman Claire
Needles: Size 0 DPNs
Gauge: IDK
Cast on: 3/29/2020
Cast off goal: None

This was definitely not on my recent radar, but I have had these socks planned for a while. You’ll know that I”m trying to use up skeins in my stash and this yarn has been around for YEARS. I originally got this yarn as part of a Christmas gift and I used other skeins to make a Riley Rose Shawl. I never used this skein and so I’ve been wanting to cast on a textured pattern with it.

I purchased the Handmade Sock Society from Curious Handmade back in 2018. It was the first season of it. If you haven’t seen these collections, go check them out. I think she’s in the midst of releasing the 3rd season of them. You receive a mystery pattern once every other month (this is how it worked for the first year, so I can’t say if it is still like this) for an entire year. So far, I’ve knit 3 of the patterns and so I’m excited to have cast on the 4th. If you don’t know Helen’s patterns, check them out. They are also so beautiful. If I could only knit one designer’s patterns for the rest of my life, she’d be up there on that list. She also writes out her patterns with percentage completion trackers, which is nice.

I needed a new cast on after all of my finished objects last week. I’ve been talking a lot about casting on different sweaters, but I just needed to get going on something. That’s one thing I love about sock yarn, you really can just grab, wind and go. I’ve been on the search for a really complex project (stay tuned for more details on that!) and so I decided to do a patterned sock instead of a vanilla sock. I really am still not in a sock place although it does seem like I cast one on every time I cast one off. They’re just so easy to cast on!

If you look closely at the pattern, there’s a cabled column on either side of the honey bee design. At some point, those were unaligned, meaning that I was cabling them on offset rows. Normally I really wouldn’t care, but it looked like it was just one inch back. I decided to just fix it, but then of course when I ripped back it wasn’t where I thought it was. Turns out, the mistake was before I turned for the heel, which suddenly felt like a lot more to rip back. At that point, the mistake still really didn’t bother me, but once I ripped back an inch for no good reason, I decided I needed to just go back and fix it. So I did and now I’m back up well past where I was. I’m finishing the last repeat of the pattern and then will do the cuff. Then it’s onto sock 2!

I think before I cast on sock 2, I’ll be knitting a charity project first. I think that’s dangerous, but we’ll see. I really don’t want too many WIPs going at once though, so I might switch off for now.

Other
1. Spinning – I did spin a bit, but not worth showing
2. Northeasterly – I knit a bunch on this and have completed another set of colors. Check out my YouTube channel to see it! I’ll post an update here when I finish another column.

Inactive
1. Neat Ripple – This is on hold until I finish up the charity items with the colors that I have used so far.

What’s Next?
An epic project. Stay tuned.

Shop
The shop is full of lots of fun ready to ship skeins. Check it out here. There are some great kits for shawls and socks along with good pairings for sweaters. Let me know if you need help with some color selections.

My new spring colors were released on Monday so check out my shop update post.
Also – check out my last FO Friday post for a discount on Strawberry Shortcake and Mint Chip.