Bye Bye January
January 31, 2020
Another month has come along, and my iPhone weather app tells me that the days are now
minutes longer! Woohoo!
Pogo thinks January was a good month for napping.
January got me with WIP-itis really bad. I had seven WIPs at one time! The only thing that saved me was that two of them were part of a knitalong and I could only work on them as the clues came out, one of them was to use up my scrap sock yarn and was therefore invisible to me, and one of them was really close to being done.
That was my Boathouse pullover by Marie Greene (the pattern will be available later this year) knit in Plymouth Merino Cammello (80% Extrafine Merino Wool, 20% Baby Camel, sport weight, 180 yards per 50g), and it's done now. So, cross one sweater off my six-sweater Make Nine Goal! The yarn is marked down to $6.99 from $11.99 at WEBS right now!
The two knitalongs that I am participating in are my Estonian lace shawl and Mystery Socks XII from Knitter's Brewing Company.
The shawl is coming along just fine; I just did week 32 and there are only 37 weeks in the knitalong, so it's almost done.
The socks are Let It Snow! from Knitter's Brewery, and this is the progress after week 2 (I have week three ready to start this weekend):
This is why mystery knitalongs are both a blessing and a curse for me. This pair is a curse, because I kind of hate mosaic knitting, and this is mosaic knitting ... but it is a blessing because I had to do it, and after I got halfway through the chart on the first leg I started to enjoy it, so I guess I like mosaic knitting now. The pattern is free from Knitter's Brewing Company and the yarn is Sockaholic ESB (Extra Special Blue, 75% Superwash Merino, 25% nylon, 460 yards per 100g).
That leaves two pairs of socks, a cowl, and a scarf. One pair of socks is plain vanilla for me because I apparently need more socks:
The other pair is a difficult pair, but it was so cute that I simply disregarded the pain of the colorwork charts and ordered the yarn anyway:
Kittycat Socks from The Knitter magazine, issue 136, by Lumi Karmitsa. Needless to say, this is the first sock and I am only to the heel flap. This pair may take a while. I was excited to be done the chart, because I thought the rest of the sock was plain grey, but it is not. The color pattern is simpler than the cat chart, but it is still more $%^&*!@# colorwork. Sigh. It will be worth it.
I haven't gotten very far on the ZickZack scarf; I'm only about eight inches up:
ZickZack Scarf by Christy Kamm, using leftover sock yarn. Meh. It'll be prettier when I get the other 64 inches done.
And lastly, the cowl I am knitting because I found a cone of yarn from Nancy Howard which felt soft and I liked the neutral color; I started another Still Waters Cowl by Swans Island. I knit the first one in blue, and I have worn it so much it is pretty much felted, so I figured I had better knit another one. The yarn is very soft, and feels like it has cashmere or alpaca or silk in it, but all I have for the information is a tag inside the cone that says "Wudervolle Froehlich Wolle 'beständig schön & gut' " which translates to "Wonderful Froehlich Wool 'consistently beautiful & good' ". I hope it doesn't have alpaca in it, because alpaca makes me itch.
Ha, I haven't gotten much done on it. It will be good TV knitting.
Sorry this has been so long! Knit happy! Congratulations if you read to the end!