Good morning,

For Knitting, I plan to knit on socks every morning for 15 minutes.  I am currently knitting some sock tubes and when I use up the yarn I will be adding cuffs and then putting an afterthought heel.  When those are done, I’m going to work on some slipper socks that my Knitting BFF says will be fast.  and then I’ve got a third pair of socks that I’ve wound the yarn for and will work on.

Last year I kitted up 15 sock projects and over the course of the year picked a project at random whenever I finished a project.  I finished the year with about 6 or 7 projects untouched.  This year, I kitted up 13 sock projects with yarn and pattern in a project bag. This includes the projects that rolled over from last year. Knitting 15 minutes every morning Monday thru Friday takes me about 2 months to knit a pair.  Some projects will be finished faster and some take a bit longer.  So I hope to get through about half of these kitted projects in 2020.

Other than my socks, my priority project is Ricky’s Weasley Sweater.  Like I said in a previous post, I have a long term goal for each of my family to have a Weasley Sweater.  In 2018, Kayla’s was finished, Jacob’s was finished in 2019.  I am working on Ricky’s for 2020 and mine in 2021.  I would have started on mine in 2020 but I’m still waiting for the yarn.  So Ricky’s Sweater has a drop-dead deadline of Xmas 2020.  All of my other projects do not have a deadline so I work on them as I feel like it. Since this has to be done, I plan to work a couple of rows every evening Monday thru Friday.

On Thursdays, it’s knit night.  My local yarn shop is closing in January so my little knitting group will need to find a new place to knit on Thursdays.  I’m so sad to see it close but the owners are retiring and are excited for new retirement adventures.  I’m happy that they are moving on happily rather than other not so nice reasons that many of our local crafty shops have fallen to.  But at knit night, I do not work on my socks. I work on other more fun projects that I usually do not have time for during the week. Here they are and I’m sorry I do not have any pictures.  I’m travelling as I write this and my projects are sitting at home waiting for me.

Fairy Hill Shawl – I’m about 70% done with this project and it’s my next priority project because it’s very close to being done. I really only have about 30 rows or so left and I try to do the difficult row during the week because it’s harder for me to work on that during knit night. Too much fun happening that I’m not able to actually pay attention to my knitting sometimes. At knit night, I knit the wrong side row which is just a bunch of purls and can easily be done during knit night. Just so you have an idea, a row contains about 350 stitches right now and every row there’s an increase of about 4 stitches.

24 days of Christmas Shawl from Jimmy Bean- This is the shawl I started last December (2019) with my Advent Calendar I purchased from Jimmy Bean. During the month of December I knitted a couple of rows a day. But now in January, I pushed this down the priority list and only work on it during knit night.

By the time I get to this point at knit night, my knitting friend Liz gets in from work and we are working on the mix wave cowl together.  We are both a bit overwhelmed with this project and it helps when we have our BFF Knitting guru, Mindy, there to help walk us through any questions we have, which we have a lot of.

Then I work on my Water Lily top for a handful of rows.

My travel project is a headband for Kayla and I was halfway through my final one.  Unfortunately I didn’t have enough yarn so I ripped it up.  I have a skein of a different red yarn. I will make a beanie for her with that and when the beanie is done I will use the remaining yarn and the rest of the first yarn to make the headband for her. My plan is to alternate every row so we get a striped affect.  Both yarns are red but they are different enough that you could tell.

At Stitches SoCal last November I bought a kit and yarn for a number of various projects.  They are numbered and kitted up on my shelves. When the Fairy Hill Shawl and the Advent Shawl is done, I will work on the Orient Express shawl.  I have yarn for 3 hats and I need to find patterns for them. When the mix wave cowl is done, Liz, Mindy and our knitting group will be working on the Soldotna, a color work hat, Tranquil Mist Twinkle shawl, Wine Country shawl, or color work mittens.  I think we’ve got a bunch of KALs going on and I’m not entirely sure what’s next. When my Water Lily top is done, I’ve got purple cashmere yarn set aside for a sweater for me. I just need to figure out which pattern I want to work on. That’s a lot of projects that are queued up and as one project is completed, another is ready to take its place.

~here’s to a great knitty 2020!

Melanie