I’m trying to be more organized with my knitting in 2026 and that means clearing the needles of some lingering WIPs. I cast on the Wolop cowl last February with my 2024 Homespun House Advent minis and it’s just been soothing garter stitch in the round ever since. For almost a year. No one ever said I’m a fast crafter.

I finished it last week and had a couple of days of weaving in so.many.ends. I took it out into the world this weekend (specifically to the bookstore to look for more Japanese mysteries – I am reading a classic Japanese whodunnit by Seishi Yokomizo ‘The Inugami Curse’ and I’m hooked) and the kiddo helped me get a couple of pictures that didn’t make me want to put a paper sack over my head. (Raveled.)

I’ve also cast on what is likely the most challenging project of my knitting life to date. The kiddo saw the Yarnquarium Bug Collection scarf on TikTok and immediately sent it to me with several pleading emojis. The scarf is double knitting, which I’ve never done, and which results in a cool reversible pattern. However, it’s fairly complicated to get the hang of since you’re using two separate yarns to create the pattern on one side and in the reverse color on the other side, knitting in one color and purling in the other color. (The chart is over 500 rows.) So, with hubris and love for my only child, I waded in.

I hope she still wants it when she’s 35, which is approximately when I may finish it.

I’m trying to assemble my Make 9 board for 2026 which will mostly contain WIPs that need to be finished, projects that I’ve purchased the yarn and pattern for that have been sitting in a bin, and several stashbusters. There may be a few substitutions along the way but my goal for 2026 is really to try to get a handle on the overflow of yarn and projects that I have stowed away without purchasing new things. (This won’t include gift knits that may come up or charitable knitting, such as my Mittens 4 Detroit projects next fall, where I will probably have to buy the appropriate yarn.) More to come on that as I hope to have the Make 9 locked down within the next week or so.

(As an aside, knitting and reading are helping to save my mental health these days. I feel – and I’ve seen a lot of other makers express that they, too, feel – unsure about posting good things when so much of the US is suffering through a dystopian nightmare. The images and stories out of Minnesota are especially devastating. I guess the way I look at it is that without these refuges of calm and peace, making things with our hands and being able to escape for a little while in a book or a movie, many of us would just collapse under the weight of our unregulated nervous systems. One of my favorite knitters and YouTubers, Denise DeSantis / EarthtonesGirl, shared a reel on Instagram recently and she just simply said none of us know what’s okay now and it’s okay to not know. We all do what we can to keep showing up and being able to say ‘this is wrong‘, day after day.)