I started the New Year with 3 WIP knitting projects and 2 more ready to cast on.

WIPs

• A Homespun House Cozy Comfort throw – this has been in process for awhile now but it’s a blanket, so those usually take me years. I started this last January or February with minis from my A Homespun House Advent calendar held double with Purl Soho line weight merino (yes this was a splurge but it was so worth it). This is my mindless TV knitting and I actually worked on it a lot over the holiday break. It’s knitting up squashy and soft and I love seeing how each mini-skein’s colorway blends or stands out with the prior one.
• Clinton Hill Cashmere’s Bandit Cowl in their bespoke cashmere DK in the Forest colorway. This yarn is knitting nirvana and this is a small indulgence project. I keep this one in my purse or in the car as it is extremely portable “waiting” knitting for when the kid is off doing something and I’m the chauffeur waiting to drive her home.
• The Secret Garden knitted dishcloth from the Kitchen Sink Shop. At some point, she released a free dishcloth pattern every month. I went back and tried to find them all on Ravelry but could only find a few that were still free, and this is one of them. I’m just using cheap cotton from the craft store in a navy blue and this will probably be gift knitting in a package of little things for my bestie. It’s a little rough to work on cotton after the cloudy softness of line weight merino and bespoke cashmere but it’s a fun knit and the pattern emerges in a very satisfying way.

Ready to Cast On

• Road Trippin’ Hat – a free pattern by one of my favorite knitting vloggers, Christina Lundborg of ‘Chelsea Yarns’. I need to use up some of my seemingly bottomless stash of fun sock yarn so I picked a skein of Targhee Sock by Oink Pigments (“Smoky Purl”) that I bought at the Quarter Stitch yarn shop in New Orleans and I’ll be holding it double with a Chelsea Yarns Luxe Mohair (“London Fog”).
• When I took my crochet class last fall at Spun in Ann Arbor, most of my classmates were already knitters so there were some pretty cool handknits being worn. One of my classmates had a careless yet absolutely elegant little triangle scarf / shawl made, she said, from a set of Harry Potter minis in a pattern she couldn’t remember. I was instantaneously envious and needed it in my life. I got myself a Christmas Advent set with this in mind, picking Six & Seven Fiber’s Literary Women 8-skein fingering weight mini set, and with 5 selected colors I’ll be casting on the Mini Solutions Scarf by Kelene Kinnersly Designs very soon (I’ve selected Amy Tan, Toni Morrison, Mary Shelley, Celie, and Louisa May Alcott for my colors!).

Cross- Stitch

I started cross-stitching a couple of years ago and am still plugging away periodically on a seasons sampler, although I haven’t picked it up in awhile. Since October I’ve almost exclusively been working on this Jacob Marley piece by Lindsay Swearingen of ‘Tusk and Cardinal’. The only thing I do more slowly than knit is cross-stitch, and I think it’s pretty funny that this is exactly half-done. The chart prints out half and half on two separate pages and I only printed one page to start with. Then, over the holidays, our printer ran out of ink so I couldn’t print the second half until quite recently. But it’s been fun to fold it over and see how it will look when it’s finished.

LIndsey Swearingen is worth checking out on IG if you’re a cross-stitcher and her book “Creepy Cross-Stitch” is full of fantastically gothic and elegant pieces that I would love to have on my office walls.

I’m being pretty lazy and not linking these projects and patterns, but they’re (mostly) all on Ravelry or for purchase from the yarn web page (as is the case with the Clinton Hill project). I also update my own Ravelry project pages (I’m sixtenpine over there) fairly regularly as things come off the needles or start taking shape, so please check me out if you are looking for more specific information like pattern links, yarn sizes, and notes. I hope you are all starting off your New Year with some fun and satisfying projects. I look forward to revisiting these pieces and providing status updates of my tortoise-speed progress! xo