I started off the month of July blogging and then kind of took a somewhat unintentional break. Rather than my usual format of check-ins and wrap-ups, I am just going to write about the past month in this update.
July is a busy month here. We usually take a week of vacation, which we also did this year. The week before is busy preparing and the week after is recovery. There are also a couple birthdays in our immediate family, and those are two days apart, so there is also "birthday week" in July. Plus the holiday at the beginning kind of alters everything as well.
I ended up dropping out of Tour de Fleece. I spun a lot for the first 10 days, and then we hit a rest day, and my bobbins on both wheels were empty, and I decided I was just going to make it a rest until we were back from vacation. And that is what I did. I had completed my goals of trying some "art yarn" techniques, I used my super flyer on the Kiwi, I completed plying the never ending Corriedale. The only goal I had that I hadn't hit was spinning on spindles while I was away from the wheels, but truthfully, I was not feeling particularly interested in doing that. Mostly that had been a goal I created to keep me spinning, but I would rather work with spindles because I want to, not because it was an obligation. So I just gave myself a nice rest.
Last Wednesday I got to spinning again. I am still spinning up some BFL singles on the Kiwi, that yarn will become gloves for my son. On the Flatiron I am ready to start plying some Falkland. I don't have any specific plans for that, it was just a nice relaxing default spin and will end up as a nice fractal.
July really was an interesting point in my making because I finished so many things and was able to really start fresh on everything.
In knitting, I had finished up all my WIPs in June, so when July 1 rolled around I was able to cast on some new things.
The first thing I cast on was the (no need to) Panic Sweater by Casapinka. This pattern caught my eye a few months back. I've noticed a bit of a trend for yokes with textured knitting lately, and I really liked this one in particular. I also liked that it could be knit with short sleeves. I had 4 skeins of Kelbourne Woolens Scout in my stash I thought would work well with this, but I was running a little short of yardage. (I'd bought the yarn last summer with a different sweater in mind and had abandoned that plan for various reasons.) I decided to see how much I could knit and if the sweater needed to be short sleeved, fine, it was designed with that as an option anyway. As it turns out, I was able to make the sweater my regular full length and the sleeves 3/4 or bracelet length, which is basically the way the pattern is written anyway. I'm on the second sleeve now and expect I should be able to finish up this sweater by this weekend or early next week.
I also spent a couple days in early July knitting the hat Minted by Andrea Mowry. My LYS carries Blue Sky's Brushed Suri and for some reason I just really wanted to play around with that. I held it double with some leftover sock yarn in a similar color and am really happy with the results.
That skein of Brushed Suri was the first skein of yarn I've purchased all year. I wasn't on a yarn diet or anything, but I was added so much yarn to my stash from converting fiber into yarn through spinning that I didn't really feel the need to buy anything. Apparently that opened something up for me though, because the next thing I knew, I'd purchased 2 sweater quantities of yarn from Knit Picks during their summer sale.
One of the sweater quantity I purchased was in Wonder Fluff. I've been so curious about this yarn and I figured it would work well for Skeindeer's Pure Fuzz pattern. As soon as I received the yarn and swatched to confirm it would work, I cast that on. It has taken a back seat to the Panic sweater, but I have knit at least a few inches past the sleeve divide, so as soon as it becomes my primary sweater knit I expect it will pretty much fly off the needles.
I haven't done anything with the second sweater quantity yet, but it is Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Bulky, so when I do start that one I expect it to also be a relatively quick knit. Sometimes you just really need to knit a sweater on size US 10 needles, you know?
Looking ahead into fall, the main thing on my mind has been my entries for our county fair in September. I went ahead a registered for a project in 1) sweater 2) hat 3) shawl/cowl/scarf and 4) mittens/gloves/mitts. I am planning on submitting my Festive Yoke for the sweater category. I might choose Minted for my hat, but I would really like to get back to learning brioche and I have a somewhat ambitious idea if I have enough time. I'm not settled on the shawl/cowl category either. I've knit both the Endlaus cowl and the Nightshift shawl that I could submit, there are also a couple more cowls I could potentially knit and complete to submit. As for mittens, I cast on the Tettegouche mittens by Virginia Sattler-Reimer with the intention of having those be my submission for that category. I'm almost to the thumb divide on the first mitten, but I have time so I'm not pushing myself too hard on that.
The other thing I'm looking ahead to is potentially participating in The Woolly Thistle's Sweater KAL again this year. The thing about that KAL is that the sweater needs to be at least 80% yarn from TWT. I have plenty of Jamieson & Smith, both in balls and also in leftover cones, so I could use that and maybe knit Stripes by Andrea Mowry. That has been on my mind for awhile, I'm not sure if I can get gauge and a good fabric though. And while it has been on my mind as a potential project, I'm not sure if I'm really feeling that or not. I spend much of the first half of 2022 finishing up yoke sweaters with two of those cones of yarn and I'm not sure I'm ready to go back to sweater knitting with them yet. Nothing else is really calling out to me, most of the sweater knitting I want to do right now is with yarn I already have that isn't from TWT, and I actually feel more interest in accessories at the moment anyhow.
I will keep working on the aforementioned things and should be back on track for an update later this month.
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