WIP Wednesday – June 29, 2021

I’m winding down several projects as the month of June winds down as well. It’s been a good feeling to get a few of the straggler projects finished up to start July and the Year of Projects with a (mostly) clean slate.

Lightweight Hipster Scarf/Shawl. Pattern is by Joji Locatelli and it’s a great single-skein project that knits up quickly. I’m using a skein of 100% merino sockweight yarn from Sock Pixie (I don’t think her shop exists anymore), in the Chicory Fairy colorway. When I was a kid, spending summers at my grandparents’ farm in Pennsylvania, when the wild chicory started blooming, I knew my birthday was coming up (it’s in late July and usually the chicory bloomed sometime in the first week of the month), so this one is reminding me of long summer days in one of my favorite places on earth. This scrunched-up image is where I currently am on this project. I’ve knit through the two lace/texture bands, and I just have the final long rows of garter stitch to knit, so I’m thinking another night or two of knitting and this one will be ready to block. It’s got fringe on the bottom edge, but I’m going to wait to add that until after it’s blocked.

Other than my Tour de Fleece spinning project, which you saw yesterday, that’s currently all I’ve got actively on the go right now! So… what am I planning to work on for July?

I have a few projects selected already. One of these will be the Wild Bee Socks. I’ll be using the West Yorkshire Spinners 4-ply sock yarn I got in my Thistle Knitter’s Sock Bag from The Woolly Thistle this weekend. The bag (which is super cute just by itself) had 4 different sock yarns in it, none of which I’ve knit with before, including the West Yorkshire Spinners’ Signature 4-ply, Yeah Socks from Rachel Coopey/Coop Knits, John Arbon Textile’s Exmoor Sock, and Garthenor Snowdonia Sock. The bag also came with some single-use Eucalan wash, a fun pin, a bee stitch marker, and a sticker with The Woolly Thistle’s mascots.

I decided I’ll cast on Helen Stewart’s Wild Bees sock pattern and use those for The Woolly Thistle’s Sock Sprint that starts July 9. The Signature 4-ply’s colorway is called “Cardamom”, and it’s not quite yellow, not quite green, but I think will show off the stitch pattern nicely.

I also will be casting on another sweater: Foss for Women, designed by Jennifer Toland. While I love knitting cables and colorwork and complex-y sorts of things, I realized that I really could use some “capsule wardrobe” type sweater as well to just toss on with jeans since that’s my wardrobe most days. I’m hoping this one will fit that niche. I’ll be using Woodsong Farm’s yummy Finn and CVM fingering weight yarn. This is a natural brown yarn overdyed in red for a gorgeous rich color. I’ve been saying for years I wish I had a red sweater for the holidays, so this one will be that!

This will be one of the 4 sweater-sized yarn lots I have pulled for Year of Projects, and I’ll start this one July 1st. While it’s not a complex knit, it is on US size 3 needles with sock-weight yarn, so it’ll take a while but I think will be a good read-and-knit or read-and-travel kind of project.

I have some smaller projects to decide on for the Harry Potter group’s classes, but those prompts will come out July 1, so I’ll pick and choose once I know what the prompts are to match up projects to those.