I decided, the last week in January that I want to knit myself a throw blanket using TinCanKnits pattern. I love how it looks like a quilt and the variation with the squares having a variety of centres and one border is my favourite. I really wanted to knit this in DK or heavier weight wool so it would knit up super quick and be lovely and warm, but I decided that stash diving is the better part of valour and went with my collection of solid colour WYS sock yarn. I was originally going to hold the yarn double but I was having trouble with the pin-hole cast on (CO) and a single-strand made it easier. The WYS sock yarn has the added advantage of being superwash which is useful for something large like a blanket.
My first colour was Blueberry Bonbon, a lovely saturated medium blue just edging towards teal, and I knit four centres whilst waiting for the cream I ordered to arrive. Yes, I decided to knit from stash and then immediately ordered more yarn. Well, I had to: I only had two colours, Blueberry Bonbon and Cherry Drop (blueish-red, same saturation as BB), neither of which was the cream for the borders. So I ordered two skeins of Milk Bottle (cream) and one each Raspberry (bluish-pink) and (light teal). And stitch markers to qualify the order for free shipping (and because I can't find my small ring-os).
I finished adding the cream borders to the four blueberry squares, lightly blocked (washing and stretching out the lace) the first square and they look wonderful. If I do 4 squares a month I'll have 48 squares, 49 gives me 7x7. If I do one a week, I can do 49 squares and still have three weeks to sew them together. I need to properly block (wash and pin out) my squares to see how big they are and decide if I'm happy with that size blanket.
I also signed up for Bombella's colour-work KAL which runs 1 Feb-10 Mar. Any colourwork project would work so I decided to finally CO Pleadias Hat by Ann Kingstone in the special limited edition Cornish Tin in (blue) and (silver) I purchased over the summer. I didn't realise at the time that the Rowan Felted Tweed That the patten suggests calls itself DK but is actually sportweight, casualty to the UK not yet having embraced sportweight. My yarn is thicker than the pattern's, so I CO a smaller size (and then the smallest when I realised one round in that it would still be too big). I added an increase round to emphasise tam/beret rather than beanie. This is my first time working a corrugated rib, so yay for new skills.
Speaking of Ann Kingstone, I also signed up for her joint "on the other hand" Mystery KAL which started on Friday. I am using some stashed Ripples Crafts 100% BFL 4-ply in teal and cream. I finished the first cuff that day and only then realised I would need to knit the second cuff before the next clue if I want to finish on time so I pulled from the other end of each ball to make a second set of balls, moved the first cuff to a smaller needle and knit a second cuff. I don't really see myself doing fraternal mitts. Picture shows the "wrong side" as I'm knitting them inside out and it's generally considered polite not to post a lot of "spoiler" photos.
New skills here include corrugated rib and lice stitch (prettier than it sounds, though it would have to be, n'est pas?) and Norwegian purl. I'm doing them slightly different in a way that's faster for me but means wrapping my yarn the other way. I can live with that.
