Year of Projects: Week 29

      I have a few finishes from the past two weeks and a new start.  So first up; I finished Hum Beanie.  I did a quick steam block as it didn't need much assistance to look good.  I think it turned out nicely.

I finally got around to wet blocking the White Whiskers Hat.  It grew alot.  I may need to toss it in the dryer for just a bit to snap the superwash back into shape.  It evened out very nicely and I wasn't expecting that with this colorwork.

I started a pair of boot socks yesterday.  I'm using a bunch of small bits of wool I dyed myself.  A couple years ago I bought a bag of mystery wool suitable for dying from a local thrift shop.  I wasn't convinced it was all natural fibers until I started dying it.  I've done a few skeins each Easter with the left over easter egg dyes and Kool Aid or Wiltons dyes mixed in as well.  Liara has helped me most years and its been really fun for both of us.  I have a pair of uninsulated boots that I keep here for mucking around our property.  I have a couple pairs of boot socks to use with them, but it never hurts to have another pair of socks.  Also these bits are all wool so these will be nice warm socks.  I'm using the Basic Beginner Bed Socks pattern but I'm winging the gauge and measurements.  None of the mystery skeins had labels so I don't really know what weight the skeins are so I'm comparing them to each other so they're at least mostly uniform.  These are going to be really bright franken-socks.  I want to make them nice and long too, as my boots are pretty tall.  I'm trying to only use half of each skein so I can make the socks identical-ish.  Here's what I've done so far:

I also worked on a dishcloth I started when I was in Syracuse, right before I got covid.  I've run out of the yarn I was using though.  Its that thinner cotton yarn I've blogged about before.  So I can get two and a half dishcloths out of a skein.  I don't have anymore of that color and I don't intend to get more.  I'll be finishing it off with another colorway.

     I've been able to get back into reading.  Not as heavily as before, but close.  There are many more distractions now that I'm home, so I usually have to read with my head set on.  I found some good white noise to use so I can focus on the book I'm reading.  I finished book 4 of the Broken Kingdoms series.

It was good.  It's the first book of Kase and Malin's story so it was back to slow world building and very little spice.  Its a mash up of Viking/Norse elements, some Fae elements, romance and a tiny bit of Cinderella.  This book ended on a very emotional cliff-hanger.  I was really glad this series is finished so I was able to dive right into the next book.  When I first started reading this series I was a little afraid each set of books would just be kind of cookie cutter with the same characters and plot just different names.  That has not been the case in the least.  The plot lines have been very different.  The characters are also varied.  The only similarity I can see is that there is a female side character that befriends the FMC, and a male side character with a great sense of humor that the FMC gets along with right away.  That's about it though.  There are so many characters in these books I may need to make a spread-sheet or some sort of flow chart to keep everyone straight.  

     We finally have gotten some winter here.  We got a big storm last week.  It had cooled off and we had some snow.  That storm brought in a warm front.  Very high winds and rain was predicted.  We lost power for about an hour Tuesday night.  We had no storm damage but north west of us had some very severe damage and something like 29,000 customers in Jefferson County were without power for over 48 hours.  Then over this weekend a cold front came through with more high winds and a few feet of lake effect snow predicted.  We had wind again and we've gotten a least a foot of snow already.  We're supposed to be getting some very cold temperatures later in the week.  I've got my knit-wear at the ready.

     My last living grandparent, my paternal grandmother has taken a turn for the worst.  She's currently on comfort care in the ICU at my old place of employment.  She had fallen several weeks ago at her assisted living facility.  She was taken to Samaritan where it was determined she'd broken her shoulder.  She recovered there and was moved to Samaritan Keep Home, which is the attached nursing home.  She was continuing to improve and was scheduled for the shoulder surgery yesterday.  She'd developed pneumonia and was not expected to recover so was put on comfort care.  She just turned 98 on December 15th.  She's already outlived her husband, one of her sisters and two of her children.  She's had a long happy life.  She's been a life long knitter, crocheter and sewist.  She's actually the reason I took up knitting as an adult 14 years ago today.

     At the beginning of each year I like to plan out a few projects for the year.  I took the last couple days to organize my Ravelry queue.  I have a very long queue, so when I actually intend to make a pattern from my queue, I move it to the first page and link the yarn.  Then I make sure to start the pattern from my queue, that removes it from the queue and brings the yarn and any notes with it to my project page.  I've already grabbed the Basic Sock pattern from my queue.  So projects 1 through 9 are all things I intend to make within this year.  I want to start planning out the items I make for the fair this year but the exhibiter handbook hasn't been updated for this year yet.  They did just announce the theme for this year, so hopefully soon I can start planning.  The whole first half of the the year revolves around the county fair for me.

I think that's about it for the last two weeks.  I've just been trudging along at my new routine.  Until later.  Happy crafting.

-Q