Seventh Year of Projects - Week 9

Nine consecutive weeks I have managed to post my update (and on Sunday too!!)  I am impressed with myself!

The first week of school went well but it did cut into my knitting time!  Such is life in the real world :)

So I managed to finish my Tour-de-Sock Stage 4 socks, but not by the deadline to get a point for completion.  Oh well.  I had challenged myself to complete all six stages during the allotted time, but missed on one (so far).  But, I did finish it within several hours of the deadline.  Here are my Stage 4 socks:

I reversed the colors in the second sock and love the look!  The blue is my own hand-dyed and the white is bare yarn.

On Thursday afternoon the Stage 5 sock pattern was released and I have been working on those since.  I have made some decent progress!  I have until September 3rd to finish them!  I love the cables and beads!!  What fun!!  Here is a progress picture (I am reversing the bead color placement on the second sock):

Front

Back

If I am honest I am getting a bit burnt out on socks!  Once I finish the Stage 6 socks I suspect I will take a sock break for a little while!!

Seventh Year of Projects - Week 8

Another week has flown by and I made some progress on my projects!  Things are picking up at university so my crafting time is reduced now.  The semester (classes) begins tomorrow but the past week involved a bunch of meetings and organizational things that needed to be attended.  I may not be making as much progress as I had been for the past couple months, but I will be keeping at it!

First I finished my August alternate square and my August Main square.  I am happy to be all caught up on my BAMKAL squares!!  All of these squares need a good blocking!!

The Tour-de-Sock Stage 4 design was released late on Monday night and I have focused mostly on that since!  It is a mosaic design and I am enjoying the knit!  I have not made as much progress as I would have liked but since school is getting back into swing this might be my new normal...  I dyed the blue yarn myself and am using the bare yarn as the contrast.  The second sock will have the colors reversed with a blue cuff, heel and toe.  Here is my progress so far!  I hope to complete them by the deadline on the 24th so check back next week to see if I made it on time!

Seventh Year of Projects - Week 7

Another week has flown by!!  This week I finished another pair of socks, made a little sweater, and worked on some BAMKAL squares.

First I completed my Tour-de-Sock Stage 3 socks.  These were a fun knit - lace and cables!  What is not to love?  I used my own hand dyed yarn for these and the speckles work fairly well with the cables.

The Stage 4 pattern will be released on Monday night so I will have pictures of another sock in progress next week (I doubt I will finish a pair before Sunday morning as I am busy Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday with work stuff!)

Next I finished my July alternate BAMKAL square and am nearly half complete with the August alternate BAMKAL square.  I plan to spend some time working on my August squares today so I hope to be able to show you two more completed squares next week.

And finally a friend pointed me in the direction of a miniature sweater challenge.  I signed up (and I think sign ups might be closed now) and got the first pattern on Friday.  Once my Stage 3 socks were complete yesterday I cast on and completed this little sweater!  It was a fun knit!  The four patterns are each examples of typical sweater designs to give us an idea of what is involved in knitting a sweater (on a small scale).  I used my leftover yarn from my Stage 3 socks and now only have a tiny little ball left over - maybe enough for one Scrap-ghan square - we shall see later!

And on another note - I got my hair chopped off on Thursday and the hair will be donated to make wigs for cancer patients ♥  They cut off well over a foot of hair!  It was not very thick but certainly long!  Now I need to remember to use a lot less shampoo and conditioner!!

So for next week I plan to work on my BAMKAL squares (finish my August alternate square and make the August Main square), my Stage 4 socks (pattern is available on Monday night), and (time permitting) the second mini sweater (pattern will be emailed to us on Friday).  Tune in next week and see what I accomplished!

Seventh Year of Projects - Week 6

Another week with some nice progress made!!

First up - I finished my Tour-de-Sock Stage 2 socks in time!  The heel is loose on my foot, but I am very happy with the colourwork.  It is nice and even!!  This was not my first colourwork project and apparently practice helps (who would have thought?).  Here is the finished pair:

Then I got back to working on my Block a Month Knit project.  Each month a main and alternate square pattern are posted and by the end of the year you have an afghan.  I did not get around to making my July squares while it was still July, but at least I made some progress in early August!  I also hope to finish the August squares while it is still August.  Keep posted to see if I actually did manage that!

I finished the main July square and made some progress on the alternate July square as well.  Here is what I got done:

And then the Stage 3 sock pattern was released late Friday afternoon - so I had to cast on!!  I love the design!!  It is cables and lace.  I am using some of my own hand dyed yarn (again) and am enjoying the knit so far!  Here is my progress:

Until next week!!  I hope to have another finished pair of socks plus three knit squares - tune in next week to see if that is what I managed to accomplish!