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My two main projects right now are my Melville sweater and some socks for DH. Now that I finished my Astronomy socks, I am back on DH’s black socks. They are coming along pretty well. As usual, I’m not using a pattern, just my 2 at a time, toe up socks. Big news on my Melville sweater ( Ravelry link ) – I have divided off the sleeves! This means the rounds are so much shorter than before, and also, I have just started the colorwork! There is a lot more to do on this sweater, but at least I’m getting into the fun part now The other big project is my National Parks afghan, but that is progressing a couple squares a week, so I will show that off when there’s something to show I’m considering stopping to block the squares I already have knit and starting to join them before I do too many more squares. What about you? How are your projects going?

My Astronomy socks are done! I did not use a pattern, just my usual two-at-a-time, toe-up method. The star of this project is the yarn, which is a self-striping yarn from Gauge Dye Works . There are 28 strips in these skeins, one for each day of February. The colored strips symbolize astronomical events like the full moon and different planetary conjunctions. The grays are just there to differentiate the days with nothing too exciting happening in the sky. I loved the KAL that went with knitting these socks, and also just appreciated the prompts to look up at the night sky a little more often!

The birds and the squirrels have been pretty constant visitors this winter, and we’ve also seen two deer in our yarn on a somewhat regular basis over the past month or so too. But yesterday we had SEVEN deer in the yard! This explains why I have needed to fill up the feeders every day! Hope you are having a wonderful weekend as well

Still working on those two main projects – Melville and the Astronomy socks. Still working on the yoke of my Melville. Just a few more rows until I can divide! My Astronomy socks are almost done – just one more stripe then the ribbing with some more of the toe/heel yarn. These socks are way longer than I normally make, but I want to use up every bit of this yarn! What are you working on these days, and how is it going?

So I had another go at making pizza – my baking challenge for this year. Last month’s effort was a big fail – the pizzas stuck to the new pans I had bought and the crust did not taste good at all. So this month, I rolled it back a little. I went back to my old standard pizza crust recipe, which is from a dorky little pizza cookbook I bought in the late 1990s, called Pizza Pizzazz: Basic to Gourmet. The only change I made to the recipe was trading out half of the all-purpose flour for 00 pizza flour. Before I baked the real pizzas I took a little of the dough and made mini-pizza to test out two methods for keeping them from sticking. I baked one on parchment paper on the pan and for the other I lightly oiled the pan. Both methods worked great! Which is nice – I have options. I figured out my timing by keeping a really close watch on them and noted the times – 10 minutes of baking for just the crusts, then put on the sauce and cheese and toppings, and 5 minutes more. And they came out j...

In early April I will be participating in the Knit for Food Knit-a-thon ! This fundraisers is for knitters to raise money for 4 charities that work to alleviate food insecurity. The funds go to Feeding America, World Central Kitchen, No Kid Hungry, and Meals on Wheels. I will be knitting for 12 hours straight – from 10 am to 10 pm, so I am in training already! Mostly by knitting every evening, which is what I have been doing anyway for the last several decades. So I feel like I’m ready Please consider donating, or participating yourself! It should be a good time

On the right day for once! I’m mostly just working on the same two projects as last week. I have finished a few more knitted jewelry pieces and national park blocks, but will talk about those another day. I feel a little bit like Sam and Frodo climbing Mt. Doom with this initial part of my Melville sweater. It’s taking for so long. So very, very long. I think at this point I should have around 8 more rows to do, but the rows are so long it might as well be 80. I’m being a little dramatic right now, as you can see. But progress is being made. On the other hand, my Astronomy KAL socks are just flying along! I’m on stripe 19 of 28, and they continue to go really quickly. These may well be done in another week! And then it will be back to finish DH’s black socks. What are you working on, and how is it going?

The Art of Landscape Knitting by Anne Le Brocq is an interesting knitting book that gives you knitting block or repeat patterns that represent different types of terrain or things you would see in nature. Le Brocq is a geographer as well as a knitter, so she has a unique insight into different types of landscapes. The pattern blocks are arranged in categories, like weather, terrain, beach, and so on. You can knit individual blocks to be joined together, or knit strips of specific patterns, as in the blanket pictured on the book cover. The author has a website as well – https://www.blanketscapes.com/ where you can find pictures of some example blankets she has made inspired by different parts of the British Isles. In addition to the pattern blocks, the book includes some knitting basics and some discussion of your options for turning the patterns into blankets. You can either knit one of the full blanket patterns included, or use the block patterns to make your own creations. You c...

For whatever reason, I just was not able to get my act together earlier this week. However, I do have some progress on my WIPS! It doesn’t really look like it, but Melville is moving along! Only about 10 more rows and I can divide off the sleeves. That will be nice, because this is basically the widest the sweater will be. I set aside DH’s new socks to do the Gauge Dye Works February Astronomy KAL. Most of the stripes represent different things happening in the night skies this month, which is very fun to follow along with! I enjoy self-striping yarn – for some reason it feels like it knits up faster. It doesn’t, I know, but it feels more interesting somehow. DH’s black socks will get picked back up as soon as these are done, but I couldn’t resist knitting along with the group! Anyone have any interesting plans for the weekend?

This is the first year I have chosen a word of the year, and it is Finish. So how did I do in January? Reasonably well! In crafting, I finished my Powdermill cardigan, which was started several years ago, along with a hat, a cowl, and several pieces of knitted jewelry. I also did some sock darning I have been putting off. In house-related tasks, I finished big reorganizations in the kitchen and garage that have been hanging over my head as well. I finished reading a book started months ago. All in all, not a bad start to the year! Pizza Well. I’m just now able to talk about what happened with my first pizza attempt for the year. It did not go well. At all. I think my mistake was trying a new recipe, a new method, and new pizza pans all in one go. So now that I’m emotionally healed, for the most part, I’m going to slow down a little and use my usual recipe and method with the new pans, and work up from there. Hopefully happier news on this goal in February!

One of the things I want to focus on this year is getting back to reading a lot more. I used to read all the time in years past, but that has somehow fallen away over the last couple years. This month I finished 3 books and started a couple others! Here are my January finishes: When I picked out Melville as my New Year cast on, I thought about rereading Moby Dick as I worked on it. That expanded into a plan to read a number of books about whales and about the real-life tragedy that was the basis for Moby Dick. Essentially, I created a study unit for myself, because I am sometimes a giant nerd. So anyway, Whales: Their Biology and Behavior is the first book in my Moby Dick-related reading. If you are interested in learning a fair amount, but not too much, about whales, I highly recommend this book. There are chapters on whale evolution, biology, ecology, behavior, and much more. I really enjoyed it, and may well go through it again at some point. The Lake Michigan Triangle is ...