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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?