Warming Up

The freakishly mild winter weather has been causing plants to break dormancy and critters to litter early (local animal shelters are bursting with kittens), but temperatures are finally cooling down a bit roundabout Exit 151. Time for knitters to warm up.

January 19 is Warm Up America Day and Modern Yarn is helping Girl Scout Troup 145 collect 7" x 9" afghan rectangles (see details and patterns). An excellent reason to pull out my stitch pattern anthologies and knit swatches! Here's my first rectangle, in progress: Fleck Stitch (March 8 in 365 Knitting Stitches a Year) worked in Coeur Rouge. I used crochet cast on, slip stitch edges, and standard bind off to provide neatly chained edges, which will be helpful when it's time to join the rectangles into an afghan. As the Warm Up website suggests, for a project such as this it's very handy to make a template to ensure one knits to standard measurements. For the same reason, I'm going to steam-block the rectangle (very gently!) when it's finished.

Paper Napkin may be on hiatus, but this week (January 8-12) is still the second annual De-Lurking Week, previously De-Lurking Day. To think I almost missed the opportunity to wish all good readers Happy De-Lurking! Otherwise known as Would It Kill Ya to Comment?!?

My first venture on DeStash Mountain went well, so here's my second, a mess o' Kureyon. See DeStash for details. ETA: It's sold!

   

I really have quite enough stuff in this color range! I didn't realize that this Morehouse Merino SuperStretch Leggings kit makes leg warmers (bleh) rather than footless tights when I bought it. Rather than return it, I'm re-purposing the quad skein of PurpleBelles laceweight for the Victorian Lace Today KAL. Right now I can't decide between leaves (Myrtle Leaf Stole) or beads (Spiders' Web Fichu) – swatches to follow.