Knit Along (KAL)

 This year I’m approaching my knitting by trying to be more social.  I’ve joined a few KAL’s on Ravelry and am hoping that will help me stay motivated to finish projects.  Most of these KAL’s are in conjunction with podcasts I already listen to.  The two main ones are the Doubleknit podcasts Deep Stash KAL and Stash and Burn’s Use it or Lose it challenge.  I’m approaching both of these challenges with similar groundrules.  Pull yarn from my deep stash (for this blog I had defined ‘deep stash’ as anything I’ve moved with – pre 2009) and use it up.  I’m trying not to get ahead of myself by picking out all the yarn and defining projects for the entire year (I think that will take some of the fun out of it) and instead focus more on the yarn I feel like knitting during that month and finding a project that inspires me.  I think this will be a more effective approach in the long run. 

First project that I’m working for this challenge is the Bella Mittens made out of Catalina Chunky Alpaca.  This yarn is similar to Misti Alpaca, and I’ve had it for what seems like AGES.  I ‘think’ I bought it in 2007 or maybe even 2006 at a ‘knitting expo’ that was held in King of Prussia.  I can’t find any evidence that this expo ever existed, however I remember buying this yarn at some sort of festival.  Anyway, I bought 3 grey skeins and 2 black skeins and I can’t remember what my original intent was, but they’ve just been sitting around waiting to be knit.  My goal is to finish up the grey skeins this month, first with Bella mitts and then perhaps a matching hat.  So far it’s going well, the yarn is a little ‘sheddy’ but overall it’s nice and soft (alpaca, of course).   I am also counting this project in my 12 in 2013 challenge (another group on Ravelry) that I’ve listed a few projects that I’ve been wanting to knit for a few years now and am committing to knit this year.

The second project I’ve been working on is the Hobbiton Cowl (now named the Shire Cowl), from Fiddleknits A Hobbit's Journey pattern collection.  First, as you may know, I LOVE the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit books/movies and when I saw this collection (not long after seeing the Hobbit movie) I had to have it.  I was wishing I had seen it ‘before’ the movie so I could wear something festive, but at least now I’ll have something for the next movie.  I’m knitting this cowl as part of the Yarniacs Self-Indulgent KAL and since it’s categorized as ‘Self Indulgent’ knitting I decided to purchase some ‘special’ yarn for the occasion (I bought it in December so it didn’t go against my stash diet this year).  I’m knitting it in Madeline Tosh Vintage (??) in the colorway Terrarium which is a lovely, ‘shire-like’ shade of green, perfect for the Hobbit theme, plus green is my signature color.

I’m loving both these projects and am clipping right along.  The one KAL project that I’ve stalled out on is the Dream in Color December Kit pattern Seychelles.  Somewhere on the second lace repeat I made a mistake and am now off of the lace pattern.  I’m deciding on how far I should rip back and in doing that the project is slightly stalled.  I’m planning on addressing it this weekend.

Well, that’s where we stand so far on knitting projects and progress.  I’m going to try and get a WIP status bar put up on the sidebar of the blog so that you can see when things are completed.