madewell fade

Happy last day of January! Are you looking forward to Spring as much as I am? I’ve been flipping through my botanical books and sketching little flowers into my journal all while dreaming of the season ahead. It seems so far away when the chilly wind is howling outside and there are grey days upon grey days. Makes me ever grateful for all of the woolly projects in my basket. I’ve been making good progress finishing some of them so a cast-on party is sure to happen soon :) The latest one off the needles is my Madewell Fade. The pattern is a great basic cardigan by Joji Locatelli. All of the yarns used are from Hue Loco. This was quite a quick knit for a fingering weight cardigan. The body only took me a couple of weeks to knit up, but the project stalled when I reached the sleeves. It’s a mystery to me why sleeves take so long to knit but socks fly off the needles. Does anyone else have this problem? Oh well I am just happy to finish a sweater after going a whole year without any completed garments. I can feel my sweater knitting mojo finally returning. Have a great rest of the week!

fringe and friends logalong

One of the highlights of my knitting year is participating in the Fringe and Friends KAL that is hosted by Karen Templer on her Fringe Association blog. The last three years have all been garment based but this year I was excited to see just a general technique as a prompt for the KAL: log cabins. Leaving the theme so wide opened to other crafts has been fun & inspiring. Check out the Instagram feed (#fringeandfriendslogalong) to see cool projects ranging from garments to accessories to housewares to lots of squishy blankets. The blankets in particular were tempting me but I already have five (yikes!) on the needles/hook at the moment therefore a smaller project seemed like a smarter plan. Since socks are my next favorite project to knit on, I was excited to try to improvise a pair using the log cabin technique. Everything started out fine and I was completely smitten with how lovely indie dyed yarns combined with log cabin knitting. But then the creative thought/planning process kinda froze up on me and I ended up staring at the above rectangle for weeks. The hubby thought I was crazy because I kept pulling it out and swearing at it. I finally forced myself to just try out a few ideas even if it meant a lot of ripping out. And eventually something clicked:

Eureka! I have a sock!

exploration station

Hello and welcome to a fresh new year! I hope that everyone is having a gentle start to 2018. We have been enjoying some quiet weeks being cozy inside in the midst of quite a cold and snowy (for Maryland) winter. It feels so good to hibernate a little with some good books and wooly projects. I have been putting off making any plans and goals for the new year but now that we are heading towards the end of January, I can feel the beginnings of the need to de-clutter and clean up some loose ends from the previous year. You know that it’s time to start re-organizing when a recently finished shawl goes missing and is finally located underneath a pile of mini-skeins waiting to be knitted into various blankets-on-the-go.



I had completely forgotten to post about my Exploration Station which was finished sometime in October. All the yarns used were from a failed attempt at the Find Your Fade Shawl. It is a testament to the utter gorgeousness of the Uncommon Thread’s Everyday Singles yarn that I didn’t mind knitting another shawl right after frogging a massive one.



I have waxed poetic before about my love of Stephen West and his designs but I must say that he reached another level of brilliance with this shawl pattern. I absolutely loved every minute spent knitting on this project and couldn’t be more thrilled with the finished shawl. It’s colorful and fun but also very wearable. I would highly recommend this shawl pattern for a Stephen West newbie. There will definitely be another one in my future.