This is my 2023 knitting update, although I haven’t really been knitting enough to have much of an update.  This summer, especially, was a bad time for knitting.  I usually knit when I am watching television and we went four months without television.  Which meant four months with only a couple of national park hats knitted.

But I figured I would show you what has been on my needles anyway.  I knitted two more hats from Knitting the National Parks.  I knitted the Mammoth Cave hat again and gave it to the bookstore manager at Cumberland Gap in case she orders the books and wants a sample.  The Mammoth Cave hat is one of my favorites because it looks very cool.  I also knit the Zion hat.  The only reason to knit that hat was that I had all the colors I needed for it already.  The bobbles on the trees were fun.

I knit two baby blankets.  One went to Ranger Michael’s new baby Jack who was born in September.  I used the Encore 8 Hour Baby Blanket Pattern for that.  The other went to Ranger Caitlyn’s baby Grayson.  I used the Encore Sampler Afghan pattern.  That one was especially fun to knit because it was a sampler where I was changing stitches every section.  I bought yarn to make two other baby blankets, but with the lack of knitting time over the summer they didn’t get done in a timely fashion.  Hopefully some other babies will come along!

I also knit one prayer shawl using the Original Prayer Shawl pattern.  Mary Sager, my brother-in-law’s mother, gave me a bag of yarn when she moved into a nursing home.  I started the shawl with her yarn and soon realized that I wouldn’t have enough.  So I bought a big ball of Red Heart Yarn from JoAnns.  It seemed like it took forever to finish the shawl because of no knitting over the summer.  I gave it to Bruce and Bev Shepherd.  Bruce has esophageal cancer and is on hospice care.

Right now I am knitting a really different project.  It is a Shetland Old Shell Hap.  I am on the border, which requires knitting 88 triangles and I am almost done.  But the pattern, and the story behind it, deserves its own blog post, so you will have to wait for that until I am done.

That is my 2023 knitting update.  What’s on your needles?