Yesterday I wrote about the sweater I knitted for my dad for Christmas.  Today I am highlighting some other projects that I knitted during the time I was working on the sweater.  I made a scarf, a shawl, and socks.  It seems I only knit things that start with “s”.

First, here are a pair of socks made with the basic sock pattern.  I used self-striping Berroco Sox yarn.  I have made these socks so often that I don’t have to think about them at all.  So I can knit them pretty much anywhere, even with five double pointed needles.  I like this yarn because it makes a cool pattern and one ball has enough for two identical socks.  You can just throw the socks in the washer or dryer and they last a long time.  I gave these socks to Ranger Melanie who goes to college in Idaho and needs warm socks this winter.

I knitted a scarf back in the spring and I can’t recall the name of the yarn.  It was a fingering weight yarn that gradually changed from dusky purple to olive.  I knit the whole scarf with one ball of this yarn.  The pattern was “Romancing the Shawl” from Red Heart but I made it narrower.  After I blocked it, I mailed it to Ranger Jeanette who had just started in Cincinnati.  It was May and hot, but she sent me back a selfie.  She is wearing the scarf and pretending to drink hot chocolate.

I knitted a table runner for the Fort at Pipe Spring National Monument.  I knitted it out of bleached flax yarn – Fibra Natura – using a German lace pattern repeat.  Most of the knitting on this project was done while standing at the Visitor Center desk, which made it a great conversation starter.

I knitted a prayer shawl for Wedgewood UMC.  Half of the yarn I used was wool that I spun myself.  But I didn’t have enough for the whole shawl, so I also bought a ball of yarn and knitted in stripes of different colors from that.  The pattern is the basic Trinity Prayer Shawl.  It is the easiest prayer shawl to knit – knit three, purl three, every row until you get it to the length you want.  The yarn I bought is Mandala acrylic from Walmart.  I don’t like to mix wool and acrylic but it was the right weight, the right colors, and the only yarn available at a store within 100 miles.

Finally, I went into JoAnns at Polaris to get the button for my dad’s sweater, and saw this wall of yarn.  It is the new concept JoAnns and the colors of the yarns just drew me in.  I wanted to buy the whole wall.  If I ever live in a house again, I might have to do a wall like this.

Do you have something on your needles?  I’d love to hear about what you are doing.