I haven’t been knitting much, but in the last six months I have completed three projects:  socks, a baby blanket, and a shawl.  I’ve been spinning, weaving and doing puzzles instead of focusing on knitting.  But knitting is my favorite carry-along hobby so I have still be doing a few things here and there.

I don’t have a lot of extra yarn.  When I lived in a house, before full-timing in the RV, I had cupboards full of yarn and always felt that I needed more.  Once Tom and I decided to move into an RV full-time, I started knitting down my stash.  By the time we moved into the RV, I only had a small cupboard full of yarn with a some sock yarn stored at John and Jackie’s house.  I kept working on decreasing that stash, only buying what I needed for a particular project that I was knitting right away.

The pair of socks I knitted are from that yarn that was stored.  I still have plenty of sock yarn, so will continue to knock those out.  Socks are very portable and look impressive to people who see me knitting.  They are also good gifts, as long as I know what size shoes people wear.  I knitted this particular pair to wear myself, but I finished them before Christmas and I haven’t worn them yet.  Of course, my wardrobe lately has been entirely long-sleeved cotton shirts and jeans.  I may give the socks away if I don’t wear them soon.  No sense in their sitting on my shelf looking fabulous.  The pattern is the basic sock pattern that I always use and the yarn is Berroco Sox.

I knitted a baby blanket for the first grandchild of my friend, Wendy.  I wanted to do something fun and different so I found this Baby Footprints Blanket.  I knitted it out of a very washable blend because babies tend to get blankets messy.  It was fun to knit, with the bobbles for the toes and the little foot pattern.  Paige and Mark, the parents of baby Emma, let me know that they appreciated the time that went into knitting the blanket.

The final project was another Butterfly / Papillon Shawl.  I enjoyed knitting the first one so much that I immediately bought yarn for another one.  Then I put the yarn aside.  But it seemed like a good pandemic project.  The shawl isn’t hard, but it does take a lot of counting so it kept my mind occupied.  And I think it looks spectacular.  I don’t have a specific person in mind for the shawl and right now it is sitting in my closet in my “to gift” pile.  I like to keep a selection of items to send to people for birthdays, weddings, Christmas, etc.  I might send it on to the Wedgewood church as a prayer shawl.

That’s it for the knit bits update.  Not a lot coming off my needles right now.  But I will always have a knitting project handy.  It is a great activity for traveling or for watching television.