YOP 13 WEEK 1/THE BEGINNING

 

And so it begins.  Year 13 of the Year of Projects Ravelry group.  This is my 13th year and I must say it has been a blast 'meeting' so many people from all walks of life and in all parts of the world.  

Before I show you my 'good' intentions for the coming year, let me show you what happened this past week.

I was working on the Scatterby socks and loved the 4 row pattern.  What I did not love was the yarn I had chosen to work it in.  So................FROG!  I still wanted to use the yarn for a sock for hubby so decided to just do my Car Socks I have done many times in the past.  This yarn wanted to be noticed for all it's glory and the Scatterby pattern hid it.

I am much happier now.  There are so many different colors in this yarn and I wanted to make sure they all got seen.  I am doing this on magic loop this time.  We are taking a road trip next weekend and DPN's are not the best car buddies.

I did manage to get more work done on the RCR socks.  Man I love making these socks.

They seem to almost knit themselves.  Hubby loves them and can not seem to have enough pairs of them in his drawer.  

I also got a little acquisition this week.

These are from Leading Men Fibers.  They had another 'mystery' yarn sale and I decided to go ahead and try it again.  I am quite pleased with the colors this time.  They are both fingering weight in BFL (blue face lancaster) wool.  I have never worked with BFL before and am looking forward to doing so.  The ply on this is so lovely and I think will show great stitch definition.  Will need to find a pattern with some fun texture.  Maybe the Scatterby socks would be fun in one of these.

Now for a little look at my goals for the next 53 weeks.

YOP 13      2023-2024

CARRY OVERS/WIPs

Madonna & Child - 8/7/20

Happy Camper - 2/24/22

Rose City Roller Sock 5/30/23 - 

Baby Blanket 6/5/23 -

Car Socks 6/26/23 - 

Three of these will be completed, for sure, before the end of this calendar year.

SOCKS

RCR

Tube Socks

I have sooooo much fingering weight yarn!  I am going to take the yarn neither hubby or I will wear and make tube socks for charities.  If y'all have other ideas of what I can make and donate with some of this yarn, speak up please!!!!

CLOTHING

Wee Sherlock

Bear Ear Hat

There may be other clothing added later but for now, these 2 items are needed for our great grand daughter who is making her appearance in October.

SHAWLS

To The Point

I seem to still have a lot of worsted weight yarn.  That means there needs to be more Prayer Shawls made for our church's cancer ministry.  The 'To The Point' pattern is still my favorite one to make.  The shawl stays on the shoulders so nicely so is perfect for someone undergoing cancer treatments.  Also, since it is crocheted, it goes rapidly.

AMIGURUMI

Gnome

What more do I need to say about this.  My 2 gnomes are in dire need of friends.  There is also a toadstool and cottage that are greatly needed.  Not sure if they will show up this year or not so did not put them on the list.

STUFF HAPPENS!

We all know that during 52-53 weeks things pop up that need to be crafted.  When it does, it will end up here if it does not fit in any of the other above categories.

That should keep me busy for the next year, right?  Before I close I just wanted to give you a look at what my next week will look like here in Arizona.

I took this screen shot yesterday.  I will either be in the house or in the pool for the next week.  You will NOT see me out walking around the neighborhood!  Nope, too darn hot.  These temps will be around from now until the middle of October.  Actually, it isn't too horrid until the middle of July when the humidity sets in with the monsoons.  Then, even going into the pool will not be refreshing.  *sigh*  It's ok.  Come November I will be all happy again and be outside a lot.

And the last thing to show you.............................

My boy is waiting for me to get off my computer so he can come over and cuddle with me while I knit.

Until Next Time.....................Happy Crafting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YOP 12 WEEK 52/THE END

 

Here it is.  The end of Year of Projects year 12.  It is also my 12th year to participate.  In all these years I have learned what the quote "the best laid plans" really means.  This is why I have started being very vague with my 'goals/plans' for the past few years. 

Before I show you what I accomplished this year, take a look at what got done this past week.

I finished the Mehujaa Shawl and even got it blocked, dried and ready to be worn.  The final row was 481 stitches in total.  I did not think I would ever finish binding off.  It took almost 45 minutes.  I am in love with the neutral color and look forward to wearing it when a light wrap is needed. It won't be outside here anytime soon.  Our temps are well over 105F (41C) and will be for the next 3-4 months.

Now, here is my list of what I had planned to make/complete this past year.

 WIPs

Sock Scraps Granny Stripe (fingering weight) - 7/8/20 Thrown away!!!!

Madonna & Child - 8/7/20

Happy Camper - 2/24/22

PRAYER SHAWLS

To The Point

    6/26/22 - 7/2/22

    8/9/22 - 8/10/22

    8/11/22 - 8/16/22

    8/18/22 - 8/25/22

    9/24/22 - 10/7/22

    1/25/23 - 1/31/23

    6/5/23 - 6/12/23

SOCKS

Rose City Roller

    6/26/22 - 7/25/22

    7/26/22 - 8/8/22

    8/25/22 - 9/10/22

    9/14/22 - 1/22/23

    1/22/23 - 2/11/23

    5/30/23 - 

Scatterby 3/22/23 - 

    

SWEATERS

Nuuk 10/8/22 - 11/7/22 

Wee Sherlock 11/20/22 - 11/30/22 

PONCHO/CAPE/CLOAK

Azel 11/8/22 - 1/3/23

GNOMES

MGKAL 9/2/22 - 9/29/22

DISHCLOTHS

SCRUBBIES

MISC

Little Boy Blue Hat 12/1/22 - 12/2/22

Allagash Beanie 1/2/23 - 1/3/23

Giant Granny Square blanket to use up stash DK yarn - 9/9/21 - 1/17/23

RCR Fluffy Pink 2/11/23 - 2/13/23

RCR Fluffy Grey 2/13/23 - 2/17/23

Purl Soho Lap Blanket 2/17/23 - 3/22/23

Mehujaa Shawl 4/10/23 - 6/23/23

Baby Blanket 6/5/23 - 

I am a little sad that last year I started with 3 WIP's and this coming year I will have 5!  I don't think that was part of my plans lol.

What were some of my favorite items I completed this year?

The Nuuk sweater.  So comfy to wear and I love the change I made to the bottom.

A Gnome.  He still makes me smile. I need to make him some friends.

Giant Granny Square blanket.  It took forever to make this (2 years) because of our horrible hot summers.  Nothing like having a huge heavy blanket laying on your lap while it is 110 and above outside.  No amount of A/C and fans can keep a person cool enough to work on something like this. Small granny squares joined together to make blankets is a much better idea from now on.  All that being said, this blanket looks so nice on our guest bed.  I am glad I made it and did not give up.    

As you can see, there were two categories I planned on that did not see any action. No one needed dishcloths or scrubbies this year.  I still have quite a few made from last year that are waiting for a home.

I do feel like I completed quite a few items this year.  Twenty three in total! It was fun and I even branched out a bit.  The gnome was a totally new to me kind of knit and I loved making him.  Now I want to make more stuffed items. The other thing I tried so hard to do this year, was not purchase copious amounts of yarn.  I only bought 2 skeins I did not have immediate plans for.  Otherwise, anything I bought has already been used.  The granny square blanket used up quite a bit of my DK weight stash yarn that has been hanging around.  The 'To The Point' shawls use up 2 skeins of yarn of worsted weight stash for each shawl.  Slowly my stash yarn is being used.

Having just celebrated my 70th birthday, I realize, buying more yarn is probably not a grand idea unless I have a specific plan for it.  Of course I say this after purchasing 2 more skeins of fingering weight sock yarn this week.  It has not arrived yet so will show you what it is next week.  It is another mystery yarn.  Should be interesting to see what I am gifted this time.

Next week I will give you a look at my ideas for the coming YOP 13.  Are you interested in joining?  We would love to meet you. Follow this link to join in.  If you are not a member of Ravelry, go ahead and join it.  Membership is FREE!

Until Next Time........................................Happy Crafting!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WEEK 51 OF YOP 12

 One more week and this YOP (year of projects) will be completed for me.  It is hard to believe I have been a part of this group since it's inception.  It has been one of the most fun things I have done.  I have 'met' some awesome people through this group.  Many are no longer a part of YOP but I still keep in contact with them through social media or their personal blogs.  If you knit, crochet, cross stitch, paint, sew, quilt etc..........think about joining us and sharing your special talent with us.  This is a 100% judgement free zone!

Anyway..................I did get something completed this past week.

The 'To The Point' shawl is completed.  The label and medal have been attached also and it is ready to go to the prayer shawl ministry to be blessed and distributed to someone who needs a bit of comfort during their journey with cancer.

Once that was completed, I decided I needed to get my Mehujaa shawl completed before the end of week 52.

Needless to say, this past week did not see it's completion.  It did see me completing 24 rows in just a couple of evenings.  I still have 47 rows to go before it will be done and off the needles.  (Blocking not included)  Is it possible to do that before next Sunday?  Possibly.  I figured out how long it took to complete each row.  I only need about 20 hours of down time to make it happen. 

Last week was a bit busy for me.  Here is a brief rundown:

Monday - Laundry as well as taking a grand to work only to turn around and pick her up again.

                 completed prayer shawl.

Tuesday - More laundry, ran errands, had a lovely spaghetti dinner at our local mom and pop                   Italian restaurant, worked on shawl

Wednesday - Finish the laundry, went swimming (finally), spent hours working on the shawl

Thursday -  hubby's 74th bday!, took E to the vet, got a haircut, did a bit of decluttering, went                       to adoration,  started a roast in the crockpot for Fridays dinner

                     

Friday - Made tortillas, shredded up the roast and added green chili to make 'green chili beef                 for dinner, made spanish rice, had a lovely dinner with a dear priest friend.

Saturday - Picked up food for our church's food bank, went to mass, went to a birthday party 

                  for my BFF.

Today we are heading over to our youngest son's home for a Father's Day BBQ with the entire family.  Should be able to do a bit of knitting on the shawl when we come home later this evening.

According to my calendar, I do not have any special appointments this coming week.  (yet)  Stay tuned to see if that stays that way.  If it does, completion of the shawl is totally possible.

Next week I will do a wrap up of the past year's progress in preparation of Year of Projects year 13!

Until Next Time.....................Happy Crafting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WEEK 50

 

Only two weeks left for me in year 12 of YOP!  Craziness!  Will I be able to complete all my carry over projects before the completion of this year?  No way, no how!  Take a look at what happened this past week and then you will see why completion is not in the forecast.

Sunday I got a phone call from one of my grandsons.  He wanted to inform me that there is a new great grand daughter joining our family in October!  You know what that means.........

Baby knitting time!  I have had 3 skeins of baby pink pipsqueak yarn sitting in my stash for several years.  I pulled it out as well as the white skeins and started on a baby blanket straight away.  The color is much more pink than shows in the photo.  I will also be making a sweater and sweet bear eared hat once I get the yarn purchased.  Since blankets take so long to do, I decided to get started on it first.

But wait................there's more!

I felt it was time to start another To The Point prayer shawl.  Wow!  My photos are not showing true colors at all.  This is actually more blue than the photo shows.  I think this will be done before the last week of this YOP as long as I work on it daily and not just the baby blanket.  This is a quick crochet project, normally.  I really want to complete it this week and then take this one and the other prayer shawls I have completed, sew on the labels and medals and get them to my friend at church so they can be turned into the cancer ministry for distribution.  Stay tuned to see if I get it completed.

Other than those projects I still have these items on the needles.

There are 3 projects.  A shawl, scatterby socks and RCR socks waiting in the wings for some love.

Then there are these:

I still have 2 cross stitch pieces to work on.  The one on the left is 3/4 done.  The one on the right..............maybe 1/100!  It is a huge piece and so hard to work because much of it is white on white.  

I am hoping to have something completed by next week.  If I can keep distractions to a minimum next week.  Thursday is Hubby's birthday and Friday we have a priest friend coming over for dinner.  I have a grand child to take to work on Monday but other than that...............not much happening.  Looks like a promising week, right?  Once again, stay tuned!

I leave you with a sweet photo of my little boy dog.

This is about 4:30 in the afternoon.  He is patiently waiting for me to get out of my chair and go to the kitchen to feed him.  Feeding time is 6pm!  His internal clock is not very reliable LOL.

Until Next Time......................Happy Crafting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WEEK 49 IS PITIFUL

 

Hey there.  How are things at your place?  It is mighty quiet at mine today.  That is not a bad thing since this past week was filled with so much busyness.  Kind of nice to have a quiet day without much on my to do list.

As for my crafting this week...........Once again, it was pitiful

My shawl has seen 3 rows added to it.  That is sad, isn't it.  It is just too large to take with me when I am out and about.  So, I cast on a RCR sock to give me a portable project that I do not need instructions for.  It did not get much love other than the day I went to get my car serviced.  I was just too darn busy this week.

Here is what kept me busy most of the time:

These three cuties.  I was on dog duty twice a day for 8 days, to feed and love on these guys while their owners were attending a family funeral.  They are good dogs but sure were missing their owners.  I tried to knit while being there but............these guys have never been around needles and yarn.  No respect for either.  So, no knitting while being there 2-3 hours each day.

Speaking of missing an owner.  Here is what Enrique does when I leave the house.

So pathetic.  He will stay there for quite a while and then move to the love seat and lay his head on the arm of that so he can continue to watch the back door.  He gives me so much love when I come in too.  Makes my heart all warm and fuzzy.

This next week looks so much calmer.  Other than taking my DIL to an appointment on Friday, I do not have anything unusual happening.  YAY!  Hubby returns home this afternoon after his 4 day conference he attended.  Yes siree............back to normal.

Until Next Time...................Happy Crafting!!!!!!!!!!!

Update for Week 48..........Kind of.

 

This post will be very photo heavy and word light.  Let's go!

Josies graduation party was last Sunday afternoon.

I took these at the start of the party.  It was very well attended.  A long afternoon for us old folks though LOL.

This past Friday there was a birthday party for me.  My birthday isn't until June 1 but since 90% of the people I wanted to come were going to be gone then, we celebrated a week early.

So many friends and family.  There were about 30 people there.  There was a yummy taco bar.

A fabulous cake

And tons of flowers that are sitting on my dining room table right now.

I have decided 70 isn't all that old after all!  We partied from 6 until the place closed around 10 or 11.  Yet we got up the next morning at 5:30 to do our food pick up for our church's food bank.

Oh wait!  This is supposed to be my YOP update.  Well.....................it is very sad.

Only one pattern repeat for the whole week.  Just having way too much fun to sit and knit.  This coming week will be about as bad.  I am dog sitting for my BFF.  That means feeding her pups (3 of them) twice a day as well as staying with them for a little while to give out lots of pets and cuddles.  That started last night and will go until next Saturday afternoon.  Taking people to the Airport Monday.  I have a RA Dr appt Tuesday.  My car is going in for normal maintenance on Wednesday.  Enrique needs a bath as well as getting his nails clipped sometime this week.  Hubby is leaving town for a conference Thursday.  Taking my DIL to a Dr appointment on Friday.   Also on Friday my daughter is coming over to spend the night so she can help me with food pick up on Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon I have an airport run to pick up Josie and her family from their trip to Disney World as well as Mass. Sunday Hubby comes home.  Not a lot of down time for knitting.

So, what's new with you?

Until Next Time.....................Happy Crafting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WEEK 47 PLUS MORE

 

I have quite a bit to show and talk about today.  So just sit back and enjoy the show.

Here is the shawl.  I did not show it last week so what you see is two weeks of knitting.

It is very slow going now.  I have 325 stitches on the needles and it increases by 4 every other row.  There are 6 rows in each pattern repeat.  I am on repeat #26 and need to go to repeat #37 before doing the 8 row edging and bind off.  Hopefully this will be done by the end of June.  I do not want to carry this over into next years YOP!

I got some treasures in the mail.  Leading Men Fibers had a dating game sale.  They had quite a few single skeins of yarn and needed to sell them to make room for more yarn.  All you get to do is select the fiber content and weight of yarn you want.  That's it.  Then they select the yarn color and you get a surprise when you receive it.

Let me tell you, I was very surprised as well as pleased.  

I would never picked out the green yarn.  Yet, I think I am going to enjoy using it.  Either all by itself or as contrast for heels and toes.  The other yarn, I would have picked.  

Look at all those fun colors in this yarn.  Leading Men Fibers always offers free winding services of their yarn.  I declined as I knew if they had it all wound up for me, I would be tempted to start another project.  Both of these skeins are 75% superwash merino and 25% nylon called Show Stopper.  I have used this yarn before and really like the way it knits up with great stitch definition.  It also seems to soften up as I knit with it.  Hubby really likes both of the colorways and was even kind of excited to think of getting some green socks.

Last Sunday we took off and went to Payson.  It is about an hour north of us in the mountains.  Temps there were much cooler and we enjoyed the break from our heat that has already come upon us.  We had a lovely hotel room........actually it turned out to be a suite!  Being it was in a casino, we were able to do a little bit of slot machine play.  Not much though as we really just enjoyed being in our room and enjoying the cool fresh air on the balcony.

We did go out for dinner at a local Mexican food restaurant.  The décor inside made me happy.

This was the artwork on the side of the booth I sat on.  It is carved in the wood and then painted.

This was the one on hubby's side.

The back of a chair across from us.  This one you can see the carving.  They were all made in Mexico.  I was greatly impressed by the workman ship.

This was the top of our table.  It is not carved but the painting was awesome.  The food was excellent too.

When we got home I realized I needed to make some bread.  Sourdough has been my go to for the past few weeks.  This time I tried my hand at a small loaf and used pumpernickel flour along with the white bread flour.

It turned out perfect.  Just the right size for the two of us to eat in a few days time.  Next time I am going to make this in my mini loaf pans.

I think it will fit nicely in 2 of them.  Stand by for results next week.

Lastly..........................I have been on YOP since it started over 12 years ago.  At that time, my grand daughter, Josie was just graduating from Kindergarten.  Fast forward to this past week. She has officially graduated from High School!  Yes, my friends, she has grown up on us.  She has already enrolled in classes for community college this fall,

Where did the time go?  We have her graduation party this afternoon.  We are very proud of her and all she has accomplished in her 17 years on this earth.

We only have one more grand child to graduate from high school.  That should happen around December this year.  

Next Sunday, I will be posting photos of a couple of parties that are happening this week.  Josie's Graduation and my birthday.  No................my birthday is not until June 1 but......We are doing it early because of people traveling over Memorial day week.  

Until Next Time.........................Happy Crafting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!