Shawl Club, Part I

For a long time I would hear about knitters being part of yarn clubs and until this year, I didn't feel like I could really afford it. There is a designer who has a sock club that I want to do one day. Not all that long ago, I finally realized that yes, I do have enough spare money that I could support my friend Shayla who dyes yarn. So I joined her yarn club. Two actually. One was her normal yarn club and the second is yarn dyed using Marvel characters as inspiration. As I am planning on visiting my best friend for my birthday in June, I've let the 3 months at a time run out for the Marvel club and will be buying them each month. For the normal club, when it runs out again, I'll wait until after my trip before restarting it. Or that's what I thought until I heard about the shawl club.

One of my absolute favorite designers that lives in Scotland has started her very first club. I would have been excited for it had it just been a yarn club. But it is more than that. It is a shawl club. For a year I will get a shawl pattern and the yarn to make it every other month. There was a way to pay for it in installments so I selected that option. February is the first month that a shawl comes out. The pattern came out last week and I have been very good. I kept myself from looking at both the yarn spoiler thread and the pattern until I got my yarn tonight. It's a very pretty brown yarn and the shawl pattern is perfect for it.

When I first started knitting shawls, the first shawl I did was a Damson shawl by Ysolda. This is her shawl club. I have knit far less Ysolda than I have wanted to and I am going to work on changing that. In addition to her shawl club, she has a KAL going on for the second year in a row. This year's shawl KAL is Follow Your Arrow 2, the first Follow Your Arrow shawl being from last year's KAL. I didn't knit last years but I am knitting this year's. And once I'm done with the Arrow shawl, I will cast on the shawl from the club.

I'm so excited. I can't wait to start the new shawl.

WIP Wednesday: 9 to 5 Socks

At the beginning of the year I had planned to make the set of musketeer socks. I was making good progress on the first until I was mostly done and tried on the sock. The cast on for the cuff was too tight. I would be able to wear it but not comfortably. I have always had trouble off and on with the cuff cast on or the cuff bind off, depending on how the sock is started. I tried to just restart Athos. It turned out that I had lost all desire to work on any of the set. So instead I spent some time looking at sock patterns.

I wanted something toe up but nothing I saw caught my eye. I even looked through my books on toe up socks. The hardest part was picking something that wasn't too easy but also that wasn't overly complicated. I eventually found a couple pairs. Ironically despite wanting toe up, the socks I picked are cuff down. I am making them in the first purple I've seen knit picks release since their royalty tonal.

On Tumblr there is a tag called #operationsockdrawer and the idea behind it is to have a sock drawer full of hand knit socks. It's a fun idea so I'm going to tag my socks with that. I've been making socks for a couple years but I don't have that many yet.