Yarn Along, February

It's back!  Ginny's Yarn Along is back!  And I missed the first one!

Ginny has reinstated her Yarn Along as a monthly, rather than weekly, feature as of January.  Due to the craziness of my life events last month, I missed linking up to that one. In it, she (and other participants) talked about some of the knitting they had done in the latter half of 2017.

Some projects I started and finished in the later months of 2017, mostly before having the grandkids live with me on-again off-again, were the pair of "Alaska" socks I began in June and took with me on our Alaskan adventures. It ended up taking me until about late November to finish them.

Socks, pattern Envy

While in Alaska, I bought a skein of yarn in a lovely blue that reminded me of the color of the glacial lakes, and in the Fall of 2017 I made myself a new winter hat with it.  It was a quick knit, maybe a week or so of not-much-knitting-time.

Hat, pattern Hinterland

I also knit DD2 a few dish cloths as Christmas gifts (now that she's out of the dorms and living in a house for her final two years of college).  I forgot to get pictures of them, but the patterns were Merry Christmoose and Wolf Track.


I am determined to participate in the current (and future) Yarn Along(s), despite having missed the inaugural one for this year, so here goes for the February edition:

In mid-January, I started knitting another pair of socks for me, using yarn I purchased several years ago on Etsy in a colorway called 'Oslo'.  The pattern I am using is Classy Slip Up, which I think highlights the various colors of the yarn quite nicely.  Sock number one was mostly knit on DH & my recent trip to Vegas, and finished up when we got home.  Sock number two is underway and progressing nicely, approximately three quarters of the way through the leg portion.


After not reading hardly at all in 2017, I've set a goal to read regularly in 2018.  I just really need that downtime, and the break from real life that a frequent dose of fiction brings.  So far I've managed to read three books this year, all in the category of Amish Fiction, and two being murder mysteries as well.  The first one, What the Bishop Saw, I enjoyed immensely.  The second, Hearse and Buggy was good as well, although sometimes parts of the story seemed weak/unrealistic, so I found myself mentally ranking it lower than the other book.  The third, Seeds of Hope, was general fiction, no one got murdered in that one, but the lack of mystery isn't why it ended up being a "probably won't read more from this author" kind of book--just too many parts that I felt weren't very well written.

Currently I am reading another murder mystery, When the Bishop Needs an Alibi.  I'm only a few chapters in, and all ready I can tell I will be eagerly awaiting the next in this series.