Hello February

Light snow welcomes winter back into February. This past weekend the sun was out and warm temperatures felt like Spring. It's too early for 60 degrees in Nebraska. I bought a pink cyclamen to add a little color to the kitchen/dining room. I love snow, somehow it refreshes the day. This feels like a good week for some refreshment.  

Thank you all for your kind words about my goofy back. With some help from a physical therapist, it is on the mend and not completely unraveling. Navigating on my laptop is not the most comfortable. I am keeping up with blogs as I am able. Some days that means more reading than commenting.   

Two weeks ago, I tossed my stash and goodness what a lot of lovely yarn I found in those bins. Just for fun I created one of yarns and scraps that I might like to use in 2020. I wanted the yarn easily accessible. Mind you, I don't promise to knit any or all of it as I usually let knitting take me where it will. No list goes with the yarns. I wrote too many goals and mission statements when I was working to impose that approach on my knitting. 

Before this back business, I finished this cowl. I couldn't find any yarn in my stash to add as an accent and had more than enough of the two colors to finish. This a great pattern for leftovers. The cowl goes with mitts I knit previously. 

Garter stitch is helping me ease back to knitting. I am knitting odds and ends of Koigu yarn into a scrappy hitchhiker. I'm not sure this scarf needs both eyelets and multiple colorways of variegated yarns but that is the way I began and it's fun to add the next color. This project began as a garter scarf knit on the edge and with an i-cord edge. 

I've also been working on the Rewilding Shawl - version 3 or 4 - I've lost track. The yarn is lovely and I especially like the rate of increases and the edges. The first pattern I tried with this yarn had an i-cord edge. Between the scarf that became a hitchhiker and this shawl, I learned that the slipped stitch or stitches in an i-cord edge don't stretch as much as a garter edge. Really, that shouldn't come as a surprise. Perhaps on a bigger needle the tension wouldn't be so noticeable or maybe the lack of stretchiness is a result of the way I tension the yarn while knitting. I wanted to try an i-cord edge on a shawl and so now I have. What I learned is that I will have to weigh the finished look against the decrease in stretchiness. There is always something to learn while knitting which is one of the reasons I like to knit. 

While resting and not knitting, I read The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin. The plot was interesting and will make for good discussion when it comes up later this year in my book group. The novel certainly has the vibe of new contemporary fiction by a younger writer. I returned to Savage Beauty, the biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay and finished it. Sometimes returning to a book is worthwhile. Millay lived a very unconventional life and wrote remarkable sonnets. I'm still not certain how to think about her. The sections about her childhood and then later on as she found literary success were the most interesting to me. I currently am reading Erosion: Essays of Undoing by Terry Tempest Williams, one of my favorite nonfiction writers. Her beautiful writing about the natural world and thoughts on climate change makes this a book to savor.  

I am joining Kat and the Unravelers today. Take a look to see what others are knitting and reading. I hope you are all well today. Happy February.

By the way, is colorway/color way one word or two? I never can remember. What are you learning from your knitting/making today?