July wrap-up

I hope everyone is doing well. I feel really disorganized and out of touch right now. I'm averaging about 1.5 hours at home each night, I think I saw B for less than an hour between last Sunday night and Friday at about 9pm, and I haven't been to a knit night since the end of June. I don't have much time to keep up with what people are doing, so I feel really out of touch. I was looking forward to being done with this push at the office at the end of July, but guess what? They extended our deadline until August 17th! Which unfortunately means four more weeks of this. I may have actually teared up a little when I found out. So, I thought I would steal this couple of minutes from my Sunday to at least show people what I have been up to...

First up, I had made a goal of knitting my Manos blanket in conjunction with Project Spectrum. And while I have actually made more progress than I had anticipated, I did fall short this color period (red, black, metallics). I had hoped (and would have) to make it to my truly red square, but I reorganized the squares I had left to knit and unfortunately, that means that I would have had to finish the blanket to get to that square, so that will just have to come later. I did knit one other square in red color family (although it does look rather purple here) earlier, but thought I would show it off now:

"Waves" in Bing Cherry (M)

I happened to notice that the two projects I cast-on for in July follow in the Project Spectrum theme. First up is my Seraphim that I am knitting in Koigu KPPPM 716. While the base color of the yarn is cream with various colored speckles, the yarn has a noticeable pink/red hue as a whole. I attempted to take a more recent status photo, but my camera batteries were dead.

Right now, I am about 50 repeats into the basic stockinette portion of the shawl and on my second ball of Koigu. I will be checking my row gauge and adjusting the length depending on how it is knitting up. When I initially checked my row gauge, I was coming in tight, but since I tend to loosen up as I go, I have a feeling I may be ok now. Either way, the most important thing for me is that I don't end up with a short shawl.

I also cast-on for Fifi in Garnet Calmer as part of the latest Sexy Knitters Club KAL. I decided to name my Fifi "January" since Garnet is January's (and my) birth stone. This is just a picture of my swatch, but I thought I'd include it since my camera batteries are preventing me from taking a proper progress photo.

I've been working on January during those few evening hours, but it has been a great knit so far. I am knitting it in a slightly tighter gauge like Nonnahs did with Josephine. I really liked the results she obtained by doing that and mine is coming out pretty good so far, I think. I just have no idea what size I will actually be making until I am to the point I can try it on for the first time.

Finally, this month's UFO resurrection challenge will not be a FO but rather a RIP. I decided that after careful consideration, I will not be finishing my Simple Knitted Bodice. I'm not sure why the love has died, but it has. I had only knit about 14 rows, so it won't be a huge loss and know I can return that yarn to my stash for something else...of which I've had lost of ideas for lately.

So, that's all for me for a while. Not only will work remain busy, but my free time is now also going to be preoccupied by a certain Mr. Potter. See you soon!