Yop 20/21 – Week 4

Hello and happy Sunday! Hope everyone is having a nice weekend. Yesterday was a pretty ideal Saturday, or at least as ideal as they get nowadays. I went to knitting club outdoors in the morning, and saw some friends in person there I hadn’t seen since March. The outdoor area was also in use by a ukelele group, so we got some live music along with our crafting. Then I came home and watched basketball. The women of the WNBA are doing amazing things this year. They have dedicated this season to Breonna Taylor and the Say Her Name campaign. Watch this video of how the season started. The players also only talked about their fight for social justice during the on court interviews and not about the game. I’m really appreciative of all these players who continue to try to make our world a better place. They are using their platform for good.

In YoP land, I actually made some good progress this week! As a reminder, here’s what I’m working on this year. I am going to call finishing the latest pair of socks a win in the finishing longstanding WIPs category! I also finished four more blanket squares so I’ve met my goal for July of 5 squares! And I’ve put in some time on the Great Western Way shawl and Ranch Coat. I actually don’t really think I’ve shown the shawl before, so here’s a picture.

This is a shawl I designed for my train trip across Canada last year. The route is called the great western way, which is where the name name from. The train runs from Toronto to Vancouver, which is four nights if you do the whole trip, which I did. I tried to pick motifs that were vaguely reminiscent of train tracks, trees, mountains, and snowflakes since that’s what you see on the trip. This past week, I finished off the first snowflake motif and started the second. I think I’ll do one more repeat of the train tracks pattern then finish it off with the blue.

Everything from the marker is what I did yesterday. I’m really liking knitting this one, and I need to start working on it more! It struck me yesterday that it will be August in a week, and this needs to be done my mid-October! Putting in this work yesterday only is 4% of the stitches I need for the entire sweater, so I would need 25 more days like that, and that was a lot of knitting yesterday. So even through October feels so far away, it’s definitely not! Normally I wouldn’t necessarily care about a non-test knitting deadline, but because all my friends are knitting sweaters with this yarn specifically for when Rheinbeck would have been, I need to get this finished!

I also added one other thing to the YOP list, which really should have been there since the beginning as I always intended to make it during this YOP year. My friend is getting married in March (I’m actually one of the bridesmaids) and I want to make a nice lace shawl for her, in a matching color as the bridesmaids dresses. Anyone have any good pattern recommendations?

I hope you all have a nice week!