May Blanket Installment Done

 Hi all -

Spring is in full force around here now. We're getting a lot of rain, which is always welcome! Hopefully this will keep up and we'll have a mild fire season!

I continue to plug away at my projects and feel good about my progress. First off, I finished my Sonatine cowl designed by Dee O'Keefe:

Sonatine

This was supposed to be a side project that I would work on when my hands were sore from my other projects, but it worked up so quickly and I wanted to see how it would look so I ended up powering through it. I think it turned out really pretty and will make a wonderful gift!

I also worked on (and finished) another side project. One of the reasons I wanted to learn to crochet was to make market bags for gifts. You can knit market bags, but I like the look of the crocheted ones. I had some acrylic yarn left over from some scarves that had been calling to me, so I decided to try a Color Block Market Bag designed by Jenn Palmer:

Color Block Market Bag

I really like how this turned out! I'm going to keep this one and try it out to see how I like the size before making more of this pattern as gifts. I'm thinking I'll want to increase the size just a little bit to make it more to my liking. I'm getting better at figuring out crochet patterns, but I still have a bit of trouble figuring out exactly what I'm supposed to do at the end of a round, so I fudges some of that to make it look right while still maintaining my stitch count. With more practice from other patterns, I should get that figured out. One of the difficulties is that different designers do things differently so you have to figure out how they are doing things. But I find that these things always get easier with time!

I've also made progress on my longer-term projects. First, I've knit some more on my Rumour Afghan:

Rumour Afghan

This project is hard on my hands so I'm trying to do a pattern repeat (which is 12 rows) each day. It's moving along fairly quickly! And it's looking to me now like I might have enough yarn to finish the blanket with the single skein, so that's good. 

I've also made progress on my Coles River Kerchief designed by Toni Lipsey:

Coles River Kerchief

This is a picture of the back side since it curls up a lot on the right side, but there's not much difference between the two sides. Blocking should fix the curling. I had a lot of yarn, so I added an extra section of the plain crochet/lace sections and now I'm starting the last section which is a longer section of the lace. Here's a close-up of the right side:

Coles River Kerchief close-up

This has been a fun project and I'm glad I decided to make it!

Finally, I got my May installment for my Juni Throw designed by Katy Petersen:

Juni Throw

This is the Jimmy Beans Wool 2023 Blanket Club project. Every month they send me the next skein of yarn, the next pattern instructions and a stitch marker that matches the yarn. Here's a close-up of this month's pattern:

Juni Throw close-up

These installments have been working up pretty quickly for me. I got this month's section done in under a day. There was a mistake in this month's instructions, but it was easy to figure out what we were really supposed to do. I really look forward to each month's installment and look forward to having this blanket finished. The combination of the dense yarn and the thick crocket stitches is making this blanket really heavy, so it should be really warm when finished!

That's everything for now. It's been really nice to have so much time to work on all of these things! I'm really liking retirement!!

Nancy