Super Bowl Sunday

 Hi all -

It's Super Bowl Sunday and I'm looking forward to cheering for the Chiefs this evening! It should be a great game!

I've been continuing to work on my Starflake shawl designed by Stephen West:

Starflake

I'm really enjoying this knit! I was drawn to this pattern originally because it starts with a traditional quilt block. A great fusion of my hobbies! It's also fun to have the non-traditional shawl shape, although I won't be able to get any good pictures of the points on the shawl until I get it off the needles. It also has interesting techniques. The section I'm currently working on uses a technique called "brioche":

Starflake close-up

It's hard to see in the picture, but brioche kind of weaves the two colors together in the rows and results in a really smooshy, wonderful fabric. But it also takes longer to knit so this section is taking me a while to finish. Again, the instructions for this shawl are very clear and easy to follow with video instructions for the different techniques included. I have several more Stephen West patterns on my future projects list!

I also finally worked on the January blocks for the 2024 Jimmy Beans Wool crochet blanket club project. I had been enjoying my Stephen West shawls and was feeling intimidated about the blanket pattern for some reason, so I left it sitting for a couple of weeks after receiving it. This year's pattern is the Wildflower Crochet Blanket designed by Lena Skvagerson. This pattern has you crochet a bunch of squares and then connect the squares at the end. Here are the squares for January:

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - January squares

Here are close-ups of each block:

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - January block #1

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - January block #2

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - January block #3

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - January center block

The center block, which was just started this month, will be larger than the other squares and will be multi-colored. These blocks ended up being easier than I had expected and I'm looking forward to the February installment.

Finally, I gave up on finding my little camera and I bought a new one (so I'm sure I'll find the camera in a couple of days....). I really like this little camera so I don't think I'll regret the purchase. It has a "burst" mode where it will continue to take pictures in quick succession when the button is pressed. This will make it a lot easier to get a good picture of Grace when she's running around! We took it on our walk this morning and got some pictures of Grace in action:

It was a beautiful, but cold, morning with about 3 inches of fresh snow on top of the foot of snow left over from last week. Grace loves running through the snow! Here are a couple of pictures of the trail that we go to every morning:

It's a beautiful little trail that is only accessible through our neighborhood so it is only used by myself and my neighbors. We haven't seen the moose for a couple of days now, but I'm sure they'll be back! I'll post some pictures of them if I get any good ones.

I hope everyone is enjoying their winter! Grace is enjoying walking through the snow a bit more than I am, but I'm definitely enjoying the beauty!

Nancy