I missed posting yesterday because I went to The Lake.  (That's Lake Michigan to you Muggles.)

That didn't stop me from knitting, of course.   The pattern and yarn both came from my first Sleeping Bear Yarn Club shipment, which arrived last Thursday!  The club is being sold by Wool & Honey, a great little yarn shop in Cedar, Michigan, on the Leelanau Peninsula.  I have only been to Wool & Honey a couple of times.  Most visitors to the Leelanau would never drive through Cedar because they tend to stick to the coastal cities, and Cedar is pretty much in the middle of the peninsula.

Each shipment consists of a skein of sock yarn that is dyed specially for the club and is inspired by Northern Michigan, one pattern (sock, shawl, or baby sweater) and one stitch marker made by a local jewelry maker.

My first package also included a Wool & Honey tote bag, a Sleeping Bear Yarn Club stitch marker, a nice handwritten note from the shop owners, and a preview of the August colorway, pattern choices and stitch markers.

The July colorway is called Good Harbor Beach and is inspired by... um... Good Harbor Beach!  (The colors in this photo are so washed out—amateur photographer mistake of taking the photos in the early morning light.  The colors in the first photo are much more accurate.)  I love the colorway because it has all the colors of Lake Michigan—water, sky, and sand.  This time I chose the Capitola sock pattern because you just can't go wrong with Irish Girlie Knits, and this is one of her patterns that I didn't already own.  You can see the stitch marker that was included this month—I forget the name of the stone.

At first I wasn't sure about the sock yarn base.  It's Sunshine Yarns Classic Sock, which I've never used before.  It's a 100% merino base, but I couldn't help thinking as I started the sock that it felt like I was knitting with a fingering weight cotton.  Weird, because merino shouldn't feel that way.  I was using my Knitter's Pride Karbonz and the yarn was not gliding over the needles the way I like, so I switched to metal, and that was better for this particular yarn.  Once I got past the lace cuff section to the leg that has the stockinette columns, the yarn also felt much softer.

It was a great beach day, and a great knitting day!

It's been a while since I've posted.  I think that I'm going to follow in the footsteps of a few of my favorite bloggers and try to post updates on Sundays.  Any other updates will be bonuses.

I have had a few weeks of "casting on all the things."  The routine usually goes like this: cast on, get bored, cast on again, get bored, cast on yet again.  Andi's post this week was about feeling the need to finish things.  She has embraced the fact that she is not a monogamous knitter, and this week for some strange reason, rather than cast on all the things, she felt the need to finish all the things.  She thinks this feeling might be attributed to the Zeigarnik Effect, which is explained in this article that she read.

The one area in my life where I don't regret not finishing things is in my knitting.  I'm okay with WIPs sitting around for a while.  I have tried time and time again to be a monogamous knitter so that I will finish projects in a more timely manner, and it just doesn't stick.  The only time I do feel guilty is when another knitter makes a comment about it.  I feel guilty enough about other unfinished things to feel guilty about not finishing knitting projects. 

The past couple of days, I've been working on some lace and cables in some very neutral colors.  It has turned rainy and cool, and these are the sorts of things I picture myself wearing in New England or the Maritimes or the British Isles.  (Yeah, I have knitterly visions.  Most of us do, I'm sure.)

Photos link to Ravelry, if you're curious about patterns and yarn.

Maybe I'll get bored soon.  Maybe I won't, and I'll have finished something the next time I see you.  You never know.

The Knitmore Girls have a segment of their podcast called "When Knitting Attacks."  My knitting attacked me this past week.

The box bags I ordered from A Needle Runs Through It came in, and they are fantastic!  Highly recommend.  I ordered two bags.  First up is a large boxy bag in sushi fabric.  The fabric is absolutely adorable.  I love the colors...

... and the different types of Japanese foods are saying different things. 

I missed taking a photo of it, but the California roll is saying, "Let's roll."  How cute is that?  I'm not even a big fan of sushi, but I couldn't resist this fabric.

The bag is really well constructed.  The fabric is heavy enough that needles won't poke through.  I love that the zipper color coordinates with the fabric.  And look at this lovely zipper pull!  These are the sort of details that make a good bag great.

The bag is a nice big size, large enough to hold a smaller shawl, scarf, or infinity loop project.  In the photo on the right, it is holding the Trillian project that I am working on, and I still have room to spare.  As the Trillian grows, I think I might have to transfer it to a larger project bag, but right now it's easily holding the 200 grams of fingering weight yarn, the project, and the pattern.

I also picked up a small boxy bag in the winter trees fabric.  This one was slightly discounted, I assume because of the fabric. Who wants to buy a Christmas bag in summer?  ME!  The fact that it's summer isn't going to stop me from carrying this bag around now.  It's too cute to wait until winter to use.

The same lovely details were used to make this bag: a coordinated color zipper and a nice, sturdy zipper pull.

This bag is quite roomy for a small project bag.  It holds 100 grams of sock yarn with room to spare.  I believe it's actually big enough to hold two 100-gram skeins, so it would hold a colorwork sock project.

If you're in need of a new project bag, I encourage you to check out A Needle Runs Through It.  She has all sorts of other cute fabrics. I just swung in there, and I will just say this: Foxes and mustaches and Tardises, oh my!

Ay, ay, ay with the enabling.  If you don't want to be enabled, don't listen to podcasts.  This whole edition of Favorite Things Friday could be about the yummy yarns, bags, and stitch markers that I've discovered while binge-watching the Must Stash podcast this week.  I'll be sure to share in a later post, but today I will share one yummy thing.

I managed to score a skein of Desert Vista Dyeworks in a destash.  This is the Tiki Bar colorway, which first caught my eye on Susan B. Anderson's blog nearly a year ago.

Want to entertain but don't want to throw a whole dinner party?  This bruschetta bar is the perfect idea!  In addition to these recipes, I might include whipped feta, roasted tomatoes, and this 5 Cheese Roasted Red Pepper Spread.

I love the idea of replacing my downspouts with rain chains.

This bean tepee would make a cute addition to a vegetable garden. 

Having finished Must Stash, I have now moved on to Suburban Stitcher.  Hopefully I'll be able to let the enabling roll right off my back.  Have a great weekend!

So, I took sock inventory yesterday, and I noticed that these two vanilla socks were in about the same spot.  If I knit a few more rounds of the green sock, they would be at exactly the same spot.  What better way to see if I can manage two-at-a-time than to try to finish these socks on one needle?  I'm already past the heel, which is the hardest part, after all.  I've got a little soxperiment going on here.

A shout out to Jesse, who blogs over at Wee Pleasures.  She is a two-at-a-time knitter and cranks out the socks like you wouldn't believe.  She's finished 12 pairs already this year, over half of which were knit two-at-a-time.  I've been following her sock knitting, and she's the inspiration for this soxperiment.

I finished my first pair of socks for the Summer of Socks KAL!  The pattern is Charade by Sandra Park.  The yarn is Cakewalk Stash in the Taos colorway.  I LOVE everything about these.  The pattern was easy-peasy, one step up from a plain vanilla.   It's a SKYP pattern (there we go with another abbreviation), similar to Simple Skyp Socks, but stockinette rather than ribbed.  I love the yarn.  Can't get enough of those speckles.  Unfortunately, this is the only Cakewalk Yarn I'll likely ever knit with.  It's very hard to come by since the Etsy store closed.

HO = Half Object

I went to the movies on Sunday (The Fault in Our Stars—awesomesauce) so I needed something I could knit in the dark without looking at my hands.  My knitting-in-the-dark skills are a bit lackluster to say the least, so I didn't want to take a project I care about just in case it went awry.  Barn Raising Quilt squares fit the bill.  I'm making a 72-square blanket, and I've got about 24 squares, so I'm only 1/3 of the way done.  Technically, this really isn't a HO.  But who's being technical?

I think this is going to be my purse knitting for a while.  Today I separated out all the sock yarn leftovers from projects I've knit from the cakes that others have given me.  The yarns in this photo are all from my FOs.  I want to make sure that I use these before using the others.  It'll be cool when the blanket is finished and I can look at it to remember other projects.

WIP = Work-in-Progress

You might be thinking that my Brickless looks strange.  That's because it's not Brickless anymore.  I just wasn't feeling it.  Brickless is a lovely pattern and not difficult, but I needed something even easier.  Enter Trillian.  Still Martina Behm, still going to be an asymmetrical shawl/scarf thing.  It hasn't grown very much this week because I was working on the socks.

SIP = Socks-in-Progress

It's the Summer of Socks, so how could I finish one sock project and NOT cast on another?  These are my best friend Carol's birthday socks.  I picked the yarn from my stash, and she picked the pattern.  She chose Socks for Euni by "Feministy" Liz Abinante.  The yarn is a Yarn Hollow Sockreligious sock blank.  I wound it into balls rather than knit from the blank.  I'm doing these two-at-a-time on separate needles.  This is the way Steph of the Must Stash Podcast knits most of her socks, and since I often have a bad case of second sock syndrome, I thought I would try this. 

So, there you have it.  FO, HO, WIP, SIP.  FOHOWIPSIP.  Sounds like a good craft beer name to me!

Today is the solstice, the longest day of the year, the official start of SUMMER.

Aaaah.  Summer in Michigan.  A time for sipping icy drinks on a patio.  A time for heading to one of the Great Lakes (for me, its Michigan) and chillaxing while you watch the waves roll in.  Festivals and barbecues.  Trips to the ice cream stand.   Boating and camping.  Eating fresh, local produce.  Climbing a sand dune.  

And also... a time for sock knitting.  We know these summer moments are so fleeting here in Michigan.  However warm it is today, we know we're going to return to a frozen landscape in the not-too-distant future, and WE. NEED. WOOL. SOCKS.

Socks are the perfect portable project for taking on vacation, to the beach, to the festival, to the patio.  So let's make some!

I am hosting a Summer of Socks KAL/CAL over in the Team Michigan group on Ravelry.  Team Michigan began as a Ravellenics team for Michiganders and has since expanded to be a KAL/CAL group for Michiganders or people who have a Michigan connection.  Summer of Socks is going to be super relaxed.  WIPs count, so drag them out of the project box and finish them up before there is a chill in the air!  You can win some yarny prizes...

I hope you'll join us!