The End of Summer - Catching Up!

Well, summer passed by much. much, much too quickly…between vacations, summer camps and programs and a few projects around the house, it seems like just yesterday that my kiddos finished up exams and we all looked forward to the summer ahead! And now, today is the first day of school! Can you believe it?!!!The schedule is already jammed packed with my son running on the high school cross country team and my daughter dancing several nights a week at her ballet school. I’m sure it will be crazy the first few weeks with evening cross country practices scheduled so the kids don’t have to run during the extremely hot afternoons that we’ve had these past few weeks.

Over the weekend, I sat down and tied up loose ends (quite literally) on several projects. First up, weaving loose ends on this baby afghan for my son’s cross country coach who has a two month old baby boy!  Welcome Baby Mac! I used Knit Picks Swish DK in Sea Glass, a superwash yarn and this Lion Brand Yarns Baby Afghan Pattern. I never used superwash yarn before so one of the weekend’s big projects was to test wash and dry the afghan. I used a gentle cycle, cold water wash and dryed at a low temperature and the afghan retained its shape and size! Perfect yarn for a baby afghan!

Next up was blocking my July socks for our 12 Socks Project Twitalong. In July, I finished a pair of socks that I had started in April for my son. Even though his feet grew 3 WHOLE sizes this past year, they were no match for these socks! They were just huge! As always, he kindly told me how much he liked them but they simply were not wearable. A couple of times through the washer at hot temperatures changed that though…I’m still not sure what happened with my measurements but at least the socks fit him now…more or less…

I knitted these legwarmers for my ballerina daughter while she and I were in NYC for her summer dance program. The pattern is Hyde Park Legwarmers designed by Allyson of The Sweatshop of Love. I love how they turned out. All I had left was weaving in the loose ends and voila! My daughter can’t wait to wear them to her ballet class tonite!

Lastly, I finished this Cotton Smocked Top! A Twitalong with @CheekyTart and @Jbee42 . Finally! I was really worried about attaching the straps and adding the elastic but it turned out to be pretty easy. Not sure how pretty my effort looks but I’m pretty sure the top will stay put…it was a little big on my daughter before I added the elastic. All in all, this was pretty easy to knit.

And as for the other projects around the house...here’s what my powder room currently looks like: We started last Wednesday…the contractor has been busy fixing the drywall because of a wall treatment that we decided we no longer wanted. It’s moving along pretty quickly and will probably be 100% complete within the next two weeks. We are also doing a small renovation to the basement. For me, this meant going through a lot of boxes and trimming things down. ..somewhat of a time consuming project but it was great to get rid of some of the stuff that we no longer needed.

Next up on my needles…my 12 Socks August 12 Project …I’m knitting these Lacy Mock Cable Socks with a Medium Weight Blue Moon Fiber Arts Sock That Rock in a colorway called Nodding Violet. I love the colors; they are perfect violet greens, purples and blues. While I thought these would be MY socks, the colors just reminded me so much of my sister who loves to grow violets. So they are Michelle’s socks. Please don’t tell her because I think they are going to be a Christmas present.

And I’m very excited to be a test knitter for Allyson @sweatshopoflove. I’ll give you some progress updates as I go along!