I'm Ready for the Next Project

It's a new week, one that's shaping up to be a busy one. A big project landed in my inbox yesterday afternoon, so that will keep me busy this week during working hours. And I'm still doing plenty of crafting, of course.

We had a beautiful weekend here, warm and sunny with no rain for a change. On Saturday morning, Rainbow and I planted the flowers and tomatoes we'd gotten on Mother's Day. We have pink impatiens in the front yarn, between the grass and hydrangea bushes. They were pretty small when we planted them and only a couple of flowers have opened since then. In the back yard, we planted a mix of marigolds (I started picking them and drying them last year to use in natural dyeing) and the three tomato plants in our fenced bed. We've got some sunflower seedlings started in a pot planter and have started some peas inside that will be transplanted outside once they're a bit bigger. I know Julia asked to see photos of the garden, but at the moment there's not much to see. Once everything starts growing and blooming, I'll be sure to take some pictures!

Though I mainly did a lot of spinning over the weekend, I've been working on my WIPs as well just about every day. I'm continuing to put in a minimum of 15 minutes a day on Rainbow's crochet blanket, and most evenings I work on my Breathe and Hope shawl. I'm nearly finished with section 3, which I think I've likely messed up a few times, but after ripping it out and restarting it three times, I'm just going with the flow at this point.

My cowl has grown quite a bit, though apparently it requires more attention than I thought because yesterday I discovered a dropped stitch. I laddered it back up and think I fixed it pretty well, but it was a warning for me that I need to actually watch what I'm doing. I'm very pleased with how it's knitting up, and it looks like I'll be writing up the pattern when I'm done (I was thinking about it, so I asked in a poll on my Instagram stories, and the answer was overwhelmingly yes -- so who am I to refuse?).

Despite having these three projects going, plus spinning, I'm getting itchy to start a new project, specifically a garment. I have quite a few sweaters on my 20 in 20 list, and the amount of time left in the year to knit them is only getting shorter. I so rarely seem to get started on warm-weather garments in time to actually wear them in the season they're intended for, so I've decided that my next project will be Tegna using yarn I spun specifically for it:

This yarn was spun from three braids of Targhee/bamboo/silk from Gale's Art. I split each braid in half vertically and used one strip from each braid as one ply in each skein, so the two skeins are more or less identical. I swatched with it (yes, cheating a bit) over the weekend and am now ready to go, but I'm making myself finish up one of the other WIPs first. That said, I am getting a lot of joy out of looking at the yarn cakes sitting nearby!