January came and has nearly gone in a blur that is leaving me wondering where the month went. I am thrilled to have escaped the holiday knitting. This year, promise that you will strangle me if I mention holiday knitting for anyone other than my kids or hubby. It is just too discouraging knitting for people who have no appreciation of the work and time that goes into hand knitting.

I would love to tell you all the wonderful things I have knit this month but in truth most of what I knit has been frogged.

The reason for the excessive frogging being that I have been working on a couple of designs that I couldn’t get just the way I wanted them. The first was for a cabled version of Calorimetry. Don’t get me wrong. I love Calorimetry but the pattern is too wide for my head and I get bored with the ribbing so I wanted to spice it up a bit. So after a little a lot of ripping and reknitting, here is what I came up with

I still want to do another tweak to get the size just right but for the most part I am happy with this version. I am polishing up the pattern so I can share it with you all. Hopefully, it will be available in about a week.

I also taught a knitting class this month. I learned a great deal about how NOT to teach a class. As this was a larger group than I normally work with, I planned WAY too much for the time I had. I did have a lot of fun and enjoyed meeting some wonderful new knitters. I think they taught me more than I taught them. I hope I did manage to share a few things with them.

My other projects this month include a shrug (which is difficult for me to spell for some reason).

This is the Retro Redux Shrug from Lace Style. I like the pattern much better knit in something other than orange. The brioche lace in this pattern is my first time to knit a lace with a design on the front and back but it is still a bit dull after the first mile or two. It is turning into a bit of a slog. I am probably about halfway through with the lace. Then I have to add the boring ribbing. So this project isn’t a barrel of fun to knit but I think the results will be quite nice. And just in time for Church-Air-Conditioner-Thermostat-Set-by-Man-in-Wool-Suit-with-Long-Sleeved-Shirt Season.

I have also been working on a new sock, finalizing the design on a skinny scarf and am making good progress on the next in the My Favorite Things linens series but I will save that for the next post.