Hi friends, it’s been a while. February felt like a bit of a blur – I always feel like I’m going to hunker down and get a lot done in February, but it doesn’t always pan out. This year, I’ve been making slow and steady progress on lots of things (most of them WIPs). Once I finished the Granny’s Garden quilt – it felt like a whole new world had opened up! First off, I didn’t have much to go so I just powered through the socks I had on the needles.

They turned out pretty cute! These socks are plain old vanilla, my regular go to. The yarn is Opal in the Juniper Height (9851) colorway. They’re cute and comfy. I cast these on back in October so it’s nice to have them finished. They are WIP 5/20 for my year of wips.

I finished those right before I took a quick flight down to NC to go to a concert with my brother and sister-in-law. I was only there for about 22 hours, but I knew the flights would need a sock. I wasn’t really ready to take a blanket or cross stitch, so I just had to pick out yarn for a new sock cast on.

I picked Stress Knits yarn in the Sunflower colorway because the yarn was wound up (can’t remember why) and I thought socks in this color will just be amazing. I spent that day with the sibs in Charlotte where we wound up checking out the NASCAR museum first…

and then hit the concert at the end of the day…

I had such a good time just escaping for a day to hang out with these two. I was up the next morning at 5 to catch the plane home, so I didn’t knit quite so much as usual. This sock is tucked back away waiting for next weekend – my first work trip in two years!

After all of this, I was tooling around my sewing room, putting away some scraps when I suddenly came across a plastic baggie labled, you guesed it, “projects.” Luckily there was just one in there, but still…

This isn’t too bad, just a wee clamshell panel. I fancy I’ll do a bit better on it now that I’ve got so much more applique experience under my belt, but needle turn is still a bit of magic to me. I started this project back in 2019 and this makes 21 total projects on the list. I really really think that’s it.

With this project added, I saw I have 10 hand projects (hand-sewing, knitting, and crochet) on the list and 10 months left. Not too bad, just need to finish one a month and I’ll be golden. I decided to pull out a cross stitch project for March.

And this is my progress to date. I’ve added the sheep, barn, and grass so far. It’s slower going than I expected, but that’s the way it goes. This is a pattern from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery. I started this back in 2017 – I spent a solid 6 or 7 months enamoured with cross stitch and then never picked it up again. I’m not in love with the process, but I’m finding my rhythm.

At the sewing machine, I’ve been working on catching up with my Avonlea quilt. I’ve completed January and am working on February now. These four blocks are the very center of the quilt. I just love how log cabin blocks come together.

And then… I saw some quilters on instagram talking about pulling out their Betsy stashes and so I just had to pull mine…

It’s so pretty. Y’all know I have a love affair with the Betsy pattern by Liberty. Last year, I made a Betsy mini quilt last year and so when Bec of Sew.Be put out the idea of a Betsy nine patch quilt, I just haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. Going through my stash, I pulled out a few solid pink fabrics that I thought might work for the background.

After a lot of hemming and hawing, I went with the middle color here. The sewalong aims to make four blocks a week. I’m starting with two blocks from each fabric and the results are pretty snazzy.

Well that’s it for now. How long do you think it will be before I discover another latent WIP? Start another project? Inspiration seems to be everywhere, year in and year out, so I’m not mad.

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#yearofwips projects finished: 5 of 21

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Happy making!