Rest

This month I'm having a rest from deadlines. The HPKCHC game gets a bit competitive towards the end, especially, and you begin to feel that you have to knit every spare minute, which does take a bit of the fun out. (We Slytherins came second in the House Cup, by the way, and won the Quidditch Cup!)

My goals this month, therefore, were to get three cranked sock tubes up to "almost finished" (so that I can finish them for "Detention" for 10 points).

 I have these ones, which need the heels kitchener-stitched closed

And these ones, which have a few ends to sew in

 And these ones, which need the hemmed picot cuff stitched down (and then I'll re-dye them! The yarn looked pretty in the skein and horrible knit up!)

 By the end of July I should have 4 pairs of socks in my Box 'o Sox, at least.

My other goal was to knit a chunk of my Gala top from 2012. I'm up to about 200g/35cm here, and should be up to 40cm by the end of the month. (Nothing else to knit!)

Plans:

I love spinning; it's easy, relaxing and gets lots of points. But my box of handspun is overflowing, so I'm determined to knit up a lot of it. Two of my Ravelry friends and I have started a thread to encourage others to knit their handspun, too. I'm not sure I'll get through all this in 2 months, but I'm going to get through some of it, at least. I'm even planning a laceweight shawl that finally uses my Nobby laceweight (on the right, there).

As for July, well that's Tour de Fleece, so I'm going to undo my hard work, basically, and refill my handspun box! :)

Another Rav friend made me this. LOL. I think I'll change my Ravatar...

Break

April is a month off, in the HPKCHC, unless you're doing a NEWT. But this month, I'm having a break. Decided it was time to pull out a WIP from 2012 and do a bit of work on it :)

This was supposed to be a quick knit, but of course, things went a bit sideways. I've finished one side, and just this month started side 2. Sad, eh? :)

Of course, I immediately got distracted. I spent an afternoon fighting with my CSM, and changed it back to fingering weight settings and 72 stitches. I cranked these sparkley tubes out!

Plan to almost-finish all of them, and use them for 10-point detention projects in May, June and July. I can't wear them yet, anyway; they're for my Box-o-Sox project. There are a bunch of people doing the same as a big Knit-along, and the idea is to make 12 pairs of socks and then give yourself a box full of new socks all at once. Christmas present :) I only have one pair in there so far, but it's this NEWT pair:

which worked very well, and fit well! There were so many ends to sew in, but I like them lots.

There wasn't much of March left by the time those devils were finished, but I did finish off this Pashmina hat (which was basically a travel-hat for when I needed simple knitting)

and a bit of spinning, which is still the quickest way to get Yards (and therefore points) in the game.

I used two matching singles (of SCF merino/cashmere/silk in "Big Sky" and "Dark Sapphire") and made as much 6ply as I could fit on my espinner bobbin. Then I n-plied the rest. Next term I'm helping run a thread about *using* handspun up! I have an overflowing box (or two) of handspun, and I don't actually knit with it much. I'm planning to use handspun for lots of classes next term.

As for my OWL, I'm doing Defense against the Dark Arts. One of the options is to study the cruciatus curse by doing something painful, and this is what I picked.

Well, this is my bullet journal, but the project is the season 18 Doctor Who scarf. I never watched the old seasons, and don't think I even knew about the famous multicolored one that Doctor #4 wore, but this version, the purple/red/orange one, got my attention in the first Christmas episode of the new Doctor Who. It was David Tennant's first whole episode, and he spent most of it in someone else's pajamas :) but at the end, when he was choosing his outfit, he threw on this scarf as a test, and I immediately thought, "Oo, I like that scarf!"

Didn't realize it was about 20 feet long! Anyway, it's 1272 rows, and each row is going to be 50 stitches (as I'm using thinner yarn that the pattern). I'll knit the whole pattern, regardless of how long it is (mine will probably end up a little shorter... thinner yarn) but it's still pretty OWL-worthy, at 60,000-odd stitches of endless garter stitch in a non-repeating color pattern.

Can't wait to start! Hehe.