How did it ever get to be the middle of October already? Seems like just yesterday it was July! I’ve decided that given my limited crafting time, I really can only pick one – maybe two knit or crochet-a-longs to participate in each month. Any more than that just becomes stressful and this is supposed to be FUN!
I’ve also decided I’m going to frog the socks I showed last week. I haven’t done it yet, but they just didn’t make me happy the way they were turning out.
Given that recent failure, I needed something to boost my productivity and confidence again so I went back to working on my year-long weather afghan project. I had gotten several months behind so I had to start with June.

Now I think I know why I put this one-off. One word describes this square: Boring! I guess I should have picked better contrasting colors between 70 and 80°F temps but I never realized that there would be so many days in the same temperature ranges this summer! I am glad I switched from that rose color for the ’80s to this lovely pale yellow.
July was a little better – at least we had a couple of days that hit 90°F to add a bit of contrast. I had fully expected at least one day to break 100°F this year – I was going to do those rows in black. However we actually had a fairly mild summer for temps (definitely not complaining – I don’t like the hot and humid).

Thank goodness for Accuweather and the ability to go back and grab past data for my location. Once I discovered they had full month calendars that listed the high temperatures for the day, I stopped worrying about writing it down each day; now it happens once or twice a month.
I still have August, September and now October to catch up on, and to weave in all those ends for the two months I finished but that won’t take long.
I’ve also been working on my harvest leaf bag.

I’m so proud of how evenly my one stranded knitting row turned out after I learned how to properly hold two colors in my hand at once. Other than that, it’s not much to look at yet. I’ve been putting off starting the intarsia section because it makes me nervous. Maybe I should add a lifeline first in case I don’t like it. Either way, the Malabrigo Merino Worsted has been a dream to knit with! It’s so soft and smooth on the hands. I’m definitely going to use it for more projects.
Malabrigo is really something, isn’t it? I’ve only knit with the sockweight, and even that is so incredibly soft I have doubts about how hard-wearing it will be.
Fingers crossed, as I’ll be finding out soon.
Can’t wait to see the harvest leaf bag when you’re done!
I love the idea of a weather blanket. I might try it sometime, here in the UK it’s likely to be very varied!
Other ideas I’ve seen have been to make a temperature scarf, or to use the sky (sunny, cloudy, rainy) or even just your mood for the day. It will be a fun reminder of what 2014 looked like for us!