Since it's a knit-a-long, I suppose it would be good to show the kit I chose. It would be even better if I had gotten a better picture, but I'm not great at capturing all the colors. Anyway, the pastel rainbow is a nice bit of change for me. Well, I actually think this will not be for me when it's done, but I'm not even sure about that. I certainly don't have anyone in mind for it, and by the time I put in all the work to make it, I may not be able to part with it.
So, obviously, the Hue Shift KAL is well underway. Before we got going, we were discussing ideas and a few details, and I asked if she wanted to set progress goals. I asked her how many squares she thought she would average in a week, and she guessed at about four or five. That seems doable for both of us. At that rate, we will have the main part of the blanket finished in 20-25 weeks, and then all that would remain are the seaming, border, and weaving in of ends (no, we're totally going to weave them all in as we work each square). That is not a very cheering thought, so I started to re-frame the way I was thinking about it. I figure, the time it will take for us all to be fully vaccinated and can be together will be about the same amount of time as it takes us to finish our blankets. So, finished blanket time will be family party time, right? I'll think of each square as getting closer to getting vaccinated. That being said, if we finish our blankets on that timetable and aren't all vaccinated, at least we will have our own blankets to huddle beneath.
Anyway, the knitting is going pretty well. It took me a few tries to get gauge. I'm down from the suggested US5s to US2s, and she had to go up to US7s. There have been misunderstandings along the way. For example, my sister thought we were each knitting half of a blanket and that the finished piece would be hers. My misunderstanding was where I thought she had already begun, so I got started. Turns out, she was still practicing with scrap yarn to understand how to knit a mitered square. So, I'm a little bit ahead of her. While we're both on the first section, she's somewhere on the third strip and I'm at the start of the fifth strip. However, she is ahead of me in vaccinating--she has received her first dose!
