You may have noticed that I didn’t start off this month with a quick look at what I’m knitting in January. That is partly because I had other things I wanted to talk about first and partly because the pictures of what I’m knitting on this month are very uninspiring.
Rest assured that I’m doing lots and lots and lots of knitting this month. It’s just that this knitting is for upcoming publications or third party releases. Mostly the yarn is not yet available in the US and/or the projects are secret for a while yet.
Wrong yarn. 
Right yarn.
So here is nice picture of the yarn for one project arriving twice through international mail. The first yarn that arrived was a mistake and the second yarn that arrived for this project took so long in coming that I’m certain my blood pressure was high for almost all of the last half of December and Fedex now thinks I live in South America from trying to check tracking numbers from that end. On a side note, it’s a good thing I can read Spanish since I haven’t had time to sort that out just yet. The deadline for this one is January 15th (pushed back from the original deadline of January 7th and released for last minute express delivery due to the lateness of the yarn).
And here is a nice photo of the other yarn that arrived for another project. The deadline for this one is March 15th and the yarn arrived nice and early. So I’ve had zero blood pressure issues with this one so far.
Beyond that I’ve finished the body and first sleeve of what I’ve started calling my Winter Hiking Sweater pattern. So all that’s left on that one is the second sleeve, neckline and writing up the pattern for test knit. Then this one should be ready to start test knitting late January or early February.
And early this month I finally started the test knit for the Cafe Blend Cowl. I have some really great test knitters for this one and I’m excited to see that they from different areas the world – US, Ireland, Russia and Spain. I simply love the way knitting pulls together people from all over the world!
