Kninja Knitter

Brrr. This was the view from my living room window this morning.

And yet, the cold weather isn’t expected to last. The current forecast is to be back up in the low 60s (~17C) by Sunday. But this is roller coaster season for the weather and temperatures. I’m glad to have handknits to keep me warm!

Stitched or Still-in-Progress

I made good progress on a couple projects, made small progress on another, and I have a couple new cast-ons to share. Spoiler alert: I made great progress on the Laura Nelkin MKAL project, and I’m caught up to Clue 3. I’ll share that picture last before moving to the next section.

I did get to the movie theater once, so I got a few rounds on the sock done. The shawl, however, got minimal attention. I may not come back to this one this week…but my goal is to have it done by the end of the month.

Cast-on Conversations

Because I finished a couple things last week along with the MKAL clue, I was looking for a couple new projects, and I wound up with three. I started with a sock project, casting on the mate for one of the test knits I completed in August. With the new Wicked movie coming out in eleven days, it’d be nice to have the pair completed to wear to the theater.

Knowing the cold weather is coming, I started a hat the day after casting on the sock above. I’m using yarn remnants from a sweater I knit several years ago. I came close to finishing the hat on Sunday night, but I opted to get to bed instead of pushing through. It will be a quick task to finish though! I also used slightly smaller needles than called for in the pattern – this will be donated to a charity group, and multiple sizes are always a good idea.

My last cast-on was a late start…my grandson apparently tried to take another kiddo’s Paw Patrol hat. I saw a photo of the target, so I did some searching on Ravelry to find the best option to knit a version for my munchkin. I found a free sweater pattern that has charts, too! I’m not fond of intarsia, but I’ll do this for the grandkid, right? So many strands, lol, but it’s coming together. Quite a few yarns, too.

There may be some duplicate stitch to follow once this is done as I’m using the main color for the white parts of the eyes – but I’ll see how it looks when the hat is done before deciding. The image also starts just at the nose, so we’ll see the eyes, ears & hat; and I need to determine when the crown decreases will begin, as that may impact the color work as well.

Football Frenzy

A quick note here as my exciting football moment this week was purchasing a season ticket for the new United Football League team that’s coming to Columbus, Spring 2026! At some point, I may look into the financial requirements to acquire an Ohio State season ticket, but with the variability of game times, that gets tricky! I don’t know what the schedule will be for Spring 2026 (season begins March 28), but the price for five home-game tickets was quite reasonable (less than half of my Broadway series season). Now I want to know when merch will be available…

The Buckeyes played well on Saturday, and last week’s CFP rankings had them in first place. That’s likely to hold until at least the Big Ten Championship game on December 6…fingers crossed!

Oh, one last fun tidbit on football: of the fourteen NFL games played this week to date (one remaining game tonight), I was the only person to correctly pick ten of the winners in the dishcloth pool I’m in. 🤩 There are three competitors right behind me, so if my pick in tonight’s game is correct, I’ll win the pool for the first time in over a year. I’ll probably waffle over my choice a few times… first, I need to check the injury list for the two teams.

Grandson Glimpses

This weekend we had another lovely visit. The munchkin had been so interested in the face paints, I ordered some art supplies for him. As he’s still a very novice beginner, I opted for the Crayola series which has special paper. The markers don’t work on anything else. Play-doh may be in our future, too. But I actually had the most fun during a break from Paw Patrol videos, when I pulled up a Neil Peart (Rush) drum solo video as my grandson had been playing with a pair of shoe stretching sticks as drumsticks. He watched for about thirty seconds, then began imitating – and he particularly began mimicking the reaches to multiple drum heads, and then he got his feet going after a snippet in the video showing the kick drum activity.

He also helped me with laundry, though he fully resisted washing either of his blankets, unfortunately.

Movie Moments

I got out to the theater once last week and saw Regretting You, starring Allison Williams and McKenna Grace. The story had me tearing up several times, and a couple scenes provided some material for me to mull while starting my goal planning for 2026. And now I’m curious to read the book to see what differences in the story there might be.

I’m still trying to schedule seeing the Bruce Springsteen biopic, and now I’m also keen to see Nuremberg after reading more about this script. We’ll see if I can swing these around the rest of my schedule. This week I have tickets for a couple concerts I’m looking forward to!

Knit on. 🧶