Sarah and I returned from Camp Stitches last week filled with inspiration — and with ambitious design projects in progress!  We also returned to family life, house guests coming, Halloween looming, birthday celebrations to concoct…well, you get the picture.  I also came back to a baby sweater on the needles (the baby shower is in early November) and a not-quite-done sweater that I am planning to wear at Thanksgiving!

I do not know why I am a little shocked every year when October leads directly to November!

My design project is a cardigan inspired by Arts and Crafts designs — think geometric stained glass windows and stylized botanical ceramics.  I am way excited!  There are delightful design challenges involved, as well as the continuing challenge of carving out time in the week to focus on delightful design challenges.  

My work style is the “hour chunk of time” method.  Meaning, I can usually schedule an hour to work on a project — maybe between yoga class and dinner (like my blog time today) or after lunch and before I tackle some housework or computer work.  So, my process is one step at a time.  Of course, once I know what I am doing, I can knit in the evenings (my usual knitting time) until I need to know what I am doing next.   And then I carve out another hour chunk!

We did have a little yarn shopping outing in Coeur d’Alene — at Knit Knit (a perfectly charming store!). I was became enamored of the fabulous fur pompoms and immediately realized I needed a new fall hat!  Some Hedgehog Fibres Merino DK appropriately named “Goblin” leapt into my hands.

I snagged a couple of mini-skeins of the shop’s own sock merino — delightfully named “Spooky”— to make fingerless mitts to go with the hat.

And I also made progress on my Halloween Shawl — during the lecture portions of our class and also in the hotel lobby bar after dinner 🙂

So, I am steadily knitting my way to November — and relishing the return of shawl-wearing evenings!