What To Make Next or Why a Stash Is Not Always a Good Idea.

I feel like this will be one long run on sentence/stream of consciousness so I will try for this to make sense.

I have been making socks again and each month I check the challenges in the Sock Knitters Anonymous group. Some months the challenges have not appealed to me so I have not cast on; other months more than one option has appealed to me but I have restricted myself to one pair. The next month’s challenges are usually published about a week before the start of the month which gives me time to choose and get yarn wound if I want to start on the first of the month. One of the challenges for July is “previous mysteries”. I have chosen my pattern and yarn. Easy right? So what is the reason for this post?

I am working on a pair of socks for this month’s challenge. I chose the designer RoseHiver as I like her patterns and have knit a few of them. I remember when she first started designing socks as part of the Sock group and I said she should charge for her patterns but she said she wasn’t comfortable doing that. I am pleased that she has become more comfortable on that concept.

So… I have socks on the needles for this month and chosen for next month, what is the problem? One of the other challenges for this month was working a pattern whose first letter is the same as the first letter of your Ravelry name. I thought this sounded a fun challenge except I really wanted to knit the designer challenge. (I have found this quite frequently this year. Either I don’t want to work any of the challenges or I want to make a few of them.) I only want to work one pair of socks each month but August is a finishing up month so I could cast on something now and finish it in August. Decisions! I chose a pattern and decided on yarn. Yarn that has been in stash for a while. But then……

When looking at patterns that I had saved to look at later I saw a pattern for a drapey cowl – a style I like – and thought that would work perfectly with the yarn I had just chosen for socks. Added bonus, it is an easy pattern and I haven’t got anything easy on the needles right now.

Next step; wind the yarn and gauge swatch.