Yarn Along - It's Personal This Time

It's hard to get any more personal with a sweater than to spin and knit it from a lamb you raised on a bottle, but really, it's "personal" pretty much any time I'm doing anything with wool these days.  Even the Lamb Camp yarn is personal because they are sheep I love and help take care of throughout the year (and am super excited for lambing to start :-).  

The Iditarod/Iknitarod is personal because it's something I really enjoy (dogs, snow, interesting mushers, hard working volunteers, Alaska!) and look forward to all year.  I follow a few mushers year round as they train and prepare.  I think about who and what I want to knit and prepare myself.

This year I picked Baaxter to "pull my sled" - a much safer choice than Maisie I hoped ;-).  Over the summer I spun the yarn I wanted to use and then stewed and stewed on a pattern.  I couldn't get excited about anything and to make matters worse, I was headed into the race with a sore knitting hand.  

I finally decided to just make up a pattern that I thought I'd like, give it my best shot and if it didn't work or I hated the finished sweater I could just rip it all out and try something else and if I couldn't finish at all, I wasn't going to worry about it.  Definitely not the best (or my normal) attitude.  

And then I heard that some ashes of a good friend (Maisie's "dad") who passed away last year were on one of the sleds (Michelle Phillips #30) headed to Nome.  That's a game changer.  Vergil LOVED the Iditarod.  It's (extra) personal this time!  

Definitely no snow here (even though I still have plenty of pictures to share from last week ;-).

In fact, if you can't beat 'em (springtime), join 'em (yeah, I bought some stupid ol' flowers yesterday).

I'm stewing a bit on the "fabric" I'm getting.  I sampled with a larger needle and didn't like it, but I'm not loving the density of this needle size either.  I think I'm going to trial block half of one of the sleeves and see how it feels "finished".  If it's awful, I can do something about it before I get any further down the trail.

Enjoy a fun walk out back with my Iknitarod team while I get back to knitting.  It's a bit over 2 minutes long, but it's one of the best videos I've lucked into so I left it all in :-).  Watch Hank near the end as he glances back at the barn to make sure his sheep are okay.  

My book this week is The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey.  I'm liking it so far and the author's description of the Alaskan wilderness fits perfectly with the scenery I'm enjoying on the Iditarod Insider.  

Joining in with Ginny...