an in-progress thing

 This is "Orchard and Vine," a pattern by Jovi Geraci. I bought it through KnitPicks, along with the yarn (High Desert Sport - a Merino/Merino-Rambouillet blend, it boasts being American-grown wool and processed in North Carolina). 

The pattern is for sort of a largish triangular scarf or a small shawl. The colors intermix by doing first a plain section of one, then alternating plain and slipped stitch rows to work in the second color, then you drop out the first....there are a total of four colors; I chose Willow, Rabbitbrush (the green and yellow in the photo), Riverbend (color 3, a blue) and Barnwood (red) for the last color. 

It takes a while to knit; garter stitch is fast to knit but it grows slowly because it is dense. You are basically increasing one stitch every 2 rows. 

I also finally opened all the Christmas cards that came when I was away for break. So thank you Roger, and Lynn (and Syaffolee, if you're reading) and my various CPAAG peeps as well. I'm slowly working through the backlog of mail - I have two magazines that came (Piecework and Mary Jane's Farm) to read (I already looked at the Cook's Country). 

I also decided to go with something I've read a few places: do more of what makes you happy. I mean, yes, there are caveats there - if being mean to people makes you happy, you probably shouldn't do it (I guess some people enjoy trolling others on social media; I don't like that - I want to make silly jokes or bad puns or put funny captions on animal pictures and maybe make one of my friends have a "nice" laugh at it, rather than make people laugh because someone's being mean)

But also: yarn makes me happy, and having things come in the mail makes me happy. So I decided that since I am no longer paying for the doki doki crates (they don't exist any more) or a subscription to Interweave Knits, maybe I take that money and get a yarn subscription crate instead - I found one that's sockyarn and "small goodies" (like a few stitch markers or a bookmark) every month, and it costs about what the doki doki crates cost. So I'm going to try it for three months. If I get a colorway I don't like (it's a grab bag sort of thing) I can either pass it along to someone else or use it eventually to make an item for a gift or for donation somewhere.