Loopy Academy Semester 2: Planning Stages

Friday morning I woke up and realized that I wasn't going to make it through the work day. At 7 a.m.., when I should be leaving for the train, I was instead stumbling out to feed the cats (they don't understand sick days), sending a nearly coherent email to my coworkers (they do) and then back to bed for an hour. I haven't been leveled this badly by a cold in several years but it's been truly miserable and required a ridiculous number of tissues.

I ended up having three phone meetings, because life doesn't actually stop when you're sick and BrineyDeep and LDZ and I were on deadline for a paper and I had to draft another short piece for a coworker to eyeball. BD, LDZ, and I submitted our manuscript Friday night and I took my sickly self back to bed. The only knitting accomplished was 4 rows on section 2 of my Catkin.

Saturday I woke up feeling far more civilized and was up and about for about 4 hours before succumbing to the lure of an afternoon nap. The Philosopher shuffled me off to bed and propped the door so that noise was blocked but the felines didn't feel dreadfully left out.

I got up again around 6 p.m. as the Philosopher was headed out to a social event-- briefly I was kind of sad that he was going out and I was staying home, but then I started violently sneezing again and was much happier retreating to the couch for podcasts and winding yarn.

For I've realized that it is suddenly March and I need to get going on my Loopy Academy 2 projects if I'm going to finish them this semester (due date is May 31, which suddenly feels very close).

Semester 2 is requirements are

1) A striped project
2) A felted project
3) A project with slipped stitches

No yarn weight requirements but each project has to use at least 175 yards.  

I can't say I was thrilled: stripes aren't my favorite and I have never been a fan of felted stuff.  But this is supposed to be stretching our skills and I dug some things out of my queue.

My striped project will be a shawl: Contrast and Complement.  I'm doing the sport weight size out of Cascade Superwash Sport in Navy and a pale blue called Alaska Sky. Yes, not especially original considering the pattern colors are pretty close to that but I looked at other combinations and wasn't caught by anything else.  This may be a gift. Not sure yet.

My felted project will be slippers: French Press Felted Slippers. We'll see how they turn out. I grabbed some rust colored Cascade 220 to make them. If I don't like them, I'm sure there's someone around with size 7.5 feet who will speak up.

My slipped stitches project will hopefully be short and sweet, but I just rejected the pattern I was considering so knows what it will be. I bought 2 skeins Blue Sky Alpaca Silk in the pale green colorway they call Plume. I'm leaning toward fingerless mitts right now.

I hand wound most of the yarn while on the couch Saturday night so assuming recovery continues, I can get started this week. 90 days to make three projects really should be sufficient, shouldn't it?