My needles have been busy, but it's been a while since I posted any knitting updates over here. We have limited time during the school day to get work done, and the priority over the last few months has been to get the first two books in our Something New to Learn series written and published, launching our yarn range, oh and attending Edinburgh Yarn Festival to both teach and sell. Written out like that, the start of 2018 seems like the craziest plan I've ever seen. Anyhow, both books are done, the yarn is out there and EYF is feeling like a distant memory, which means the I've been getting back to some non-work knitting, and finally have some time to chat about it.

I love that work involves knitting, but I am also well aware that in order to keep my passion for knitting alive, I need to protect some knitting time for fun projects – projects that are designed by other people, projects that I don't need to knit, projects that are totally deadline free, and most of all, projects that stoke the fire of my knitting enthusiasm. This type of knitting had been in short supply for a while, as I'd been busy with my own designs, as well as sample and swatch knitting for the books, but now it's back! Huzzah!

As part of the Something New to Learn About Cables KAL over in our Ravelry group, I have been working on finishing my Alonzo Socks. This is a design from Rachel Coopey's Coop Knits Socks Yeah! Volume 1, and Rav tells me that I cast them on back in October 2016. The slowness of finishing them is no reflection on the pattern, but simply that things have been daftly busy over the last 18 months. They feature little twisted cables and ribbing, and I loved the pattern when I worked on editing it, so it was extra-lovely to get them finished.

Jim has been working on a Jón sweater since January 2016, and having knitted both sleeves and the bottom colourwork band on the body, progress had seriously stalled. As a thank you to Jim for knitting lots of the swatches for both the cable and lace books (swatch knitting is not my favourite), I offered to finish off his Jòn sweater. I may also have been motivated by the desire to clear the decks and move the project bag off the dresser in the living room. Perhaps just a little bit anyway... I whizzed through most of the body in the van on the way home from EYF, and then got busy with Lace stuff, so it was a great feeling when I finished work on the yoke back in April. I've left Jim to weave in his ends (I should have demonstrated splicing to him at the start of the project!), and it still needs blocking, but I'm going to call it done.

It has been something of a Rachel Coopey palooza on my needles, as having finished the Alonzo socks, I immediately cast on for an Areto hat, from our Cables book. I'm knitting it in Socks Yeah! DK in the Minos pale grey shade, and it will be a gift for a teacher who has really made a difference to us this year. He's quite sporty, so I'm hoping he will get some wear from this hat later in the year. I think I'm over half way through now, so with any luck I'll get done over the weekend.

So what's next? Well, I have my Ola Yoke cardigan that's been on my needles since before Christmas, that I would love to make some progress on, but I think I may be side-tracked, as I am itching to cast on all the things in our new yarn! And top of my list is a Granito sweater by Joji Locatelli. It's a lovely design (POCKETS!!) and I think it will look great in our Something to Knit With 4ply Twilight shade. But there's still time to get sidetracked again...

What will you be making over the weekend?