The Great Loopy Challenges

You know (if you have read my blog before) that one of my favorite online shops for both yarn and fabric is The Loopy Ewe.  I just finished off Camp Loopy projects, I’ve done several semesters of Loopy Academy in the past, Loopy Monthly Mixers, quarterly KAL projects etc.  TLE is always coming up with something fun.

In place of Monthly Mixers, there will be The Great Loopy Knitting Challenges and the Great Loopy Sewing Challenges.  If you’ve ever watched The Great British Baking Show,y you know there are Signature Challenges, Technical Challenges etc.  Well TLE has Signature Challenges, Technical Challenges and Show Stopper Challenges too so you can do one challenge, two or all six and earn points for The Loopy Reward Shop.  All the info for the first group of challenges, which run from now thru December 31, can be found on TLE blog here.

I don’t plan on doing Loopy Academy and love the fact that with these challenges (like the Mixers of the past) you can use yarn/fabric you previously purchased from TLE or use newly purchased from TLE and several of the challenge projects/patterns were already on my list to make which works out great.

So I “think” I plan on doing a couple of both knitting and sewing.  The current plan, which is always subject to change:

Signature Challenge – I’ll probably do both challenges.

  I want to use my Broody Bantam yarn to make another version of Touchstone by Laura Aylor which fits into the “Hot Right Now/In the News” category.

My winter coat, which I bought on sale at the end of the season last year so has never been worn, is the rusty color of this yarn so this one will be to go with that coat.

The KAL for the Signature Challenge is Aeque which I had planned to make anyway so that’s perfect too!  I had planned to use some Finito yarn in my stash – just need to see if I have 5 colors to go together or if I need to repeat a color in one of the sections.

The Plaid is the New Fad pattern was already in my queue to make  and since it’s a Shopstopper KAL pattern that works out great.  I got a hank of lovely reddish Wollmeise below) to go with two other colors in my stash to make this.

That’s all I’ve decided on so far for knitting although I think  there’s a pattern I may make for the Technical Challenge too.

For the Sewing Challenges:

 

Timber! is a pattern for the QAL Technical challenge.  Mine is going to be Santa in disguise.  The dotted fabric is actually red and white peppermint candy print, black overalls (because Mrs. Claus does not let Santa wear red ones year round), the stripe will be for his hat and binding, and the rest of the fabrics will come from my TLE fabric stash.

 

The Showstopper Challenge QAL project is to make a project using 20 blocks from The Splendid Sampler book.  I got this book as a birthday gift and have been wanting to work on a project from it and so many cute blocks to choose from.

Now that I’ve frittered away the afternoon looking at projects and planning… guess I’ll go wind that Broody Bantam.  I’m nearly done with my first version of Touchstone so I’ll be ready to start on the “Broody” version soon.

 

 

 

One more….and then what?

Just one more starflower hexie to put together and I will have enough large hexies to make a quilt for my bed.  Once that block is finished I’ll fill in the missing triangles where rows come together and get the rows all stitched together.   I have a bunch more starflower blocks (not turned into hexie) to use for some other project (wallhanging, table mat, tree skirt (actually I do think I’m going to use this idea for my tree skirt out of the Christmas ornament fabric I previously bought) or maybe another quilt – who knows.

It’s a dreary gray holiday day here but great for a sewing day.  I had originally planned to do some closet cleaning among other chores this weekend – hmmm… don’t think that will be happening tho I really do need to start straightening the sewing room back up  since I’m sewing in a different room due to lack of clear table space in the sewing room) 🙂  But first, on to that last block after I make some lemon bars to take into the office tomorrow.

And did you know that today (Labor Day) you can watch free classes all day on Craftsy??  No affiliation other than I have enjoyed and learned much from Craftsy classes.  I started watching (well listening mostly) earlier this morning as I was sewing with some free motion quilting playing on the computer in the background, then switched to a King Arthur flour bread baking class, and now am watching a knitting class – stranded, braids, steeks, etc. It’s a great way to preview a class that you were thinking of buying and see if  you really want to purchase it and a great way to sample various teachers techniques and styles.