Challenges past, present and future

Just a quick catch up post today, I've got a couple of finished projects to get up over the next few days but I thought I'd pop in with a few thoughts and plans for now.

Me Made May finished a few days ago and although I initially wasn't going to bother this year I made a last minute decision to participate.  I felt like it wasn't really too much of a challenge and that I didn't have too much to learn that hadn't already come up over the last 2 years, but I thought I'd feel left out if I didn't do it so here we are!  In a lot of ways I didn't really learn much I didn't already know, i.e I have loads of dresses and not enough separates.  This year seemed to really hammer home that point and I'm really resolved to actually deal with that situation over the coming months.  I think the weather here this May was incredibly variable so I wasn't able to coast through the month in sun dresses and little cardigans and found myself having to mix self made and shop bought separates on cooler and wet days.

This leads me nicely on to this year's Outfit Along which runs throughout June and July.  In a nutshell the idea is to knit a garment and sew another garment to make an outfit.  In previous years I've sewn dresses and knitted cardigans and made some lovely outfits (except for last year I sewed a dress, hated it and then lost all motivation to finish the coordinating cardigan) but this year I figured it would be much more useful to do a top and bottom combo.

The official patterns this year are the new pattern from Untangling Knots, Waters and the True Bias' Lander Pants.  These aren't really for me so I'm planning to knit Lycka from Knitty S/S last year and the Closet Case Patterns Ginger Jeans, although this is subject to change!  Before the OAL began I decided to try out the Ginger pattern to see how much work needed to be done in terms of fitting.  I finished that pair a couple of days ago and they are just straight up too large so I'll be trying them again in a smaller size and see if that does the trick.  If not I'll go with my plan B which is to make a Grainline Moss skirt instead and keep working on the Ginger jeans in the background until I get the fit right.

Ordinarily I like to shoot for 2 outfits during the OAL, it's 2 months long so it's doable but the next Boo Knits MKAL is happening in July and I won't be missing that so my personal OAL deadline will be the end of June.  The MKAL is entitled Dreamscape and calls for 3 colourways of fingering yarn using a mixture of solid, semi solids and speckles.  The 'official' yarn is Skein Queen Wiggle and there are some really beautiful kits available for this MKAL but I decided these were a little pricey for me so I ended up ordering this combo from Knit Picks instead.  Obviously I have no idea how this is going to turn out given that this is a mystery knit a long, but these colours are all making me happy so I'm good.

So I think that's all I've got going on knit/sewalongwise at the moment unless anyone has any recommendations!  (Seriously don't, I just can't help myself!)