Year of Projects 2026-2027: Week 1

Kicking off week one of year 16 of Year of Projects with the following things:

Handspinning – Tour de Fleece: The Tour started on Saturday, July 4th, and I pulled out two 140-gram gradient packs from Hilltop Cloud Fibres in the UK. The colorway is Wild Rose, and it’s a blended roving of bamboo, Blue-Faced Leicester and Merino wools. The colors shift from tangerine through peach and salmon to a dark rose.

My plan is to spin each of these onto separate bobbins and then ply together for a long subtly-shifting 2-ply gradient yarn in a fingering weight. I’m through the first maybe 40 grams of bobbin 1 so far.

A Long Winter’s Nap: I have been slowly adding stitches to this one off and on. I decided to work this using a color completion method that was a success for my last full-coverage cross-stitch. I have 7 colors completed and if you kind of squint, you can start to make out Santa’s facial features (his eyes mostly).

Jane Austen 250th Anniversary Quilt: I put in quite a bit of time over the holiday weekend here in the States on this one. I have added 3 of the 4 appliqué block borders. From here I’ve got 1 striped border, 1 more pieced border, and then a final striped border to finish this one up. I would love to try to finish it up in July and get it sent off to the long-arm quilter for a custom quilting in August.

No pictures for these last two things, but I cast on for a new fingering-weight lace-yoke summer top (not really enough worked to see anything), and as I was cruising along on my Transfer Point shawl, I checked my stitch count and realized I had missed an entire 24-row section back where the contrast color is used the first time. So that one has been ripped back almost to the beginning, and I’ll go forward from there.

That’s all this week YOP’ers! Hope if you are getting hit with excessive summer heat you’ve got some relief in sight soon.

17 responses to “Year of Projects 2026-2027: Week 1”

  1. Thr fiber is so pretty. Reminds me of sorbet. The quilt is getting prettier each time I see it. Fingers crossed you make your self imposed deadline. The cross stitch…..love it. Color completion is new to me. Alhough, I guess I do kind of do that but only in blocks of 30×30 stitches. Sorry to hear you needed to rip back your shawl. That can be so frustrating.

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    1. Thank you, Marsha! I like the color completion method for these full coverage pieces. It makes me feel like I’m making progress even if it’s hard to see it sometimes!

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  2. That handspun yarn is going to be amazing. What a gorgeous project it will make. Can’t wait to watch your Long Winter’s Nap grow over the coming months.

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    1. Thank you! I’m not usually an orange kind of gal, but I really like this color gradient.

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  3. That handspun yarn is going to be amazing. What a gorgeous project it will make. Can’t wait to watch your Long Winter’s Nap grow over the coming months.

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  4. I just finished spinning a pack from Hilltop Cloud! That will be a very pretty yarn. The quilt is so pretty. I have probably said that before but it really is.

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    1. She has such lovely fibers. Thank you – I feel the same way about the quilt.

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  5. I love the roving and your plans for it. I’m looking forward to seeing it progress. Love your other projects too.
    I’m tempted to look into joining in with YOP, but it might be too much pressure than I need right now. I tried starting back doing WIP Wednesday posts earlier this year and it fell away. So I think I’ll just post on my craft projects as I can and maybe try joining you all next year.

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    1. Thank you! YOP is pretty low key. In fact, if you’re doing WIP Wednesdays you could just use those posts for the group! (But do what is non-stressful right now!)

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      1. Thanks. Is there a link that I should go to for “sign-up” to join the year, or to share the weekly/whenever updates?

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      2. Everything lives in the Ravelry group here: https://www.ravelry.com/groups/a-year-of-projects. Each week a new thread opens up on what is Sunday morning in the UK and usually stays open for 3-4 days. You can post a short link to your blog there when you feel like it. (But absolutely okay to skip and go at your own pace. It is a lovely low-key group.)

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      3. Thanks. I used to be very active in ravelry groups, but not for several years now. I’ll check it out

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  6. I love your spinning project pics! I’m not doing anything for the TdF this year, but I love seeing other spinners’ projects.

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    1. I always enjoy seeing handspun too 🙂

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      1. I’ll get back to it sooner or later! (Hopefully sooner.) Just not this TdF. I have to much else going on this summer.

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  7. Lucy Bowen Avatar
    Lucy Bowen

    I love the handspun, such a beautiful colour- I look forward to seeing what it becomes!

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    1. Thank you! No specific plans quite yet but I will see how much yardage I have when I finish up the spin.

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