As I’m sure many of us can appreciate, working from home has returned my commuting time to me. This means I have over an hour of time back in my day, something I am enjoying as the days get longer and the weather gets nicer. While my coworkers have spent this extra time catching up on shows that they’ve fallen behind on, my partner and I have spent the extra time driving to remote trails. In other words, overall I have not really lost much car time.

That being said, what I’ve lost in having my car time break-even, I’ve gained in not driving. So as my partner drives us all over the place, I’m able to cheerfully knit in the passenger seat. Yes I am cranking out knitting projects left and right. Yes, it is starting to affect my creativity, and my ability to slowly think about what to knit next.

Enter Camp Loopy, a series of challenges that involves knitting one project in June, July and August. Normally, I’m not into deadlines or being told what to knit, but something about Camp Loopy is always a good time.

Someone, whether or not it was in honor of Covid, had the grand idea to create a pre-camp challenge, a ramp up to camp if you will. This came just in time, as I hadn’t yet decided to make my partner’s mom a Venzia shawl for her birthday and am currently trying to use up as much stash as I can outside of the summer challenge.

There were 9 prompts to choose from, this is the one I selected:

Buried Treasure: make something that has been in your Ravelry queue or on your Ravelry favorites list (or on your internal “must make” list) for more than a year. It has been buried in your list – now it is time to unearth it!

What was my “buried treasure”? The Wish and Hope cardigan by Anne B Hanssen, which I would make out of some leftover Wollmeise in Pinie. Hanssen promoted this pattern as free a while a go and I couldn’t help but eye it from a far.

When I first started the pattern, I couldn’t help but marvel in the beauty of working an intrecate pattern for a baby — after all a tiny sweater means you’re done with the lace work relatively quickly!

Don’t get me wrong, overall I’m happy with the way everything turned out, but I won’t be knitting this one again. I stopped the leaf pattern after the edging because I was tired of working it. Then I had to sludge through picking up so. many. stitches. But the icing on the cake was a three needle bind off at the top, which created a visible seam.. I should have used the kitchner stitch to graph it together. I could blame the wordiness of the pattern, but there’s a balance between providing enough information for beginners and overloading your experienced knitters.

I think my neighbors were happy with it, I left it outside their door with a note and haven’t heard anything. Nothing like being busy with a new baby!