For the past 5 years, I have gone away to camp for the summer…well not exactly a literal camp but more like a virtual camp, which was courtesy of The Loopy Ewe. For those who are not in the know, every summer from June through August, there’s an overarching theme for camp. This summer’s camp, known fondly as Camp Loopy,  happened to be all about Dinosaurs, and for each month, there is a suggested direction for the dedicated project. 

It’s All in the Stitch

For June and the first project, anyone attending camp was tasked with knitting a project that had a stitch pattern or one could use a yarn colorway that conjured up a dinosaur vision. For me, I went with “Here There Be Dragons,” by Theresa Walunas, which creates a scale-like stitch. It reminded me of the plates on the spine of a stegosaurus, which also happened to be my dinosaur group for June.

Every summer…a little idiosyncrasy that I have is to also choose a yarn that I never used before for my three summer projects.

However, it didn’t quite gel with project #1 as I went with Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock, Lightweight in the colorway, Valkyrie. I wanted to have them knit up in time for the season premiere of “Game of Thrones” in honor of Drogon as one of Daenerys’ dragons. Even though it’s summer for half the world, winter is still coming, and after all, a true fan needs to be prepared. 

Got Spelunking?

For July and the second project, we were tasked to use a pattern that was published in 2014 or earlier. What did I choose to knit? “Something in the Air” by one of my favorite pattern designers, Joji Locatelli, in Malabrigo Rastita in Cereza. While I have used Malabrigo in the past, this was my first foray into Rastita. Just have to say it was a dream to work with this yarn along with the pattern.

July’s theme was a celebration of Spelunking, simply because there have been many interesting dinosaur, fossil and mammal bones found in caves. And to keep the cave ambience going, it was nice to subliminally take advantage of the picot edging in Joji’s cowl pattern.

Confession:  I pushed getting this knitting project completed by the deadline to the limit. So much so that I soaked and blocked the cowl out on my Knitter’s Pride cords prior to grafting the two edges together (one was a provisional cast-on edge). I completed the cowl and uploaded my final photo to the Camp Loopy Project #2 Gallery. That’s the good news.  Unfortunately, the bad news discovery was made the next morning when I noticed that I didn’t line up the edges quite up to snuff.

I am now the proud owner of a Moebius in the Air.

Finally Freeing My Fade

For August, and the third and last project, the  mission was a nod to all the fantastical new dinosaurs that we, being  campers, had been making to date. I decided to honor my “Kniteratops” by choosing to knit a more recent pattern by Andrea Mowry of Drea Renee Knits…her “Free Your Fade Shawl.” Somehow I never hopped on board the “Find Your Fade Shawl” bandwagon, and thought that this new shawl would be fun.

This time around I definitely am using new-to-me yarns, Fibernymph Dye Works Bounce in the Ode to Van Gogh color way and Fresh from the Cauldron’s Freyr Sock in Red Reddington. The two colorways are somewhat different in color and fiber content, and were chosen strictly based on the colorway names. Van Gogh is one of my favorite artists, and I love Red Reddington played by James Spader on “BlackList.” I also opted to only used two colors for my Free Your Fade, as I definitely wanted the final color option to be my Fresh from the Caludron choice. 

Knitting Project Status: Almost up to the first suggested color fade in the pattern, but will wait to fade until the Fibernymph is a little more depleted.