February 2026

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Note: I'm using a photo of Jared Flood's Quill as a placeholder until I finish this month's project and take a decent photo of it. My project is not identical to this one, but similar enough, I guess.

I'm continuing my challenge for 2026 this month, but I chose to do something slightly different in February.

It all started the month before, when I was planning to start a new sweater, even though I hadn't finished my January project yet (far from it). In principle, I have enough yarn in my stash to knit for over 2 years (based on my yarn consumption of last year), but, in practice, I realized I didn't have a single sweater amount, even if I joined different yarns in order to do some colourwork (at least, not if I wanted to like the final piece). After close inspection, I discovered that a large portion of my stash consisted of Drops Alpaca yarn. However, most of this yarn was effectively in use in 2 projects, my January sweater (soon to be finished and the yarn officially removed from my stash) and a blanket I'd started in 2024 and never finished. 

The reason I haven't finished this blanket is that every summer I have to put it down, when the weather gets way too hot to knit a blanket. And then, when the weather cools down, I'm excited about new projects and don't bring the blanket out of hibernation early enough (I think it's funny that knitters hibernate projects in summer). So I thought, hmmm, if I don't start working on this project now, spring is already coming and I might as well leave it for next year.

But I really wanted to finish both of these projects, because, once I do, I can add the left-over yarn from both of them to the rest of the Drops Alpaca yarn I have left over from other projects and make some kind of colourwork project with all of it.

So, I started thinking whether to start the sweater I'd been planning to knit or consider this blanket my February project, when I heard of "Finishing February". This is a challenge among crafters of using February to finish projects that have been languishing. The decision was made and I put this blanket back on my needles on the 1st of February.

This month I worked on two other projects, my January sweater (which I finished in the first two weeks) and a shawl that I had started last year and was always meant to be a long-term project.

Note that my 2026 challenge is to start a new project on the first of every month, but there is no set date on when to finish these projects. That obviously depends on how long they are. This blanket is very near its end, but, even so, I suspect that it'll take me several months to finish. I'd be ecstatic if I finish it before summer, to be honest.

Project data:

Pattern: self-drafted
Yarn: Drops Alpaca (2020 Light Nougat)
Needles: 3mm
Main details: a traditional Shetland hap, to be used as a blanket.

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