Gray hat: finished!

I'm always really excited when I finish a project. I can change the status of the project from "in progress" to "finished" on my Ravelry page, I can write my final notes about it, I can try on the project and show it to my family and post pictures of it on Facebook!

The picture above kind of sucks because I took it using Photobooth on my iMac. I had to have a picture of me wearing the hat, because it looks really awkward when it's not on someone's head.

I really liked the pattern. I wasn't in love with it, and I probably won't make it again. Not that that's a bad thing. The hat has a brim made from plastic canvas, which I've never done before, and the hem on the bottom is doubled so it makes your ears extra warm. The whole thing is wool and squishy and cabled. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I used Knitpicks Swish DK in Cobblestone Heather (which is actually dark  gray, not light blue) and the yarn was kind of splitty and felty when I worked with it. 


(Side note: There are so many other patterns in the world. I can never understand the people who knit the same pattern over and over and over again. At least a dozen knitting magazines are released seasonally. There are books being published all the time. Why would you want to spend your precious knitting time knitting the SAME scarf pattern for everyone? Don't you want to learn new skills? What is WRONG with you people???)

So I picked up the next Christmas present on my long list of Christmas presents: A hat pattern called Thorpe. I got some Malabrigo Chunky from Eat Sleep Knit and I'll be working on that project this weekend. I have all of the crown increases done (they were really quick) and I just have to knit 6.5 inches of hat body before I can work on the earflaps. I hope I have enough yarn. I got two skeins and I'm knitting a medium size. According to the instructions, the medium should only use one skein and the crochet edging and tassels should use half a skein. But I know how inaccurate free patterns are sometimes, even when you use the yarn suggested.

After Thorpe, there's a three-cornered hat I want to knit for my smallest cousin out of this self-striping yarn I have. That should be interesting. It uses size 3 needles. In comparison, Thorpe uses size 9 and Struan (the gray hat) uses size 5.

I also finished another dishcloth this past week and started another one. I think I picked up a really really old skein of cotton (I think it's one from my great grandmother's stash) and it had this gritty feel to it. I don't know if it just got dirty from being in storage the wrong way, but I ended up just throwing it away. It was way gross. Now I'm using newer yarn that doesn't feel old or gritty. My ball of yarn ends is the size of a large grapefruit. My plan is to finish my dishcloth knitting for all of my extended family and then knit dishcloths for my mother out of the epic ball of yarn ends.

That's all for now!