Look! Knitted Stuff!

I can't believe how long it's been since my last post, but sadly, all of the posts I would have made would have been the same. "Still here, not much to show, work and wedding are taking up all my time!"

BUT, today I do have some things to show! After an incredibly grueling couple of weeks at work, I finally got some time to relax a bit, and work on my Madroña wedding shawl. One wing is now complete and I am well into the second! In fact, I took this picture a couple of days ago, so it's a bit out of date. You repeat the wing chart 12 times for each wing and then knit one more chart, ending in the bind off. At the time of this picture, I had only about 4 repeats complete on the second wing. I'm now up to 9 repeats. It's funny how much faster you can get at knitting a chart after you've done it 16 times already.



Unless work or some other fact of life interferes, I'm hoping I can be finished by the end of the weekend. I can get about 1 chart repeat done a night - 1 and a half if I get home a little early. I was hoping to get to 10 repeats over the weekend, but I decided the superbowl was too high risk to have this around, what with the jumping and the cheering and the food everywhere. So, I started a little side project!



Everyone has been saying what a super quick knit Romi's Gothic Tam is, and they did not lie. The hat consists of 4 charts plus the ribbed brim. I got through 3 of the 4 charts during the game (plus some post-game commentary). I actually attempted to start this hat a while ago but got a case of the stupids regarding the Emily Ocker cast on, despite the fact that I've done it several times before, so I had to go look up a video tutorial for a refresher before I started yesterday. But, once I got going, it was really quite an easy knit and a fairly intuitive pattern - easy to catch your mistakes on. To be honest, it's calling me a bit - I could totally finish this tonight if I tried - but the wedding shawl comes first. You can bet I'll be finishing up this one as soon as I get the chance though.

I'm actually hoping I'll have enough yarn to make two. A dear friend sends me yarn every year for Christmas from a local farm fesitval. I never know what she's going to send and I always love getting it because it's one of a kind. This year she sent me two skeins of undyed alpaca. I'm hoping I can make a hat from each skein, and then I'll have one to keep and one to send back to her. The only snag is, she's not a knitter, and I worry that when I send her back things made from the yarn she gave me, she thinks I don't like it. This year she asked if I was tired of getting yarn. I said, NO PLEASE KEEP SENDING ME YARN PLEASE PLEASE.

As I sit here typing this, I'm remembering that she sent me two pretty hefty skeins of yarn naturally dyed yarn last year too that would make really cute tams...hmmmmm...

How many knitted hats do you think one Texan needs?