Actual Knitting Content

I was in search of an instant gratification project and read this post by the Yarn Harlot about knitting hats for newborns. I was charmed by this pattern by Knit Chicks that the Harlot linked to and decided to give it a try.... Although I altered the pattern in every possible way.. ( I was determined to use yarn from my stash) I do love the resulting Tomato baby hat.

This was my first project using two colors (with the exception of my festival of trees tree, stripes don't count, and it was a felting project so the tidiness of the color changes was not so important) and I learned some things, both about knitting with two colors and about me as a knitter.

Lesson one is that I am an intuitive knitter. I should have already known that but this project made that very clear. By intuitive, I mean that I do much better when I look at the knitting and do what I think should come next. When I try to slavishly follow a pattern, counting stitches, counting rows, I will lose count. Every time. I finally just paid attention to the knitting and did what should come next. Ah, much better...

Lesson two is that color knitting is not that hard, I do better not trying to work from the whole skein but from smaller amounts of yarn, and that despite the messiness of the inside of the in progress hat, it will look fine once it's done and the ends are woven in. I'm guessing the second try will look even better than the first. No. I'm not going to show you the inside, it isn't perfect...it looks like a first try :)

In other knitting, I've almost finished a pair of Regia socks for my dad, and finished one traveling sock (seen below on vacation earlier this summer). Rogue is waiting patiently for one and 1/2 sleeves. I hope to work on that more when it gets a little cooler and have it ready to wear this fall.

I think there will be more instant gratification, mindless knitting coming up while I'm adjusting to some new changes. I am looking forward to more socks with yarn gifted me by the best group of co-workers ever. Thanks guys, for everything.