Knitting: Oh YES I am!

So after a bit of a hiatus with the start of fall... I've jumped back into knitting full force. It's a good thing. I'm amped up, I'm ready to finish stuff. I've had thoughts of pulling WIPS out of hibernation and getting them done. That being said, I am still having a bit of castonitis, too.

I was fortunate to have a nice long 5 day holiday break. I started a hat Tuesday night at Panera with Brandy and Becky. I finished it on Wednesday. It's for my BIL, Patrick. I hope he likes it. It needs some serious blocking though because my stranding was a little tight and it's a bit puckery.

Then on Thursday, while Turkey was in the oven, I was trying my hand at designing another sock. I pulled out the Harmony Guides, Lace and Eyelets book. I have a lovely variagated yarn that I purchased in Portland at Sock Summit from Hazelknits. I decided on a cast on of 60 and started this pattern with a 12 stitch repeat. Well 2 repeats into it, I realized it wasn't going to work. The design was completely lost. :(

So I moved on to another pattern which was a 20 stitch repeat which fit perfectly with my 60 stitch c/o. :) So I've done a full repeat, but I'm not totally sold on this one either, yet. So I set it down. Then Turkey was done and there was the eating and the bloating (j/k). And I decided to go with something I knew. I'm jonesing to have another pair of socks, stat! So I pulled out more yarn from Sock Summit, Blue Moon Socks that Rock in the ST-1 colorway. It's lovely shades of gold, green, orange, red and brown. Very FALL! I could totally see this yarn in a nice leafy design, however, I decided to use this in a Cookie A pattern. I pulled out Baudelaire which was on Knitty sometime back, but it was a toe-up sock... and frankly I wasn't in the mood for toe up (I don't know why). So I said to myself, "Sock INNOVATION!" Pulled that out and found a pattern I thought would look nice with a variagated yarn, "Rick." Friend Lindsey made one of these and it looks pretty awesome, so I decided to give it a go. It's a 60 stitch cast on, so I started. I made it through the cast on and did like 1 or 2 rows of the pattern and it was time for bed.

On to Friday. Met up with Cath and Jimmy at Staufs in the afternoon and brought ST-1 Rick along with me. I did about 3 more rows and just was NOT happy with it. I was really not liking the SSK through a YO. It wasn't fun, I was tense, my knitting was tight. Rick and I weren't seeing eye to eye. I stopped.

I pulled him out, left the cast on and went with something I knew very well, the Ampersand (with mods). I wanted a tighter sock than the first pair. I used the 60 cast on I already had instead of a 54. I used US2 instead of US3 and it's coming along nicely. I made it through the heel flap and turn and picked up the gusset stitches, did a few rounds of decreases and then went to bed.

Here's where castonitis comes to play. While I was working that sock I watched a repeat of Bones in which she's wearing this lovely grey cabled hat and me things I NEED that! And I have this gorgeous skein of Purple Highlander I've been dying to use and it will match my new purple vest! Perfect! Anyway, I have been good and haven't casted on, but my fingers they are definitely twitchy!

And I've really been wanting to make Brian a new Chullo hat. His is a store bought one a few years old and it's seen a better day. I thought of surprising him with one, he rarely pays attention to what I'm doing anyway. So I could work on it and he wouldn't necessarily be the wiser. For a few weeks now, I've been surfing for "free" patterns and I've found a bunch of crochet versions, but little on knitted versions. Still searching.... So Sunday, I tossed him my Interweave Holiday Knits and told him to see if there was anything in there that looked cool. And don't you know the pattern he picked is a Chullo hat by Kenny Chua. I totally forgot that it was in there. I laughed and said I was planning on making you one of those already!

So, I went to the stash and pulled out a bunch of WOTA Kettle dyed colors I had purchased some time back and that project never came to life, so I asked him to pick colors. He didn't really give me any good suggestions, so I think I'm going to just make it up myself and he can live with it. One thing for sure, the boy likes colors, so I think it will be good. And I am twitchy to start this project, too!

But I'm going to finish that sock first. Then look out! Hats! Hats! Hats!