ten

I've been all about knitting hats lately.

Honestly, I took a look at the last few projects on my Ravelry page and I've really been on a hat kick. I've finished three hats this month alone, and the only project I have (lingering and languishing) on the needles currently is my Sockhead Hat. Please don't take this as a complaint, though. Knitting, no matter the project, is always fun. And speaking of fun... I already finished the pair of Norwegian Snowflake Hats that I was worried about starting. This was a great project, and I particularly enjoyed the crown decreases. The hat is squared at the top, and I love the look of the additional snowflake that comes together as you are finishing the crown. The public project pages are here (red) and here (navy). I may even have a chance to wear one of these hats, as the weather reports here in Pittsburgh are calling for snow on Friday, the first day of winter. How nice.

Even without snow on the ground (yet), it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas at our house. Full disclosure... We put the tree up (and the stockings, banister garland, and decorations) the Monday after Thanksgiving, and I've been listening to Christmas music since October... So I guess I should really say that it's continuing to look a lot like Christmas. Oh yes, and there are pine cones in a bowl on the dining room table, in case you were wondering. Here's a picture of our stockings hung in the stairwell (since we don't have a fireplace) with care. I knit the stocking on the left for my husband this year (for a few months), and the one on the right belongs to our chihuahua, Ringo. I don't have a knitted Christmas stocking yet, but maybe by next year.

And if anyone is curious, my stash is now down to 36! I'm slowly, but surely, getting to my goal of 30 by February 2013. Sadly, I can't type anymore at the moment. Somebody needs some attention...

nine

The weeks seem to be getting shorter.

This week has been quite busy. Not in a bad way, though. I was mailing Christmas presents, making marshmallows, enjoying two different holiday lunches at my office, finishing up the Christmas shopping, and of course there was some knitting and a Christmas movie or three.

First of all, let me take a moment to address the marshmallows. I've been making homemade marshmallows for years, usually sometime in December (when the Hot Chocolate really hits the spot), and they always get great reviews. However, I'm not a confectioner in any sense of the word. Anyone can make these. All I have is an excellent recipe from Ina Garten (or the Barefoot Contessa) in which my stand mixer does most of the work. Honestly, they are quite easy, albeit a little fiddly at the end. Patience required. If you thought you liked marshmallows before, well, just wait until you try these! In the picture below, there's a few pale pink marshmallows on the left, those are the peppermint... Thanks for the inspiration, Williams-Sonoma. The others are vanilla, and just as soft and pillowy.

I've also started a rather daring knitting project. Well, maybe not as daring as one I've done in the past, but certainly ambitious for me. I'm knitting a set of two hats. The Norwegian Snowflake Hat pattern is free on Ravelry and was designed by Tim Doran. I'm using the last three hanks of yarn from the 2012 Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival that I mentioned here. I'll be knitting two hats, one blue with white snowflakes, the other red with white snowflakes. Here's my public project page for the first hat. I've started with the red hat, and here's my progress so far...

As if knitting two stranded hats one after the other isn't ambitious enough, I've just added another stranded hat to the mix. This week, Knitty released their Winter 2012 Issue. For those that don't know, Knitty is a completely free online knitting magazine. 2012 marked the 10-year anniversary of this publication, and it's a resource I've always loved. Anyway, anyway, back to the hat. The new issue had two stranded hats, and the one that caught my eye is Fitful Head by Aileen Ryder. It just so happens (cough) that I already have seven different balls of fingering weight yarn in my stash, all in different shades of green. Between the available stash, the pattern requirements, and the fact that I'm trying to stash-down, this was a coincidence I couldn't ignore. In any event, I think I may end up spending the remainder of 2012 knitting stranded hats.

I hope I'm not as crazy as I sound...

eight

I just love a good BLT.

Today's post is a quick one, and is coming to you following a delightful Sunday BLT brunch. I guess I'm using the word "brunch" a bit loosely here, though. All we really did was eat an early bird lunch. Not that I'm too worried about any particular time of day, since I've found through extensive research that bacon can be enjoyed during any hour of the day... or night.

Yesterday, I finished a hat. The pattern is called The Natural and you can take a look at my public project page, if you'd like the knitty gritty details. It was a great way to use up one of those single skeins of worsted, Cascade 220 for me, that most of us just have hanging around in our stash. The pattern was pretty straight forward, and would be a great project for the beginner that's never cabled before. Below is a selfie that took me about 10 minutes to capture, as it was a new angle for me. However, it shows the basic cabled detailing along the hat, so I guess that means mission accomplished.

I'll be casting on another item soon (of course), but right now I really have now idea what that will be. For some reason, I've been a bit wishy washy about what to knit next, and I'm not sure where it's coming from. Hopefully I'll figure it out soon. I'd hate to waste a whole Sunday without knitting...