O.M.G.!!!

Why the OMG? Well the other day I get a call from a friend that my En Fuego Shawl pattern had been featured in Knit Picks weekly email! Squeeeeee!!!!  Of course I immediately went to check my email to see it and then called & emailed my family (yes I am that nerdy!).  I didn't even know that was going to be happening, so it was very exciting to see.  I should also note that the shawl would look fabulous in their new yarn line, Capretta.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to be ordering some of the yarn to knit one myself.

One of 3 men's hats that I knit

Okay, what else have I been up to?  Well I've been knitting hats.  Then when I thought I was done knitting hats, I knit another hat.  It started with my Seedling hat (which I'll get to in a moment), but what started to really put me over the edge were the owlie hats I knit for my nephews.  This lead to me knitting the Shroom hat, 3 men's hat (3x3 ribbing with stockinette hat body), and culminating in me re-knitting my Seedling hat.  Yes, I ripped and re-knit my Seedling hat and I couldn't be happier with it.  The original hat was big...really big..and I realized that I was never going to wear it AND I really wanted to wear it.  So rip it went.

It was quite the experience having to first find all the ends that I previously wove in and then unweave (is that a word???) them.  At one point I ran into a knot of sorts and seriously debated just cutting the yarn, but in the end I got the knot loose so I didn't have to cut anything.  I was able to recover pretty close to 100% of my yarn, which probably wasn't necessary as the smaller hat would use less yarn and if needed, I already had left over yarn from the project.  To make the hat smaller I cast on 87 instead of 99 and followed the rest of the pattern essentially how it was written.  The two biggest pieces I had to rework involved the math to change the frequency of the increases in the pattern set up and the decreases at the crown.  All the details can be found on my Ravelry page here.  All in all I really enjoyed modifying the pattern and thought it taught me a lot about hats.  It might even give me the courage to design a hat in the (near?) future.

Hat before ripping and re-knitting

Hat after ripping and re-knitting.

Can you tell that I'm on a blue kick? Lately blue is just talking to me and I can't say no.  I have a shawl on the needles in blue as well as a baby cardigan for my nephew that is blue.  In fact, the only non-blue item I've knitted recently is the black hat that I knit for Mr. SpiderKate.  Now all I need is for it to get cold again so that I can wear my hat out!  Oh, you might be wondering who all the hats went to, well here is the break down:

• Owlie hats - Little Phil and baby Jack (nephews)
• Men's hats - Mr. SpiderKate, Phil (brother), and Pat (sister's boyfriend)
• Shroom hat - Erin (sister-in-law)
• Seedling hat - Me!