The Hat Is Done!

YAY! Another completed project! I will admit that this isn't my crowning achievement, either in the category of technique or design. lol The design, as I've mentioned before, was Mr. Pie's idea (actually, he wanted red on top and grey on the bottom, but I told him it'd looked like a monkey's butt). The colours were chosen for his favourite football team, The Buccaneers. As far as the technique goes, let's just say this: I don't think I'll be doing the full on ribbed knit again for a while. It just takes too much concentration to get it perfect all the way.

Speaking of rib knit (as if I wasn't sick of it by now!), I've cast on my dad's pull over vest he requested for Christmas. Here's what I have so far:

I've had to rip this baby out and recast it about 9 times it seems. I kept not giving myself enough length for the long tail cast on method! I think it was about the 5th try I thought I'd gone crazy and given myself way too much yarn, only to realize that it only got me to stitch 170, 30 short of my goal of 200 cast on stitches. ARGH! I also had to rip out about two rows because I realize, SOMEHOW, I managed to knit the freakin' wrong direction, only to turn around the other way. You know how I realized I had done this? I had 8 rows on one of the dang thing, and only 6 rows on the other side. What the hell? How did I manage to do THAT?

I've had a chance to use my stitch markers too:


This baby is part of a set that I made a couple of weeks ago. I was really happy with how they looked but I've realized now that it's absolutely essential to make sure that the top makes a complete uninterrupted circle, other wise it catches the yarn. I'm not sure if or how I'll fix these ones, but in the future I think I'll be creating them differently.

In other unrelated knitting news, I've started to become interested in spinning. At first I looked at devices like this:


... and I knew from reading that it was capable of turning this in to yarn:


but the process completely confounded me. How the heck did you turn THAT in to pretty scrumptious yarn?? That is, until I found these how-to videos from The Art Of Megan on you tube! She's brilliant, I swear! She made it totally easy to understand.

And now I want a Drop Spindle. Was it inevitable? You be the judge. ;)