Friday, September 08, 2006

Hat & Scarf Done!

I finished the hat & scarf set for my first student gift! Sadly, I forgot my camera so I had to use the one on my phone. The quality may not be as good &, more importantly, that means I'll have to add the photo to this post at a later time. Hopefully over the weekend. I've had virtually no knitting time this week and so I was up two hours past my bedtime finishing the hat, knitting in really bad light so I wouldn't wake up the kids. I really don't want to do that again (the staying up late or the bad light). My reason was simply that we are having a going away party for her at work today & it is her last day at work. If I didn't finish the hat, I was going to have to mail it to England. I knew I only needed a couple of hours to get it done, so I stayed up. It seemed the only responsible thing to do. Now she can take it with her & I can move on to student gift #2.

The hat (in the Baby Grande Alpaca) turned out very nice, although I did struggle quite a bit in the beginning stages. I was trying to be good and plan the thing out, getting my gauge, avg. head size, the pattern I wanted to use, etc., all to figure out how many stitches to cast on. Well, I still managed to get it all wrong & I really don't know why. Anyway, I cast on with a size 10 circ and after three garter rows moved to a size 11 to start the pattern. This shift allowed me to try on the beginning of the hat for size and see that I just didn't know anyone with a head that big. At least not in the literal sense. Ha! So, I took it all off the needles and then put it on my head and tried sizing it that way. After one more false start, I finally got it right. While I wasn't great at geometry, I did do well at a more practical math, statistics. I have no trouble balancing a checkbook, at least not in principle, and "real life" math is usually very easy and straight-forward fo r me. I still can't figure out why my hat math didn't work. Oh well, the important thing is that the hat is done & I think it looks great. We'll see what the student thinks.

I'll be giving it to her in about an hour, and so now the nerves kick in. Will she like it? Is her idea of fluffy my idea of fluffy? I really just need to learn to relax. I'm proud of myself for the attempts at planning and the fact that I wrote it all down. Impressive really. Now I need to start planning for the gloves. I think I've found the pattern I want, I don't have it handy to post the title, but I found it on Knitty.com. It is a fingerless glove, well, with partial fingers, but I will probably put whole fingers on them. Maybe. I like it because it isn't tiny yarn. I really don't want to do gloves with sock yarn. If I find another pattern I like better within the next week I might be willing to change, but once I buy the yarn, I'm done. I've promised myself no significant stash increase as a result of these gifts. I think I'll get another hat out of the leftover Baby Grande Alpaca, so, no stash increase. Woo-Hoo! Look at me being responsible. heh, heh, heh.

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