half-way there

I'm halfway to buying the extra skein of yarn I need to finish my Latvian hat. I used almost exactly 100g of manos (I had about 1 yard left over) to make this hat:


Front view of me trying to take a picture of myself wearing the new hat. The brim uses a simple slip stitch pattern from the Barbara Walker Treasuries.


Now a shot from the top to show how I incorporated the brim pattern into the decreases. I decreased six stitches evenly around by K2tog, and then used the slip-stitch pattern on the next stitch. I maintained that stitch in pattern all the way up. I didn't need to use stitch markers to know when to decrease, and I think it adds a bit of interest to an otherwise boring hat. The slip-stitch pattern shows up nicely because I used reverse stockinette for the body of the hat.

Then I decided to make matching mittens:

However, I hate the mittens. I hate everything about them. I hate the way they look, I hate the way they fit, and I hate how they were knit. This mitten probably won't exist in a few days.

I am trying not to make single accessories that match NOTHING I own. Therefore, I decided to try my hand at a matching scarf:

I'm not far enough along to hate this one yet. However, I remembered a few things while knitting with this manos:

1. I hate thick-and-thin yarns. If I wanted to knit with something that was spun this badly, I would spin it myself.
2. I hate knitting with thick yarns. Once in a while, it's fine. However, I usually don't love the results, and it's slow and awkward to do.
3. The instant gratification is nice, but it doesn't make up for the process.

Because I knit for the process rather than the product, I went back to knitting with yarn I love at a gauge I love.

This is Shetland jumperweight 2-ply yarn from the stash that I am knitting in a Komi (Russian) pattern (it's the pattern on the cover of the book). What you see is a swatch. I don't usually swatch, but this is an exception. I don't know if I'm going to have enough yarn to make this into a sweater or not. Therefore, I'm going to knit two repeats of the pattern in the round, then rip it out and measure how much yarn it used. I'll then figure out how many repeats I'll need to make a sweater. I can then figure out how much yarn I'll need in each color.

In other news:

Last night, as I was trying to come up with something to knit, my husband told me that he thought I should order the yarn to finish the Latvian hat, even if I didn't knit anything from the stash first. He said that he thought the hat was to pretty to not finish it this winter. So, as soon as I know if I will need to order a couple more skeins to make my Komi sweater, there will be a yarn order being placed. I may go from having too few projects in progress to having too many!