Is It the Weekend Yet?

What a week it has been! Work has blown up this week, with big projects all arriving at the same time and needing to be done by the same deadline. The result has been a very stressful several days, and I am very much looking forward to the weekend to recover. I've been relying a lot on my knitting to relieve some of that stress, and while I haven't made a huge amount of progress, the rhythmic, repetitive motions of making the stitches has done a lot to bring my blood pressure down. And I did manage to finish a project!

Pattern: Sandrine Slouch Hat by Katy H. Carroll
Yarn: my handspun, from Crown Mountain Farms Heinz 57 fiber in Sumer (spun in October 2011!)
Needles: US 2 (2.75 mm) and US 3 (3.25 mm)
Started/Completed: January 18/January 25
Mods: none

This was a fun knit, and it went a lot faster than I was expecting (really the slowest part was the ribbing on the brim). I really like the cables, especially the way they're cleverly decreased for the crown. The pattern is very well written, and I'll definitely be looking at the other patterns in Katy's Virescent Collection in the future. I've still got a little less than half of the yarn leftover, so I'm thinking of making another hat in a smaller size (I knit the largest size for me).

I've spent the last couple of evenings working on my Evenlight, which seems to be growing more slowly now that I've moved on to the body. I've got about 4 inches knit under the underarms at this point; I need to get to 14 inches before I start the bottom ribbing.

I've reached that point in the project where I'm starting to worry I'll run out of yarn, even though I should have more than 100 yards extra according to the pattern's yarn specifications. I'm not panicking, because I can get another skein, but I'd prefer not to. Fingers crossed!

Tonight I should be finishing up one project that's been on the needles (one you haven't seen because it has to remain a secret for now), so that will leave me with just the sweater as an active WIP. That means it's time to cast on something new! For starters, I'll be casting on for the socks for my father-in-law -- plain black ribbed socks (to be knitted only in sufficient daylight, presumably). Those will be my lunchtime knitting for the foreseeable future. In addition, I'm going to knit another Zeccola Cowl for myself as part of the knitalong! I haven't yet settled on my colors just yet, but I know it's going to be two of these skeins from my recent Knit Picks order:

Originally I was thinking of using either the two greens or the two blues, but now I'm thinking the dark blue and the light green. I still might change my mind. For this iteration, I'm just going to use two colors and do the stranded sections pretty much continuously (so no big one-color sections between the stranded sections). There's still time to join the knitalong if you're interested, and there's still a few days left on the introductory discount on the pattern!