Knittin up a storm

I've been knitting up a storm here this week. I finished a few past-due knitting projects that took longer than it really needed to be and already CO for some new projects over the weekend.

First, with the new. I saw that my LYS was calling all knitters and crocheters with the request of fulfilling a need with a somewhat short deadline. The owner of the LYS is involved with the local community and is helping coordinate the distribution of hats for those less fortunate this Thanksgiving and need 60-70 hats to hand out on turkey day. Since I finished 2 projects this week, I figured what the hell and hope to crank a quick hat out.


So the photo above is the hat I hope to contribute. It was some yarn I had in my stash (moda dea tweedle dee). I'm almost done w/ the brim folded up. You can find more details on my Ravelry page (btw, did you see they hit 1 million users on Friday?)

And this photo below is my Clapotis scarf. Well, not mine per se, as the intended recipient is my cat sitter. It was a little shorter than what I would have preferred, but the recipient is a petite thing, so it may seem larger on her than on me. I'm just glad I didn't run out of yarn as I had expected to happen, more than halfway into it :)

I can finally say that I too, have knit this pattern, since everyone and their mother has knit one.
It was funny talking amongst the gals in my knitting group though, as many people seemed to have started the project but never finished. A few did though, and gave me some good tips. Dropping that first stitch really took some guts at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's fun dropping stitches intentionally (which usually isn't the case for me, lol).

Sorry for the lack of flow on the photos - Blogg*r seems to have an issue with the order you upload photos and you can't switch them around for some reason. So I guess it will be a 'new project, old project' rotation of photos....

So the next one below is the yarn (Cascade 128 superwash) that I purchased over the weekend to make a scarf for a friend of Bear and I. I had to have Bear discreetly ask our friend what color she likes and I think he was able to do so without her thinking he (or I) was up to something. She likes brown and earthy tones, similar to my color preferences, but since brown was the color specifically mentioned, I CO for a scarf in a chocolatey brown. The pattern I am using for this scarf is here.

And last but not least are my Sybaritic socks, 10 months overdue. I joined a KAL on Ravelry for these and I had the first half of the pair done around March of April of this year. I had slowly worked on it here and there, but had left it untouched over the summer, 2 inches short of completion. So picking it up and finishing this week wasn't really going to take long.

Here is a photo of the close up of the legwork:

One of the leaf patterns continues down the side of each sock, as shown below. The body of the sock was all ktbl (knit through the back loop, for my non-knitting blog readers), which slowed my knitting down for some reason. Needless to say, I won't be starting a project that entails any amount of ktbl for awhile :)
I haven't even shown progress photos of my commission slippers, which is another project on the needles that needs to be done before the holidays, so that's another project I've got going too. Yikes, have I bitten off more than I can chew? Hopefully not.

But holy cow, talk about a lot of projects started and completed, at least for me. I hope to have more projects to show in the coming months, as I really could use an escape from life outside of work, and knitting fits the bill. Work has been really stressful this year and I think in the past it had deterred me from picking up the needles, but I think doing just that is what I need.