FO #13 & #14

This will probably be my last post for a while. I'm starting on three pretty intense weeks at work. I leave tomorrow for Pittsburgh, and won't be back until Wednesday. Thursday I have in the office, and then I leave Friday for a week in Seattle, which includes two campus visits and two conferences. Then I get back and there are three days in the office, and then I leave for a conference in Tennessee. If I live through that, I'm taking a well-earned couple of days off.



Anyway, these two little accessories were made during my funk brought on by the endless knitting on that baby sweater. I just wanted a break from that cotton yarn, and I've been dying to make something with the one skein of Regal Ram that I have had in my stash for about three years or so. Once I reorganized the stash, it got moved into my single-skeins bag, which is next to the couch, so I would see it from where I was sitting, and finally I took it out. I got out all my 'one skein' books, and decided on a hat, since I wasn't sure how many yards the skein held.



I also decided that something lacy would help the yarn stretch farther also. Thus, this pattern.

Pattern: lavender lace beanie by Lorna Miser from 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders. I think the lace is supposed to look like lavender or thistles or something. I don't see it, and I thought it was a pretty tough lace pattern to learn, but it turned out really cute. I like the garter stitch band at the bottom, and I like the stockinette portion at the top. My hat had a little point at the top before I blocked it out, and you can kind of see it in some of the FOs on Ravelry, but I kind of liked the point, and I think it's going to be back, eventually, as the blocking fades.

Lorna Miser seems to be a very prolific designer, of the 'realistic knitwear' variety. Her designs in Ravelry seem to be stuff normal people can wear, as opposed to real arty stuff or stuff you have to be stick thin to fit into. Also, family-oriented. Check her stuff out here and you'll see what I mean.

Yarn: Regal Ram Knitting Worsted Deluxe--this came from an old lady's stash, which I stupidly bought on e-bay. I say stupidly, because she stashed everything from the 1970s and 1980s, and I ended up with a lot of vintage Red Heart. I donated most of it, but way down at the bottom of the box was this lone skein of Regal Ram.



Just look at that ball band! Lovely. The color is a very weird one called "Charcoal Green", which amounts to a very dark teal. It was only 2 oz., so I couldn't hope to do a whole lot with it, and I wanted to showcase it in a special project.

Needles: Size 9 circular from my Boye set for both.



When I finished the beanie, I had so much yarn left over, I decided to make a matching scarflet with the remainder. I thought I had more than I actually ended up with, but it goes around my neck once, and is enough to keep the air conditioning off of it. Keeping it on are two vintage buttons from Grandma's button box, which I've just buttoned through the lace. The piece is about 5" x 20" laid flat, but the way it is buttoned, it is a little off center.



This past week, Stella was in the hospital again. She's fine now, but I couldn't work on anything really complicated because I didn't have the time or the brain power. So I started a pair of socks for Spanky. I've turned the heel on the first one, and I'm taking it with me on my trips. I'm also taking the cabled aran vest that I started from the Paton's Cables booklet I picked up on my last trip to Florida. Maybe I'll have finished the socks and one side of the vest by the end of the three weeks. You think?