Hey wait! It's still February!

I had plans, big plans I tell ya, for Fair Isle February. I really want to make the Tropical Garden Vest from Knit 2 Together.

I've been flip-flopping between making the vest or reducing my stash all month. In the end stash reduction won. After all, there are plenty of small stranded projects I can do with what I already have. Plus I have to admit I am not 100% happy yet with my mad stranded skillz. I've done a couple of small projects and so far I haven't mastered the art of even stranded knitting. Everything comes out kind of lumpy. But my Fair Isle February project, a Bea Ellis traditional hat in Dale of Norway Heilo is my most even yet. The snowflakes aren't lumpy at all!



The hat has been gift-wrapped and sent up north to a friend. I'll start the Tropical Garden Vest (sort of a tropical inspired Fair Isle pattern more appropriate for Florida than a snowflake hat) soon. I've put it at the end of the queue, after a few more pairs of socks and a cable vest I already have the yarn for. Does the list get longer and longer for all knitters?!

The Pirate Life

Ahoy! I finally finished the "We Call Them Pirates" hat - just in time for my friend Todd's visit. I made him the hat to commemorate his first visit to Gasparilla. I say first visit but really one Gasparilla will pretty much do for most people over 25. I was however impressed with Todd's bead catching skills. The St. Petersburg Times said 400,000 people came to watch the invasion and I believe it. Bayshore was packed.

Back to the hat: it was the second We Call Them Pirates hat I made the past two weeks. The first hat I knitted with the recommended needle size. I used the same yarn, Dale of Norway Hauk (same colors even). I checked my gauge like a good little knitter. But when I was done with it I could barely fit it over my head. My knitting got tighter when I used two colors. My swatch was with just one color. That means I either need to do stranded gauge tests for stranded projects or learn how to do stranded knitting correctly. I went up one size, US 4, for the second hat and it worked much better. No longer felt as if pirates were squeezing my brain.

It was too warm to wear the hat for Gasparilla, but Todd graciously agreed to model the next day, when it was a bit cooler:


We even took the hat out for some pirate-y shuffleboard action before Todd had to fly back to DC. Pirates love shuffleboard: