Time, Frozen Smile, and Paper

(I'm gonna give up on doing a regular "Sports Saturday" post. Not only did I forget my camera today, but I didn't even bring my knitting. This is why I also don't do "Eye Candy Friday" and "Saturday Sky" and the "ABC-along" even though they look interesting. "What's on your Needles Wednesday" is in every post, so I cover that by default. "Tuesdays are for Spinning" will again occur when I take off the current spun stuff from my bobbins--and get another Tuesday off work. Anyway, too much pressure to remember...)(Tough games today. DS's soccer game tied and DD's game was lost by one point.)

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I've been working on several little things. Three to be exact.

However, I've been leaving them not-quite-finished and have moved on to the next.

See?



I decided to finish them and time myself to see how long it really took.

1. 6 minutes. Yep, that's it. I actually BO and pulled the yarn through to a knot, but didn't cut and hide the ends.



This is a shawl/stole that took 3 skeins of Moonlight Mohair (on sale for $2 each, regularly $8.99 thankyouverymuch). Cast on 40 sts on size 15 needles, knit every row increasing at each end every row until done. (Save enough yarn to bind off. And hide the ends.)

(Thanks to DH for the pics, he's trying out a new flash.) (When's it flashing? Now? oh, ok, now. I love frozen smile pictures.)

2. 38 minutes. It took longer than I thought. There was only one toe to do which had already been decreased part way. (I thought I was done, so I cut the yarn only to realize that I had one more decreasing row to do, which needed more yarn than I left, so I had to join the yarn again for one row which made 2 more ends to hide and which got in the way when I did the Kitchnering. Not that I was in the least way annoyed.)



Horcrux socks using Trekking XXL color 108, sz. 2 dpns and 70 sts.

3. 36 minutes. I had a bit of yarn left over, so I ripped back the hat to add a couple of more rows. Why so worried about using every inch?

Because.... drumroll please....

It's made with my very first handspun yarn from my spinning wheel!!!



The yarn is incredibly sproingy and thick and fun to work with. It's going to be great to wear at those frosty bus stop mornings at o'dark o'clock.

The pattern (mostly, I fudged a bit) is The Yarn Harlot's Unoriginal Hat for bulky yarn. Size 11 16" circs for the body, switching to 10.5 dpns for the top ('cause that's all I had and it worked.) (By the way, the pattern is in pdf form which I just discovered right now, but unfortunately not when I printed it out earlier. That time I printed the blog entry which is a whopping 43 pages. A few pages for the pattern and the vast majority for the comments on how much everyone liked it. While I agree, I didn't really need to keep the comments. I actually tried to print "selected" but automatically clicked "print all" then tried in vain to cancel the print. I gave up, and used up the paper that was laying around on the floor getting stepped on, then got the brilliant idea of sending the same paper through twice. After all that, the actual page with the pattern didn't get printed, just the chart. Sometimes charts are a challenge since I knit left handed, but this time I made it work.) (Phew, still with me?)

The pdf pattern is two pages.

That's 6+38+36=80 minutes, a frozen smile, and a ream of paper.