Thanksgiving!

Much news to catch up on!!

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to all you Americans out there! To the rest of the world, happy Thursday!

Next: NaKniSweMo.

Since I last post, I have given in to all the guilty voices in my head that are saying "It's almost Christmas, and you're spending a whole month on a project for yourself???" I don't want to think of it as "giving up".....I mean I could possibly finish the sweater by the end of the month if I set my mind to it. But then I start thinking, "Yeah, but if I put that much effort into other projects, then I could get multiple gifts done in the same time." So I start getting into this weird guilt thing.

Yeah.....basically, I suck.

Not that it was particularly hard to tear myself away from this project. I mean, the project is fast and all with the size 13 needles, but I am getting really sick of the yarn. I have never before seen yarn that caused more dropped stitches. The furry alpaca sometimes glues two stitches together so that only one of the stitches gets knitted. So then I get several rows down, and I notice the dropped one. And don't even think about just ripping back to the mistake, oh no. Once a stitch has been....stitched, the fuzz pretty much glues it in place. So you CAN'T rip back to mistakes. Basically, the yarn is a pain in the butt.

I have good news, too, however. Yesterday, I finished an entire Jayne hat in one day. Shiny! (By the way, Jayne is a character in the TV show Firefly. In the episode called "The Message" he receives in the mail a hat his mom knitted for him. So he's this big, tough mercenary guy wearing this cute little hat with earflaps. And thus, a nerdy joke is born.) Here's the TV version of the Jayne hat, modeled by Adam Baldwin (the man who played Jayne):

And here is my version of the Jayne hat, modeled by my brother (for whom the hat was knitted. Though I'll probably steal it from him like every day.)

Pretty cunning, don't you think?

It's a little (okay kind of a lot) bigger than the original pattern intended because 1) it's supposed to look dorky, and 2) I'm sorry Owen, but you have a giant head. Plus, I think I have a disease where I can't just follow a pattern to the letter. I just have to go make some modification. I mean, look at the sleeves I'm doing for the NaKniSweMo sweater. I just HAD to go knit them in the round, didn't I?? *grumbles incoherently about the stupid yarn*

I fully intended to follow the pattern this time, but the urge to modify is apparently too strong. For the hat, I extended the orange section by one row, shortened the yellow section by one row, worked the decreases at the top of the head differently, and increased the width of the earflaps by two stitches. It turned out great in the end, so I'm not complaining.

I've also started another pair of fingerless mitts for my mom's friend Tammy. I'll upload pics of them when they have a little more shape. Right now, they're just garter stitch rectangles with thumb holes.

All right, I think that's all for now. Don't eat too much turkey, everyone!