Selfish Knitting

Nothing makes this knitter more self satisfying than a month or so of gift knitting. As soon as I was done with the last of my Christmas knitting I went hog wild with the casting on.

Over Thanksgiving I purchased six skeins of Queensland Collection Aran tweed at a "new to me" LYS, Knits and Bolts of New Haven, Vermont. The color card says pale pink (#141), but a better name would be pink granite.

These were purchased with a project in mind, another scarf, hat, and fingerless mitten set. (I'm still catching up with the coat purchases I made this year and at the end of last winter.)

My preference is for a lace scarf and after a couple of weeks of indecision, I realized the Shetland Triangle would be the perfect pattern. First, the pattern is so addicting and easy to knit. Second, I've taken to wearing both of my smaller shawls, the Sunshine and Shadows and the Shetland Triangle, wrapped around my neck, rather than my shoulders (scarf style, rather than wrap style). And last, I've been itching to knit a lace pattern in a heavy weight yarn.

(I love how matchy the Yarnissima stitch marker looks in this picture, which I took on the plane ride home from Arizona. You can take the girl out of the 80's, but you can't take the 80's out of the girl!)

Not knowing how much yarn the scarf is going to eat up, I made a commitment to knit on the scarf only long enough to sate my craving. And then, as a salve, I allowed myself a little more knitting on the plane ride home.

I cast on the first mitt the day I cast on the scarf. Instead of carrying over the fir cone lace motif to the mitts, I opted for the fern lace motif instead. It is definitely better suited to the shape of a glove than the fir cone lace.

What is usually a quick knit, over a few hours, has yet to be completed two weeks later. I started the second mitten last weekend.

These mitts are uninspiring blobs. Who can blame me for dragging my feet with them?

So, instead of wrapping this project up on Sunday, I started designing the hat. I borrowed the quarterly "bar" structure of Knitty's Foliage hat for my design. I'm at the point of the design where the bar welds into the leaf. Using waste yarn I've gone through a couple of variations with fir cone lace. Once I decide which I like, finishing the hat will come swiftly.

Sunday morning, as I lay in bed in a half dream state, I considered writing out a pattern for the hat and mittens and publishing them them here and/or over at ravelry (for free). This seems like a logical next step for me. Yet, I'm not sure how devoted I am to doing the legwork it will require.