Absent Minded Knitting

Trying to work through yarn from the stash has had some interesting consequences. One rule of thumb for yarn ownership and retention is that if you don't love the yarn, it needs to leave the stash and go to somewhere that it will be loved. While I can usually make the hard decisions on yarn that was a mistake, often time I will find a yarn that I'm a little less committed to but which comes with memories. That's the yarn I bought while on vacation with my best friend from high school. This is the skein that seemed like such a good idea on the day that AudioGirl and I were hanging out. Over here is a skein that I bought because everyone online was buying it and there was that funny conversation, etc etc etc.  While the yarn itself may not be as special to me, the memories are and, as knitting it lets me extend the memory and stop it needing room in the stash, that yarn has been starting to show up on the needles more frequently.

This yarn memory was of the dyer, Dizzy Blonde Studios. I bought this from her very first update on Etsy and she's someone I knew sorta/kinda thru the internet. I was a regular Plurk user at that point, hanging out with various internet knitting friends, enabling left/right/center, and I was convinced that I was going to knit all of the shawlettes. I had even cast on something.

Fast forward a couple of years and the unfinished shawl was still lurking. I'm rather less than enthused with small shawls that don't actually keep one warm and end up falling off my shoulders. Continuing with a single skein shawlette was out. I have, however, been hoping to stock up the gift bin again and so I turned to a tried and true hat pattern.

This project has been passively knit, cast on a few weeks back, absent mindedly picked up at home, stuffed occasionally in my purse. I have no deadline for it, no particular focus, it's just a Sockhead Hat being knit when I get a moment, so it surprised me when I realized that I've actually made quite a lot of progress and should be starting to think about casting off in the nearer rather than later future.

The yarn has pooled and puddled like crazy. That's not something I particularly enjoy but the result is rather pretty and unusual, so I can live with it.

I need to start some decreases soon, so I probably should consult the pattern again and see what the plan is. And once it's done I hope to get another hat or two on the needles. I'd forgotten how much faster than socks they can be.