So, it has been a little while since I posted last.  I know.  Sometimes, you just knit a bunch, and then you don't want to knit anymore for a while.  And then you find your way back to it.  Or sometimes your hands just hurt from working with tiny needles.  Now, at some point I thought I wasn't going to post pictures on here of work done from kits.  Well, in the end, who am I to belittle work from kits, some of my best friends are kits.  No I kid, but seriously folks, when I'm doing work from a kit, that's what I've got to show.  So here it is, what has been keeping me from finishing that hat that was in the last post:

My family tree cross-stitch.  Now, this thing has spaces for four baby names, so really I have no buisness working on it right now.  Also the excuse about my hand hurtting really doesn't hold a lot of water as a reason to work on this thing, because it causes the same problems.  For me, though, cross-stitching is quite possibly the most relaxing thing a person could do.  And though I don't want a giant cross-stitched portrait of the Pope, or Princess Diana on my wall, a family tree seemed like a really appropriate cross-stitched item.  I just have to finish the boarder on the left hand side and put in more little children and then I will start adding the names.  That is probably the best part of cross-stitch, the plan of attack.   Less Zen, more constant strategy. 

The real shame about all this work that I put into the cross-stitch was that the hat from the last post was so close to being done.  I know how close it was, because I finially finished the knitting.  In 3 days.  Well, slack a lot, work a little.  Of course now I've gotten it into that dangerous time where it is almost done, but far from finished. 

Thinnesses of yarn and changes of needles mid project aside, this will be a warm soft lovely hat if I can get my act together.  But then, other projects are beckoning, saying things like "It is too hot for a hat now, he won't need it till winter" and other equally bad things.  But I'm pretty dedicated to the idea of this sucker being finished by the weekend.  If that comes to pass, then two posts in one week!  In this corner of the above picture is a back view of what this hat will look like.  The two selvege ends of this, the short ends of the rectangle, get sewn together into the back of the hat, and then the top gets sewn into four corners.  My favorite part is that braid stitch, at the bottom and at the top.  It looks like it is done after the fact, but it is really just a matter of twisting the yarns as you knit color A and then color B over and over again.  I think i mentioned last time, the patterned part is mosaic.  Don't know why you would do it another way. 

My gosh, I made a list of all the projects, like, full concepts and colors selected, etc, that I would like to work on.  There were twelve items on the list.  I don't know too much about the life cycle of a crafter, but it must involve forgetting planned projects at some point and just starting the list over.  Oh, just a final note about the hat.  The grey colored yarn is a lovely hand dye, lots of subtle variation in the color, which comes out more in the ball than in the knitting in the picture.  But the dye came off on my hands while knitting.  Not a whole lot, but enough.  So I got some dye fixative.  I'm nervous about using it but also excited to see if it works.  Update on that later for sure.  Whatever the outcome, I'm sure I'll have something to say about it.

 

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