Oops, I made a hat!

Yesterday afternoon I stumbled on a cute pattern on Ravelry, and despite really needing to get on with my shawl knitting, I decided, what the hell, it's MY knitting, and cast on. And then proceeded to knit the whole hat in under three hours, or two episodes of Jeopardy (sans commercials, thank you tivo) plus A Life Less Ordinary (which you should see if you have not). Without further ado, I present my new alpaca hat:

Just to be clear, I don't actually smirk very often, even though I'm always smirking on the blog. The reason for this is that I'm trying to avoid having a double-chin, so I avoid actually smiling for most of my blog photos. Just so you all don't think I'm a smirker...

Project Stats: Alpaca Hat

Pattern: Robin's Egg Blue Hat

Yarn: Cascade Baby Alpaca Chunky, less than one skein, in ivory. Yarn purchased at Weaving Works, where I also got the button.

Needles: Size 10.5 bamboo straights and DPNs

Time to knit: March 14, 2008, about three hours

Impressions: Cute! Fun! Fast! Warm! This is a fun pattern, really simple and really quick to knit up. If I make another (Not unlikely - I have lots of potentially appropriate yarn in the stash. Many people might get one of these for Christmas next year.), I will make it a tad smaller, especially if it's for me. But it does fit, although I made it slightly too long. I have that problem with hats - either too short or too long, and always just a little bit either way so I don't bother to fix them. Alas, I like it anyway!

In other news, I have finished the first border chart of the shawl, and have mastered the nupps. I actually haven't had much difficulty negotiating the p5togs, but that's probably due to the spectacular Knit Picks needles with their lovely sharp tips. Now that I'm all into the lace and feeling confident that I might actually finish a lace project, I'm looking forward to what I want to knit next, and thinking that whatever it is I'll have to get more of these needle tips in whatever size I need, because they are great. I knit eight rows today and I think I have 25 left, although the last 15 don't have nupps and hopefully will go by quickly. I doubt I'll get much accomplished tomorrow because we're going skiing, but we'll see. If my eyes aren't tired when we get back I'll try.