Nothing much

Actually, I've been crocheting and knitting more than usual, because the activity that has appealed to me most this week, for some reason, has been watching Say Yes to the Dress on Netflix. Since I rarely watch tv without  wanting to do something productive with my hands, I've made unexpected progress on my crochet project (semi-secret!) and the Eternity Scarf that I started last week. I did most of the ribbing on the bus to and from New York last weekend, and now I'm watching people buying their wedding dresses in Kleinfeld's while I work on it, so this scarf has acquired a sort of Manhattan flavor in my mind.

By the time I finish it, of course, it will probably be too warm to wear it, but at this point that's a good thing... I'm ready for spring.

My first hat

Hats make me nervous. I'm not a frequent hat-wearer, so I've never been very tempted to try making one. But my sister asked me to make one for her, and I'm happy to do family requests, so after sitting down with her and Ravelry and finding a pattern she liked and pinpointing what color exactly she wanted, I started on the Phannie hat.

It's actually a very easy pattern, and the fit was pretty good the first time. But due to my hat nervousness, I had to take it out and try making it a little slouchier, then take that out because it looked weird and make it up normally again, then increase the size of the band, then decrease it, before finally deciding that I had to be done with it and the problems were with me, not the hat. I sent it off to my sister last weekend and she seems to like it. So, yay first hat! Now that I've passed that hurdle, I went out today and bought yarn for the Diamond Ridges hat. I've had my eye on it for a long time, but some of the Ravelry comments made it sound a bit intimidating. We'll see!

Finishing

Wednesday night was a night of finishing projects. First, I spent an inordinate amount of time figuring out the bind-off for an iPod sock cozy I've been knitting:

I decided back in my brief podcast phase that my iPod needed some stylish knits to wear, but it took me until this Saturday to finally get started. Although I spent half the day wrapping my head around the cast-on, after that it was amazingly quick, for my third knitted project ever. I don't love the yarn I used since it's obviously supposed to stripe for something (human) sock-sized, and only sock-sized. But, the knitting pattern is really nice. It's so nice that she included links to tutorials (although I ended up going with these instructions for the bind-off). The pattern has a bunch of variations, so I think it will be a good way for me to practice new techniques on a quick and relatively unimportant project.

After doing that, I also finished my stash-busting granny square afghan. When I was about halfway through, I wove in all my ends, so it didn't take long once I finished the last round of crochet to weave in the rest. In terms of making blankets, having it be completely done less than half an hour after you stop crocheting seems like instant gratification to me.

Panda friend

I have not yet introduced the panda friend I made over Christmas vacation:

My sister is very fond of pandas, so when I saw the teddy ornaments pattern on All About Ami, I knew I had to make her one. I used the yarn I had on hand which produced a much bigger panda than the pattern intended, so since he ended up too big to be an ornament, he is just a very round and rolly panda friend. I think he's cute.