I was a knitting maniac this past week/weekend.  Remember I referred to this hat on Saturday?  It’s the Garter Ear Flap Hat by Purl SoHo.  So. Stinkin’. Cute.

I started this on Saturday at 5pm and was done by Sunday at 2pm.  AND that included an emergency trip Saturday night to my mother-in-law’s house with Paul to fix a frozen pipe.  He used a hair dryer that she has had for 46 years.  FORTY-SIX YEARS!  It worked great.

(Try to ignore this creepy Styrofoam head. It took me forever to find one online and it’s actually pretty small – not an adult head – and I think the face is creepy. I need to get a different one.)  Seriously cute hat.  I love the little tassle.  This hat is a “kids” size. The pattern comes in many sizes, baby to large adult, which is nice.  I think I’m going to make an adult one too.  Easy and quick quick quick.  Also, I saw my doodlebugs at dinner on Sunday night and tried to get them to try it on since they are “kid” size.  No dice.  They’re two and a half so I don’t know why I thought they would do so willingly.  When I asked each of them if they wanted to try it on they said, “No fank you, Auny Wiz.” (read: “No thank you, Auntie Liz.”)  At least they were polite about it.

Next was finishing the Steek This Coffee Cozy fair isle knitting:

Now it’s ready for the steeking which we will do in a few weeks at the next workshop.  The little section on the front shown in this next picture is the part we will reinforce and then cut:

And see all those ends?  Ugh, weaving in galore, right?  WRONG!  Apparently, if I read the instructions correctly, they are all in the steeking section and something miraculous will happen where I won’t have to weave in the ends.  I think. (I hope).

Before the weekend started, I had knitted the clues for the Jimmy Beans Wool Downton Abbey Mystery Knit-a-Long:

It doesn’t look too terribly different but it’s coming along.  Now, I’m working on the next set of clues.  There are only 6 rows in this next set, since there are eleventy-thousand stitches on the needle at this point.  Eleventy-Thousand.

I also finished the leg clue for my Through The Loops Mystery Knit-a-Long:

A pretty intricate pattern for what I normally do – it’s been fun to see how they are turning out.

My next mystery knit-a-long starts this Friday: the Knitter’s Brewing Company   Mystery Sock KAL: Cocktails for Two.  Still haven’t decided on a yarn yet, but stay tuned.

I also finished the second Snow on the Laurel cabled arm warmer:

You’ll have to take my word for it that this is actually the second one. I can see how you may have doubts since I only recently finished the first one and I tend to procrastinate on knitting the second of anything.  However, the first one is at the yarn shop as a class sample so I can’t take a  picture of the pair.  Honest.  I had been done with my knit-a-long clues, looking for something else to knit and decided this was as good a time as any, and then I could cross it off my list. Took me just a couple of days.

Next, I knitted up the two-color brioche swatch which I will be teaching as a class at the shop:

If you look toward the bottom of the swatch in the bottom picture you’ll see a little row of white stitches where I messed up.  I left it so I could use it in class as an example of what NOT to do.  So nice that I can USE my mistakes.  As a reminder, this is the two color swatch which will go with the teaching of the brioche stitch scarf:

And, finally, I worked on the weaving section of the Princess Franklin Plaid Collar:

A few challenges with this one.  Trying to weave the strands while keeping them loose-but-not-too-loose is hard.  Even paying close attention and trying to stretch it out a little, I ended up with some puckering.  You can see it at the top of the picture.  Then, just for “fun”, I decided to try it on to see what it looks like.  I apparently have a huge head, and a ton of hair which adds to the circumference of my head, because I had a hard time getting that woven section pulled down.  I tried putting my hands inside and gently stretching to make the woven strands looser, to no avail.  If I had stretched any more, the strand ends would have started unraveling.  Once I did get it over my head, it looked pretty good and was comfortable on my neck.   I’ll just need to re-do my hair after I put it on.  So, now I’m revising this pattern and will only weave about another inch, so that I can still wear it.  Since it is a rather tall cowl, about half of it will be folded under while I wear it anyway so why not make it easier to put on, right?

Whew.  That’s it.  Not much really.  (Ha! No wonder my hands are sore.)