Start-itis, or The Appeal of New Things

I started this year with making a goal to complete all of my UnFinished Objects list. It's in my bullet journal and everything, guys, so super official and legit. There are ten items on this list, containing everything from shawls to purses to lace to felting. Confession: they have all been on this list for a long time. I made the list up in 2016 sometime and it has gone unchanged since then. I have some big cohesive projects I want to complete, knitting-wise, as blog fodder and just for fun but I feel awkward starting these without finishing my poor abandoned UFOs.
But the problem is that these items are UFOs for a reason. I got bored (in the case of the cream lace bag), or didn't want to do the finishing up (in the case of the silk ribbon purses my mom turned out in droves), or got scared (in the case of all the felting projects I knit up but didn't actually get around to felting). Turns out time has not helped with any of these problems. The thought of lace knitting a white bag is still boring. Felting is still scary. Colorwork chevrons are still too complicated for normal knitting.
So despite good intentions, I started in on new, different projects.

A good winter project, no?

 This is the Antler Toque that was originally for my brother-in-law J. I underestimated how big his head was though and made the adult small size. Given average male head circumference, I should have known better. Therefore, this is probably my new winter hat :)
I did make a mistake one of the rounds as seen below.

Can you see it?

The third cabled Y from the bottom was miscounted and is about a stitch too far over to the left. I am not a Type A knitter. I can barely see it...and I know it's there! Hence, I didn't care enough to fix it (plus fixing cables after a few rounds is a ginormous pain in the arse). 

My old foe hit again though. I am ready to start the decreases, but decreasing in the cable pattern requires sitting in front of my computer to read the pattern. I needed something I could knit on the go, especially as we were going to see a movie I did not want to see and so needed distraction. 

So I started this little number:

Not great lighting.

This is my new favorite little girls sweater In Threes. It is so simple and is knitting up so quickly. I am still a little disappointed in my color choice. I was in a hurry and in the mood for something not-quite-so-wintry. I think I've already stated before I don't like pastels, period, and I'm not fond of pink, not even for little girls. Again, since I was in a hurry, I went for this pale, pastel lilac color for my CoWorker D's little girl A. I knit her a blanket when she arrived but nothing since. She's a year old this week and so it was time. I don't know what her mother's preferences for clothing are so I had to hedge. That's my poor excuse for the more 'girly' sweater, even though I usually try to avoid this. 

What a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. 

Anyway, the point is that it's often more fun and feels more rewarding to start something new rather than finishing up old things. But I imagine the sense of reward will be all the greater for completing a dreaded task and conquering it. I just have to get there first. 

Last but not least today, I want to do a tiny bit of product sharing. My dear darling Tall Hubby reached into my Christmas list and pulled this little number out of Etsy:

Isn't it gorgeous?

It's a fabric knitting needle case or organizer by Lena Brown Designs. It's got a fantastic amount of pockets in different widths for different gauges. I'm not sure it's supposed to work with circular needles, but I just balled up the wires and went with it. It rolls up nice and tight to keep everything together:

I think my longest needles stick out a bit on top, but no big.

And look at that fabric!

Gorgeous!

I like it a lot, and it's already helped tidy up my work space (the floor by my side of the couch and under my side table). I can find all my needles without digging in a floppy denim bag and can keep track of sizes I have so much easier! Recommended by Stephanie over at Yarn Harlot, this is such a great idea and I am so grateful to Tall Hubby for the excellent gift. 

Scale

The adventure post-So Many Babies has involved knitting...for a baby. Our friends Fish and H had their second baby in June and I realized that I hadn't ever finished knitting him anything. Baby R is getting big, the little chunker, and he's been hand-knit nothing by that weird Friend/Aunt/Person Erin. Not to be allowed!
So I sat down and did some planning. Now, we live in Red Wings territory. It's a fairly large territory, I'll grant you. Fish grew up in Chicago and so is a Blackhawk fan. I once ruined his life by coming to help paint his bathroom on the night the Blackhawks played the Blues and informed him that I used to be a Blues fan when I lived in St. Louis and had even been to a game or two. The Blackhawks lost with dispatch and I was ordered from the house, never to return. Until the next game night.
In any event, he is a Blackhawks fan in enemy territory. I have no doubt he is raising his sons to be the same. So I started thinking about winter hats (a necessity in the northern Midwest) that would be so-called 'subtle' Blackhawk-themed. Perfectly acceptable hats to a Red Wings fan that were actually more in line with the Blackhawk themes and colors.
I even texted Fish to tell him of my plan and to ask for some design advice, being the graphics-person that he is. This is what we came up with:

Red for the main part of it and the turned-under sweatband, and then 3 equal stripes in black and white on the outside of the ribbed sweatband.
Now the problem was one of scale. I had three boys of varying ages and head sizes, but I wanted them all to look proportional. I needed a 1- year, 2-3 years, and adult size.
What I ended up doing was adding the requisite stitches to go up in circumference and added one rep to each line of striping each size up. The result:

The adult hat isn't sewn up yet.

I think they turned out rather well. Fish thought so too:

He even wore the right color shirt to coordinate.

Here's the one downside to color work:

It looks like a rubbish fringe.

One end each at the top and bottom, 3 stripes each with 2 ends, yarn held double for the black and white stripes, times 3 hats... More or less 48 ends to weave in. My thoughts about this:

Okay, that might be a bit melodramatic. And once I found my tapestry needle it wasn't so bad. But trying to weave in all those ends with a regular knitting needle was rubbish. 

The result was worth it though. 

Look how happy they all are!

Fish said he's going to buy Blackhawk patches to put on the hats, which will make them less subtle. Ah well. That's his problem now.