Jet-setter

My husband is becoming quite the traveler. I was trying to find a time to visit him in January and here's the schedule I have to work around:

Jan 7-12: Seattle
Jan 13-22: Hawaii
Jan 31-Feb. 2: Ontario
Feb. 2-5: Chicago.

Craziness. Some of you may be wondering about the Hawaii trip. The telescope is on the top of Mauna Kea on the big island. It is cold up there. He brings a hat and gloves. It is not a vacation!

Speaking of hats, my dear husband has asked me to knit him a hat that is medium-warm. See, I knit a hat out of wool-ease that he wears when it's not too cold (the man starts wearing a hat when it getst to be 50 degrees out; he's a little thin-blooded). Last year, he requested a warmer hat. I made him a double-knit hat using KnitPicks Decadence, a bulky weight 100% alpaca yarn. It was slightly big, but it was warm enough for walking half an hour from our apt. to campus everyday during a Chicago winter (I just took the bus; this may explain why he is a stick while I am pleasantly plump). Apparently, this hat is "too warm" for Hawaii, but the wool-ease hat is "not warm enough" therefore, I need to make him a hat that is "just right" (perhaps I should start calling him Goldilocks?). Therefore, when I ordered the red scarf and Dulaan yarn from KnitPicks, I also ordered more of the Decadence to knit him a single-knit (as it were) hat. I hadn't planned on giving it to him for Christmas, but since he's going to be going to Hawaii in January, I want to get it to him before then. So that's one more project to add to the Christmas list.

Speaking further of hats, I finished the second pattern repeat for the Dulaan hat. I tried some of the techniques Eunny suggested in her recent post to even out my stitches on my colorwork with mixed success. I think I need to just keep doing colorwork projects until it becomes second nature to me. The Dulaan projects will be good for that. Anyhoo, I suspect that, with the holiday weekend approaching, I'm going to finish this hat before my red yarn shows up, so I am wondering what I'm going to do for charity knitting in the iterim. I will have some yarn leftover from the hat, but I'm not sure it will be enough to make matching mittens. I suppose I could just make small mittens. It'd be nice for a child to get a "set" but not mandatory I suppose.

You may be wondering how it is I'm getting so much knitting done these days. It's A. She knits constantly. You would too if you had six scarves and a pig to knit before Christmas. And a duck to put together. Though she has finished one scarf and is 2/3 done with a second. The first was worsted weight knit with size 8 needles and the second is bulky weight knit with size 10 needles (Brittany needles that I got her for her birthday which she loves due to their pointy tips; she's been using Clover bamboo for everything else). And they aren't very long scarves. But she is really cranking them out. So when she's home, if she's not sleeping, in the shower, or eating, she is knitting (and watching tv). This, in turn, inspires me to knit more because even when I'm dead tired and don't feel like doing anything, having her sitting there knitting her little fingers off makes me want to knit.

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with good food, good friends, and knitting!