Swap Hat = Done! (But shhhhh)

Once again, if you are my swap partner, do not click the "read more" link :)

Also, how cool am I for figuring out this whole "jump break" stuff in Blogger?  I think I'm pretty cool.

In other, not-so-secretive crafty news, projects abound at our apartment (oh, how I wish I could say house already!).  I'm afraid I won't finish my knitted feather & fan afghan before the end of March, which was the HPKCHC deadline.  I've been bringing it to work with me to knit during lunch instead of the headbands and hats I usually make.  It's going soooooo slowly.  Remind me to never knit an afghan again.  It's painful.  I wish I had chosen to do a crocheted one!

I also started one of the assignments for February classes over at HPKCHC.  We have to turn something scary into something not-so-scary.  I wanted to do this really easily, so I'm just making one of my cute Whitney Headbands with pirate skulls fair-asile-d on it in pink and green.  Because pirates are scary, right?  And the pink and green combo is pretty hysterical (I love pink and green together, but not with death skulls, so it's pretty entertaining).

I'll probably just end up selling it in my shop because it's actually turning out pretty cute.

Speaking of headbands, don't forget to enter my contest and possibly win a custom-made Whitney Headband for yourself!

Shop for Haiti Special at OpenSky

100% of proceeds go to Haiti - woohoo!  The great news is that OpenSky has extended the dates on their Shop for Haiti Special!  This offer originally ended on Sunday, but has now rolled into today, so get yourselves over there and enjoy some knitting goodness over at Vickie Howell's shop (or anyone else's super cool shop, too!).

Personally, I wouldn't mind getting me some of these:

My Review: Knit- and Crochet-Pattern-A-Day Calendars 2010

Because I promised!

These guys arrived very quickly after placing my order last week - no surprise there, having ordered them from Amazon.  I was still a little miffed at Barnes & Noble for not carrying the calendar selection they usually have, thus having to pay full price for the one calendar (plus shipping!!!!), but whatever.

I now have the Knitting Pattern-a-Day: 2010 Calendar sitting on my desk at work, and the Crochet Pattern-a-Day: 2010 Calendar at home, so I've had a chance to take a deep look at them over the past few days.  Here are some of my conclusions:

The Good:

• Design: The Pattern-A-Day calendars have really grown up for 2010.  You'll notice that the cover design is different and includes multiple pictures of those patterns you'll find inside.  Though the Marketing side of me is thinking that was done as a better way to advertise what you're getting, the Buyer side really enjoys seeing how the year is gonna go down creatively.  And overall, it's a more mature look.
  
  
  
  The photos are also really nice to look at, and much more professional than in past years.
  
  
  
• Indestructible: In past calendars, you couldn't help but destroy the daily pages if you removed them from the box.  I keep finding them in my stash pile, actually, and they're crumpled-up messes.  It makes me sad because when I find a pattern I like, I probably want to make it again, but I was always too lazy to laminate the pages.  The newer pages are much thicker.  I mean, they're still paper, so you don't want to set them on fire or let your cat bat them around, but you don't feel bad about leaving them on the couch for a couple days while you work with them.

The Bad

• Lack of patterns: This "bad" isn't much different than what people have complained about in the past, but it seems 2010 is lacking in patterns even more severely than past years.  This might not actually be true, as past patterns that lasted for several days would have their own pages for that day, whereas this year, each page has two days on it.  In all actuality, it probably evens out, but it just seems like there are less.
  
  But... each month also gets a bonus pattern, so that kind of helps.
  
  If the problem is that they're lacking pattern submissions, I am more than happy to volunteer some of my pattern ideas in the future :)  I have so many ideas floating around in my head, and I actually have some patterns written down that I've never typed up to sell, that it might be another venture worth looking into.

Take that as you will.  I think they're worth getting if just to take a mental break from daily life and look over to see things like "[K1, inc] twice, K1".  It just makes me happy.  Yes, I know that probably makes me strange.

If you're about as crazy as I am, you can check out both items in my Amazon Associates store.  Because you can never have enough patterns!  :)

FO: Knitted Spiral Hat

I give you my finished "Dizzy", by Berroco Design Team:

I had added this hat to my Ravelry queue back in late November or early December in an attempt to make a bunch of hats for Christmas gifts.  Lo and behold, Life kicked into gear and got in the way of accomplishing my goal; however, I still really wanted to make this hat because you have to admit it's pretty unique.

The yarn is Moda Dea Vision, which may turn into one of my favorite yarns to work with due to the color patterning.  I have another skein in pink, and I know exactly what I'm going to do with it, so that left me to use this purple-y skein I had sitting around.  Both skeins were purchased years ago to go with a free purse pattern I picked up in an aisle of ACMoore.  We all know how that goes, so both have been sitting in my closet ever since.  It was time I used them up!

Though the hat came out niceley, I made one or two mistakes because the pattern was a little difficult for me to read.  The first part is fine, where the pattern is written out for 5.5" (you do the same repeat during that amount of time).  But then the instructions turn into just that - instructions.  The last quarter of the hat is reading a paragraph with some knitting language embedded within it, which really threw me for a loop.  I figured it out, and it wasn't difficult, but I really had to pay attention.  If you know me, you know that's not something I like to do when I'm making something for fun, so it was a bit frustrating.  It looked so neat, though, that I had to finish :)

Of course, I still haven't learned that I need to make my main hat section larger than 5.5".  It's a bit short, but still adorable.

Overall, I consider this one a success.  And since posting it on Flickr, it was already requested to be added to a group - how cool?!

View this project's details on Ravelry.