52 Hats

I thought I'd share an end of February status update for my goal of knitting 52 hats in 2018.  But please, forgive the quality of the photos.  I accidentally spent the 'good light' part of the day filling out a new planner that's going to help me accomplish all the things instead of actually doing the things.  Things like taking photos.

Number 10 is still on the needles.

Number 10 is Beloved, a free Ravelry pattern.  It's knitting up quickly, but I think that may be because I probably should have gone down one or two needle sizes.  Size wise, it's fine but it just seems to have a little too much space between the stitches.  It's not bad enough to frog but next time....

Hat #9 was knit with Barcelona in Dusk.

Hat #8, you've seen before.  Although I'm out of this world excited about how well the button matches the yarn on this hat, I still haven't added it to my Ravelry project page.

Hats six and seven are basically the same.  I used the same yarn, needles and design, but I ran out of yarn so hat is about a half inch shorter than the other.

And last but not least, there's #5, the Owl Hat.  The hat that I enjoyed knitting and think is adorable but will never make again due to the buttons.  Have I mentioned how I feel about sewing on buttons?

So that's almost six hats in February for a total of almost ten so far this year.  But I'm left wondering, can I count the dog hats?  And if they count, do I count them as three hats since I made three, or just one since only one of the three fit properly?  Are there rules that say the 52 hats have to be for humans?

After voting on the dog hat dilemma, please follow me over to Maggie's Mad Hatters' Link Party to see photos of others' hats.

Oops!  I'm editing this post since it's Wednesday and I forgot to include a blurb about what I'm reading.  I've been on a true crime kick here lately and am currently reading The Briley Brothers by Dwayne Walker.  The story fascinates me because I lived through it.  The Brileys terriorized my neighborhood and raped and killed people my family knew. Their reign of terror affected our lives in so many ways.  But no matter my fascination, this book is difficult to read.  Not because of the horror of what the Brileys did, but because it's so poorly written. Even overlooking the poor, or lack of, sentence structure and subject/verb disagreements, I'm half way through the book and I bet there haven't seen five commas yet.  Forget Eats, Shoots & Leaves, just hand this book out to the kids to help them understand the importance of grammar.

Makers' Monday - Diagonal Stripes

Today's Makers' Monday post is going to be quick and dirty and not at all what I'd planned to talk about.  Instead of telling you about the new hat pattern I'm knitting....

Diagonally Striped Blanket

I'm knitting a diagonally striped blanket with left over scraps of fingering weight yarn on US 3 needles, while sitting in the rain, in a giant traffic jam, otherwise known as I95.

What are you creating?

Still Happy!

I'm still happy dancing over here!

First, thank you for all the love on yesterday's post.  I was a little worried that I was being one of those annoying moms who think every single scribble their child makes is genius and should be hung in the Louvre.  I was glad to know I wasn't the only one who thought Sarah's letters were funny.

My new copy of Vogue Knitting

Second, I'm happy to report that I finally got my hands on a copy of the new, updated version of Vogue Knitting and it does not disappoint! 

While I've been anxious to see the new version, I didn't intend to buy it.  Why bother? I already own an original 1989 version.  So what if the new version has prettier, more modern photos?  I didn't need to spend the money just to get modern photos.  After all, it contains the same information.  It's just an update.  Right?

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

If you haven't checked it out yet, what are you waiting for?  Close this blog post, turn off your computer and go directly to your LYS, local book store or Amazon and find yourself a copy.  Today!

A smaller hat for Nooshi

And third, I'm happy to report that Nooshi likes her new, smaller pompom hat.  Admittedly, she looks a little skeptical in the photo.  But the smaller pompom is definitely more her size and her mom reports that Nooshi is happy to wear it.

Three on Thursday

My daughter will probably kill me in my sleep for sharing these, but I couldn't resist.

In a recent attempt to avoid cleaning up what ever it was that exploded in the microwave and was left to harden into a cement like mass, I decided to purge my file cabinet.  In the process, I came across a few letters Sarah had written when she was younger.  I hope you find them as humorous as I do.

The first, a Father's Day poem for her dad.

This is a photo copy.  The original is framed and hangs over my husband's desk.  As a point of reference, Mike's office used to be next door to a bakery and he'd bring home yummy goodness several times a week. He also brought truck loads of sand home occasionally for the kids' sandbox. The poem reads:

Dad, Dad, you're the best
Your brought us sand
And all the rest
Like cookies, pie and donuts
and now we have great big butts.
And so I'd like to say,
Happy Father's Day!

Next up is a letter to Santa that was found in Sarah's stocking late one Christmas Eve.

It reads, "Dear Santa,  How's your wife?  I have been extra good this yaer! I hope you have a safe tripe back home.  Love Sarah   P.S I hope your deer are ok!"

First, "How's your wife?"?? That just cracks me up.  And the "o" in "hope" has been turned into a peace sign.

And last, we have a letter regarding her feelings towards her brother.

"Dear Mom,
I find you're son completely EVIL. He steals my diary, messed up the still wet ink from my 9 hill (I have no idea what that is supposed to say, but that's what it looks like.) and did numeus (numerous) other crimes.  You should be thankful I, Sarah Wiant, DO NOT press legal charges.
Sarah"

Although I saved these masterpieces, I failed to date them.  I'm kicking myself for that now.  Sarah must have been eight or nine.  She had mastered the your/you're thing by the time she was ten or eleven and she obviously hadn't when writing these.  She had to have been at least eight when she wrote the evil brother letter though, because she'd put it in an envelope and written our return address on it.

Join me over at Carole's for the Three on Thursday link up.

Doing the Happy Dance!

I'm so happy!

 I'm happy because Zack finally came and packed up his room yesterday.  He moved out two years ago and when he left, all he took with him was his guitars, his computer, his bowling balls, one beach towel, a few pair of jeans and his toothbrush. All his 'stuff,' his manga, his rock band magazines, his stuffed animals from when he was three, his posters, bowling trophies, CD's, DVD's, 90% of his clothes.... have all been just sitting.  Sitting, waiting for him to come make the Toss or Keep decision. 

Now that Zack's room is mostly empty, I can have a yarn stash room.  A whole room to fill!  Happy Dance!

It's almost a fire pit.

Zack gave us a fire pit for Christmas and I knew if I waited long enough, he'd put it together for me.  Now we can have an outdoor fire.  I'm so excited.  I've wanted a fire pit for ages!

Some how the YMCA song got put into my phone's music thing and every time I press Shuffle, YMCA plays.  Of course I can't resist doing the arm motions, and it's played so much the dog has learned to jump up in the air every time they sing the Y-M-C-A parts.  It cracks me up that she's doing her on version of the YMCA dance.

41 Teeth on my Hitchhiker Shawl

I'm happy dancing that I've finally passed the 40 teeth mark on my Hitchhiker shawl.  (And how is it that I always notice a mistake in the photos, never in the knitting itself?)

I'm happy dancing over the weather.  It has FINALLY stopped raining and with the sun, we have warmth!  Actually, we have heat.  We hit 75 degrees today and tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer.  Record breaking warm, actually.  Actually, I might not be that happy tomorrow.  It was Hot today!  And if it's going to be this hot, I'm going to have to shave my legs & dig out some shorts.  Please, please, bring back the snow!

I'm frantically happy dancing over Sarah's new computer arriving today.  You wouldn't think I'd be so excited for her to get a new computer....  But she's been using mine every day.  I've only had computer access for an hour or two in the evenings for the last month or so.  It's been a struggle.

But, with all that no-computer time I've had on my hands, I've had lots more time to read.  I'm happy that I read four books this week.  I finished The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (and it was Excellent!,) The Christmas Boyfriend by Taylor Hart, The One Hour Content Plan by Meera Kothand, and Lifestyle Blogging Basics by Laura Lynn.  The two blogging business books were interesting and motivational but not earth shatteringly educational.  The Christmas Boyfriend was what you'd expect from a story line where a girl hires a stranger to be her boyfriend to get her parents off her back.  In other words, total fluff but fun and quick to read.  And then there was The Ocean at the End of the Lane.  Wow! I LOVED this book!  It was one of those books where I found myself frequently highlighting whole passages and I was riveted from page one all the way to the very end.  I'm definitely giving this one five stars.  No actually, I'm giving it more than five.  Six stars and I'm adding it to my 'Re-Read Every Couple of Years' list. I'm also going to buy a hard copy that I can actually use a real highlighter on to underline my favorite passages instead of having to track them down on my Kindle. The Ocean at the End of the Lane may not have been a very happy story, but I sure am happy that I chose to read it.

I'm joining up with the #Unraveled crew over at Kat's.

A field of color

A field of color

I bet you thought I was going to be talking about spring flowers again, right?

Nope!  I'm trying to keep thoughts of fields of spring flowers (tulips instantly come to mind) at bay by concentrating on knitting my Hitchhiker shawl and the never ending mitered square blanket.

OTN 02/19/18

I keep thinking I'm doing so well and making good progress knitting each....  And then I check the numbers.  Although I'd swear that I'm knitting a minimum of four or five 'teeth' a day on the Hitchhiker, today's count shows it having 38 teeth.  It had 34 teeth three or four days ago. How is that possible?

And then the mitered squares.... Goodness!  I don't even want to think about it.  I had it in my head that I only needed to knit 15 or 20 more squares.  Nope!  I have 141 more to go.  One hundred and forty one more squares.

I SO wish I hadn't counted.

My second favorite mitered square

But, to make today's Makers' Monday post a little more cheerful and a little less whiny, let's have a contest.  That blue, orange and celery green square is my second favorite on the whole blanket so far.  It's knit from a self striping yarn.  The first person to name the yarn correctly in the comments below wins a random skein of yarn from my stash pile.

And, since it is Makers' Monday.... You know what to do.

Made for each other

Button Brim Hat

That button and the yarn seem made for each other!


Yarn:  Lion Brand Wool Ease, Dark Rose Heather
Button:  LaMode

Three on Thursday

It's Three on Thursday and I have a MASSIVE case of spring fever!  We hit 70 degrees this past, very rainy, weekend.  It's supposed to be in the mid 70's tomorrow. 

And it's supposed to snow on Saturday.

I have spring fever and I'm consumed with thoughts of

Daffodils, photo courtesy of thoughtco.com

daffodils

Tulips, photo courtesy of lushome.com

and tulips

Forsythia, photo courtesy of wimastergardener.com

and forsythia.

Join me over at Carole's  for the Three on Thursday link-up.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm going to keep today's post super short - hopefully.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

After finishing Seven Steps to Closure, I started reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman.  Seven Steps was a fun, hilarious read all the way to the end and while I'm only 31% into The Ocean, it's proving to be just as good, although for completely different reasons.  These days, I only seem to be able to find time to read right before bed.  I've trained myself to read a page or two then fall asleep.  If it wasn't for that, I think I'd have finished The Ocean at the End of the Lane in one sitting.  It's that good!

2018 Weather Cowl

As for my knitting, I'm still busily knitting mitered squares for my blanket, doing some shop knitting and keeping up with my weather scarf. cowl.  I keep calling it a scarf, but it will definitely end up being a cowl, no question about it.  Each month will only be about two inches long.  Definitely not a scarf!  Although I seem to be incapable of calling it a cowl, I'm happy for it to be a cowl.  Specially since I can easily knit a liner for it and not have to deal with weaving in 365 loose ends.  I do wish I'd chosen a different green for the 67 - 77 degree range but.... I was/am working with what I have.  Gotta stick to that yarn diet!  I also find it amazing that it can be 70+ degrees one day and snowing the next.   Welcome to winter in Virginia!

Join me for today's #Unraveled  link-up.

A log cabin miracle

So, I finished my log cabin shawl a week or two ago.  I even blocked it right away which is fairly unusual for me.  But the shawl was ... dull.  It needed some bling.  I went to the craft store and found the perfect beads to bling it up.  Understated bling, exactly what I wanted.

crystal teardrop beads

I came home and sewed them on in time to wear the shawl to my knitting group meeting that night.

Bling

And as I walked through the kitchen on my way out the door to go knitting, my husband asked me to hand him the salt shaker.  I reached over the stove to grab the salt and...

Gasp!

The shawl threw itself off my neck and into a pot of spaghetti sauce.

Yes, a full, giant, 20 quart kettle full of bubbling spaghetti sauce.

Holy ^%%$%^&E%%^ Hell!

You have never heard such curse words before!  Words spewed from my lips that I didn't even know I knew!

I grabbed it out of the sauce pot and attempted to toss it in the sink but as luck would have it, it hit the floor instead.  The dog immediately began licking it.

I was so upset I just walked away.  I left my brand new, just finished alpaca, merino and silk, just washed and blocked, just went the trouble to buy and sew beads on shawl laying on the floor and I went to knitting group.

I assumed the dog would eat the entire thing and it would be out of sight, out of mind by the time I arrived home.

It wasn't.  A dear family member had shoved it over into the corner with their foot however.  Very kind of them, right?  At least the dog was helpful in cleaning up where the sauce had smeared across the floor.

Thinking it would be in 1,000 pieces from the dog chewing it, I picked it up to throw it in the trash....  But it was still in one piece!  It was a little hard to tell because of the amount of sauce that was still stuck to it and beginning to harden but... It looked okay.  It had a reddish/orange tint to it and there were still chunks of tomato stuck to it, but the fabric looked to be still in once piece.

I filled the sink with water, tossed the shawl in and went to bed.

The next morning, I rinsed the shawl out a few times, let it soak once more in soapy water, re-blocked it and Voila!

A log cabin miracle

You'd never know it ever took a spaghetti sauce bath!

It's a log cabin miracle!


To see if anyone else had a creative miracle this week, join me for today's #CraftingOn link-up.

Makers' Monday

It's tough when your knitting turns on you.  It may be Makers' Monday, but I'm not exactly celebrating my own knitting achievements today.

I've been doing so well lately with staying on track with my knitting and getting the pieces on my To Do list knitted, finished, and shipped as necessary.  I've been doing so well at it that the skin on my forearm has become overly sensitive and sore from my shirt sleeve/cuff rubbing against it as I knit.  That's a lot of knitting!

And then there was the knitting for puppies issue.

I had an Etsy customer who bought a hat and wondered if I could knit her little dog a hat with a matching pompom.  I went in search of dog hat patterns to get some ideas, (there aren't many out there) and came up with a design that I thought might work.   I knit the puppy hat and sewed on a pompom that was about half the size of the human hat's pompom.

The adorable Nooshi

Look how adorable Nooshi is wearing her hat.  Look how the pompom is almost as big as her head!  Look how I didn't do a very good job trimming the pompom!

Nooshi

Poor little Nooshi!  She can barely hold up her head due to weight of that giant pompom.

Roxy

During the design process, I ended up knitting two hats in different sizes so I shipped them both to the customer.  Poor Roxy!  She looks mortified!

Poor Roxy! She's not happy with her new hat.

 Roxy never asked for a hat, nor is she happy to be wearing a hat, specially a hat with a giant pompom.

Luckily, depending on how you look at it, my phone went bonkers yesterday and I spent close to four hours at Walmart's phone center tying to fix it.  After a crazy amount of time with Joseph, the extremely helpful Walmart associate (he was so helpful, he deserves recognition,) and a conference call with the phone provider's service rep, I ended up having to buy a new phone.  While I'm not thrilled with having to spend the money, or that I lost the majority of my contacts in the transfer, I'm right pleased with my new phone.  I'm also right pleased that all that time away from my needles was a huge help to my forearm.

I'm also right pleased that while I was leaving the store, I happened to stroll by the craft section and noticed they had a teeny tiny pompom maker.  So now, it's back to the puppy hat drawing board.  And Roxy, I promise to never again ask you to model a hat.

A giant Thank You! goes out to Nooshi and Roxy for playing guinea pig and, despite their pain and embarrassment, for allowing me to post their photos.

On The Needles

My current garter stitch, 'knit while I read' project is another Hitchhiker shawl. 

Hitchhiker

I thought I'd talked about it already, but I was unable to find a previous post, so maybe not.  I'm knitting the shawl with Patons Kroy Socks in the Blue Striped Ragg colorway and using a US 4 needle.  I was worried about how the self striping yarn would behave but so far, I'm very happy with it.  Very happy with it, except that I've knit 30 teeth already and it seems to be growing  in width much faster than in length.  But as they say, I'm sure that sh*t will block right out.

(Sorry.  I try very hard not to curse here on the blog, but I just love that blocking quote.)

Three Hats

 (This post may contain affiliate links.)

Welcome to another Three on Thursday list.  Today I’m thinking about knitting hats.   What with the 52 Hats challenge, it seems like I’m always thinking about hats these days.  Recently I've added three more hats to my Ravelry queue.

 1.   Oak Leaf Beanie designed by Morgan Capestrain.  It's knit with Wool of the Andes and a twisted stitch chevron pattern.  I love the idea of knitting something with the look of cables, but without the hassle of doing cables. 

2.  Weather the Weather Hat designed by Megan Williams.  I love the lightening stripe zigzags. I have a love/hate relationship with lightening.  I love thunderstorms and watching the lightening streak across the sky.  But over the years, I’ve come dangerously close to being struck by lightening multiple times so I’m a little paranoid about it.  As a teen aged lifeguard, I was standing about six feet away from the edge of the pool when it was struck.  I’ve been on a sailboat and had the mast get struck.  More than once, I’ve been in the water, swimming a boat back to shore that’s lost its steerage, when lightening was striking the water all around me.  And several times, lightening has struck the ground just outside the window I was sitting next to.  I’m a lightening magnet!  So I thought it would be fun to laugh in lightening’s face and knit a hat with lightening bolts on it.

3.   Ferry in the Harbor  designed by Kirsten Kapur.  Besides wanting to get more practice with fair isle, or color stranded knitting in general, the hat’s named Ferry in the Harbor.  If you couldn’t tell from my lightening story, I love anything to do with boats and/or water.

  

Join me over at Carole's to see others' Three on Thursday lists.

Closure

I won't have closure on my mitered square blanket any time soon but....

Mitered squares in bad lighting

I have pulled it out of the UFO pile and begun working on it again.  I don't know how many blocks I have to knit before it's finished.  I refuse to count them.  Maybe in a few days...  For now, I'll be content with just knowing that it's my "current" project and that I've already knit six or seven squares since I rescued it from it's UFO fate.

As for my reading, I'm currently enjoying The Seven Steps to Closure by Donna Joy Usher.  I'm absolutely LOVING this book!  It's hilarious!  According to my Kindle, I'm at the 51% mark and I've already laughed so hard I cried more times than I can count.  Twice I did the laughing/crying thing in public!  And once, I laughed so hard, I blew my Starbucks out of my nose.  That was painful.

I will warn you though - The Seven Steps to Closure does have quite a bit of cussing and a bit of sex.  It might not be everyone's cup of tea.  But I sure am enjoying it and I'll be looking for other books by the author when I finish reading this one.

To enjoy what others are knitting and reading, I"m joining both the #Unraveled and Yarn Along link ups today.

Slytherin or Slithering?

I've made a tiny bit of progress on my Slytherin sock.  As you may or may not be able to see, I've started to knit the heel flap.

Slytherin Sock

And now, I'm sort of slithering away from the project.

I'm blaming Dee over at Just D 2 Me.  She keeps posting photos of the progress she's making on her mitered square blanket.  And that reminded me I had a mitered square blanket hanging out in the UFO pile....  And then someone else posted a stunning scrap sock yarn blanket they'd made on a Facebook knitting group I'm in the other day...  And now I want to make one just like it.  But before I start the new scrap yarn blanket, I'd really like to finish the first.  (I have visions of knitting the second blanket and running out of yarn & being unable to finish the mitered square blanket.)

And really, I should be knitting the blanket now while it's cold instead of waiting and trying to finish it in August when it's 100 degrees.  It just makes sense.  Right?

Join me over at Frontier Dreams for today's #CraftingOn link up.

Makers' Monday

I'm going 'old school' for today's Makers' Monday post.  Instead of talking about what I'm making, I'm going to show you a few things others have made.  In other words, I got lazy.

I'm actually writing this late Saturday night because I have to work on Sunday.  I know!  My "summer" job starts tomorrow.  Or yesterday, as you read this.  My work schedule will be sporadic days sprinkled here and there for a while, then it will be every weekend, then every day.  Anyway, I won't be around on Sunday to type up the post.

Saturday's to-do list had me taking photos of several things I've been knitting but...

I accidentally spent Saturday curled up in the comfy chair reading trashy romance novels instead of being a productive member of society.  In fact, I was so unproductive, I didn't even knit while I read!

So here it is, late Saturday night and I've got nothing of my own to show you.  I do, however, have a couple of things I've procured off Etsy recently that I'm super excited about and think you'd also be interested in.

Ann Budd Gauge Ruler courtesy of Friends and Fiber

The first is Ann Budd's Gauge Ruler from Friends and Fiber on Etsy.   How cool is this thing?  You just lay it over your knitting and match up the stitches on the ruler to your knitted fabric stitches.  It's so stinking easy to use!  The ruler, besides being an actual 9 inch ruler, measures gauge in half inch increments from 9 stitches to the inch up to (down to??) 4 stitches to the inch.

Cool new tool

 And, if you're like me and tend to refuse to check your gauge even when you have a cool, handy gadget, it also makes a great knitting journal bookmark and bullet journaling straight edge ruler.  Oh, and it's also handy for tearing washi tape.

Ruler available at Friends and Fiber

Hey!  Look at that - a tiny bit of knitting.  I'm no where near as far along on my Slytherin sock as I'd hoped to be.

Knitting Project bag from Twisted Yarn and Fiber

And then there's this project bag.  I LOVE my new project bag!  Actually, I'm not sure I can legally call it "new."  I bought it several months ago and you may have even seen it hanging out here on the blog.  I use this bag constantly so I'm sure it's probably been in a photo or two.

The bag is from Twisted Yarn and Fiber.  I absolutely love the fabric it's made from.  First, it's black so it doesn't show dirt.  While I'm fairly obsessive about keeping my knitting clean, I do carry my knitting with me to some fairly strange places and the outside of my more frequently used project bags end up getting.....  well, gross.  But the jelly fish are fantastic at hiding the dirt, plus they are colorful enough to see at the bottom of my black hole of a knitting bag (more like a giant suitcase.)  And while the jelly fish don't actually glow in the dark, they are bright enough that I can find them in the dark when I toss the bag into the car's back seat. (One of Little Red's quirks is that she doesn't have an interior dome light.)

So, yes, I LOVE this project bag.  The drawstring closure is easy to open and close and the bag's size is perfect.  All my other project bags, and I seem to have collected quite a few, are either several inches smaller, or many, many inches larger.  This bag will easily hold a Hitchhiker or two sets of socks yet it's still small enough to cram into my purse.

As much as I love my jellyfish bag, I picked a lousy time to show it to you.  The shop is currently on"sewcation" so that it can get restocked and ready for spring.  I really hope you'll go check them out in a few days or weeks though.  I remember having a hard time deciding which bag to get because they had so many adorable ones and the customer service was excellent.  The shop's bags are definitely worth the wait.

Okay, I think I've rambled on enough.  Please join me in celebrating #MakersMonday and also, please know that I'm not affiliated with either of the products I mentioned today - I just really, really like them and thought you would too.

5 out of 52

(This post may contain affiliate links.)

It's the fifth week of 2018 and I've finished knitting the fifth hat out of the 52 I've challenged myself to knit this year.

Owl Hat

At least I guess I can call it finished.  The knitting part is finished.  It's currently blocking and awaiting eyes.  I should probably only count it as half a hat because....  Sewing buttons on is NOT my favorite thing to do and seeing as the hat has seven owls, which means fourteen buttons....  Perhaps I shouldn't count it at all.  I desperately wish I'd thought to use beads instead of buttons for the eyes.  I could have put the beads on while I was doing the knitting.  Oh well....  Next time.

As for the pattern details, I used Oyster Heather Wool of the Andes worsted weight yarn and US 5 needles (also from Knit Picks.)  For the owl design, I used an old, photocopied baby sweater pattern that has been hanging out in my loose pattern files forever.  I think it's a pretty standard owl-ish cable design if you wanted to knit your own.

Since I'm currently on a mission to watch all the Harry Potter movies while I knit the Slytherin sock I might have to knit white, gray and brown hats to represent all the owls in the movies.  I'm also flabbergasted to realize that apparently, I've only seen the first two movies.  How is that even possible?

Three on Thursday - A Month in Review

Wow!  I can't believe it's February already.  Where did January go?  What they say about time passing faster as you age must be true and I must be ancient!  It feels like January lasted all of 20 minutes.

But it's February now, and it's a Thursday, so you know what that means...

It's Three on Thursday. 

And since it's the first of the month, I wanted to recap January for posterity's sake.

1.  52 Hats Challenge:  So far I'm keeping up with my goal of a hat a week.  I've knit four of the 52 hats which puts me at 7% complete.

2.  Besides the hat challenge, I also signed up for Ravelry's project challenge.  My goal is to knit 60 items in 2018.  I know! I don't know what I was thinking.  But the 52 hats are included so it's not quite as bad as it sounds.   According to Ravelry, I'm at 7% complete there also.

3.  Back in December, I challenged myself to go one month without buying any yarn.  I met that goal and decided to carry the challenge into January.  Now I've decided to continue it.  I'm not going to come out and say that I won't be purchasing any yarn during the entire year because, seriously!  Who am I kidding?  Currently, so that I don't freak myself out too badly, I'm going to take it one month at a time.  And Etsy shop custom order yarn shopping doesn't count - but those purchases have to be for real Etsy custom orders, not just something someone might want at some time in the future.  Anyway....  I failed my challenge two days in January, or 6% of the time.  And while that sounds bad, I stuck to my yarn diet 29 days or 94% of the time.  Yay me!

And to take my mind off yarn shopping....

January 31, 2018 sunset

Yesterday's sunset.  Although pretty in the photo, it was SO much more glorious in real life.

Join me over at Carole's to read others' Three on Thursday lists.