Olympic Knitting

It's been a busy Olympic knitting week.  And that's weird for me.  I've never been a big Olympics watcher.  I like to watch the ice skating in winter and swimming in summer, and that's about it.  But this year.... This year I have become obsessed OBSESSED.  I have no idea why but the TV is on 20+ hours out of 24 and I get extremely upset and frustrated when they are running reruns.  

And I have to say, I just don't get curling.  Okay, it's sort of like bowling on ice but when I first started watching, it was male/female teams and all I could see was the woman throwing a giant rock on the floor then screaming at the man to Swiffer harder and faster.  And once that image was in my head.... But other than that, I am really enjoying watching the games and I'm getting lots of knitting done.

I finished knitting the "walking hat."  I may have to rename it the Sitting On My Butt, Watching The Olympics hat, but that just doesn't have the same ring to it.  The hat needs a pompom and I think it needs to be either black or white, neither of which I have at the moment.  I'm counting this as a finished project anyway.

Valentine's is right around the corner and I need a gift for Hayden.... but gift shopping would mean turning off the Games for an afternoon so....  I remembered I had this pink sparkley yarn in my stash and decided to knit her a hat.  She likes to wear hats.  Hates having her hair "done" but loves hats.  Anyway.... 

Sadly, I got cocky and "knew" my gauge with this yarn (Yarn I've never even knit with before.  Sheesh!) and didn't test it out.  I simply cast on.  And well, it turns out I cast on two inches too many stitches.  Dammit!  

Will I ever learn gauge matters???

I knew it was going to be too big and considered ripping it and starting over but I kept knitting and telling myself that it just looked big because the brim was rolling before I hemmed it and hemmed hats never stretch as much as ribbed hats so it would be fine.... Then it just seemed to big because it took forever to pick up all those stitches to do the hemming..... And well, I'm now knitting an adult sized hat for the shop and Hayden will probably end up getting a pan of brownies for Valentine's instead of a hat.

And last but not least, I'm almost ready to bind off the Palette scarf.  I can't believe how fast this has knit up.  I've made a bunch of these in the past and it normally takes me forever.  As in, sometimes multiple months worth of forever.  Probably because I get bored, but this time I've had the Olympics to help with the boredom of all that garter stitching.

This bad boy, if I measured correctly, is 67 inches long.  It's hard to measure when scrunched up on circular needles plus my tape measure only goes to 40 inches for some odd reason.  Anyway, it's long.  And in two more rows it will measure 8 inches wide.  I'm struggling with making it 12 inches vs binding off and starting another.  Your thoughts are welcome on that.

The scarf  has 58 different shades of Palette in it.  Granted, a few of those are the same color, but different dyelots that are noticably different if you look closely and under good lighting.  As for a color pattern, I knit two rows from the brown pile and one row from the 'colors' pile.  I'm on my third roation through the browns and am just two skeins into the second repeat of the colors.

And while I have a zillion other knitting projects on the to-do list, some of which are slightly important and have deadlines, all I can think about (besides the Olympics) is casting on another Palette scarf using whites, creams and pale blues and grays.

I need help!