things without polar bears

So... I have been doing some knitting this year that has not involved polar bears. (Goodness knows why, I am thinking of never knitting anything without polar bears ever again.)

I made an Urban Aran cardigan for my brother. It was intended to be done for Christmas and/or his birthday, but I ended up miscalculating how long it would take the zipper to ship, and it was not done until mid-January. Regardless, here it is!

And yes, he is totally the sort of guy who would love to be covered in that much orange.

Shortly after, I made Feldspar for Snowflake out of Norah Gaughan men. It was fantastic!

I have to admit, Chloe helped me pick the colors here. I think that they worked out really well. Sort of a fall colors thing going on. I like it a lot.

With the Feldspar, I started the practice of measuring things hanging, not laid out on the ground. It makes sense: when he's wearing it, it will be hanging! As you can see, the fit is darn near perfect.

I've been participating in the Enchanted Wood shawl KAL from The Unique Sheep. It's been really fun! I want to post pictures, but there is a spoiler problem, so I'll just link you to my project on ravelry.

I also made Lily from the first Twist Collective. A great, fast knit. I love how the shaping is done.

Apologies for the bad picture. As you can see, I did not take it (although I take many bad pictures.)

My friend Misato wanted a hat with a flower.

And I guess that's pretty much it!

I also finished up the knitting on my old Mystery Stole 4, which is now waiting for blocking. And I'm working on an Apres Surf hoodie for my friend Ting Ting, which I have modified for working in the round. And I'm working on a very silly felted bag project. I will show you when next there are pictures!

In the meantime, feast your eyes on Gizmo:

This little guy's hair is in everything I knit now.

POLAR BEARS

Snow day! This seems like a great day to update the blog. I need to tell you guys about my knitting for this year, but I really want to just talk about this awesome Polar Chullo. Maybe I'll make two blog posts, bringing me to a total of 100! Here we go!

So, for the past week (well, since Friday night, after I finished clue 4 of the Enchanted Wood Shawl) I have been obsessed with knitting this super fun hat! I finished it up last night. I made it in the recommended yarn, which was my first experience with Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift. I like it! It is not that soft but I can see why people love it for Fair Isle. I think I do want to make the Autumn Rose pullover out of it.

Here's the hat!

By the way, this is what happens when you try to take pictures of yourself wearing a hat... I'm not exactly centered in the pictures here.

I didn't block this hat last night because I wasn't sure if it needed blocking and I wanted to show it off at school today. But there was a snow day today, so I'm blocking the hat now.

I love this hat so much. SO MUCH. I think I just really like to do colorwork. I'm starting to think that I want to completely reknit the Bauhaus for Snowflake. It came out too small and actually fits me. I was thinking about knitting side panels, steeking, and inserting them, but now I kind of want to knit the whole thing over. It was fun!

What will my next crazy project be? Hmm...