Finished Object Dance

It's one of those things. Sometime between 7:30 - 8:30 at night I say that tonight I should make an effort to go to bed early because, after all, I keep staying up late without meaning to. Then I get to doing things and well, there it is going on midnight and I'm making myself stop what I'm doing just to get some sleep. Repeat the following evening, except maybe falling asleep around 10 and then waking up close to midnight realizing I'm not in bed yet, am I?

So, Sunday night I was talking about working the Dairy Queen hat in worsted weight and what I was going to change with this third iteration, thinking in the back of my mind I'd get it done that night, because, after all, it can't take that long. Tonight the DQ hat got finished at knitting group.

Now I'm ready to assess. The finished measurements came out to 9 inches width at the base (so about 18 inches around) and 7 inches high. When tried on my head it mostly fit around, but it didn't come down to the ears. So, if I keep the same cast on and increase at the end of the garter stitch portion, I should revise the straight stitch count bit (having reduced the number of rows by 10 from the original) to something longer before starting those decreases. This one is even more likely to fit someone than the prior two, but, it could use some betterment.

Yes, I saw Danielle's comment about doubling the worsted weight to get gauge, but where's the fun in that? I bet she buys flour ready-ground at the grocery store rather than erecting her own mill in the backyard.

And then I started thinking about Christmas presents for the family. As of this morning, I was thinking of making my mother (who is impossible to fit and doesn't care to wear anything I've made for her) a felted bag. By this evening I was thinking Lucy's sock yarn and a small shawl. Lucy will be dying again in a couple Mondays and I've put in a request for shades of apple-y medium green, which my mother says is her favorite color, because she thinks she's a red head.

And then I started wondering if it was worth trying the felted clog slippers for my 10-year old nephew, who has not inherited his father's appreciation of having things made for him. And am I descending into what the Yarn Harlot calls "It" in one of her books -- that special knitting season that coincides with winter holiday gifting where time contorts for and against you and you believe twice as much can get done during an all-nighter than can during the day, with no sleep necessary at any point in the period?

And I was going to get how many charity hats done for how many mitten trees scattered from here to the NH border in the same season?

No progress on Himself's sweater tonight, though. Packed the project, with both (straight) needles, had the toolkit with the cable needle that will be needed in the next ten rows, had the notebook with the rows to be crossed off as completed, forgot the copy of the pattern with the chart to follow. Brother's sock moved towards the toe decreases instead.

Now I need to think about what I'm using as examples in the Reading Your Knitting class I'm teaching at Mind's Eye on Saturday. Or do I need to make some.......