Hansel and Gretel

The night before Rhinebeck all were a chattering! "What pattern is that?" "O look at this!" "Hey make a note of that!" There was way too much excitement happening inside that hotel room to get much sleep. Pens were flying across paper trying to make any last minute additions to possible wish list items. Alas, when I added the yarn amounts needed to my list for the Slanting Gretel Tee, I had no intention of knitting it myself. My sis had wanted the little note for herself in case she found yarn for it the next day.

Once back in NYC after the weekend festivities, sis and I were decompressing from all the adventure. I was perusing the Fall '09 Interweave Knits and kept coming back to the Tee. Much discussion followed as to whether or not this Tee would look good on me (ya know sometimes the girls just get in the way). Then I remembered I had some really good craptastic yarn that I had purchased way back in the day when I first started knitting. It's "craptastic" 'cause of the yarn content, but "good" because of the color and it would also allow me to tryout this sweater without a big $$$ investment.

So right before Christmas I casted on with my craptastic yarn. I was hesitant at first because of what everyone was saying on Ravelry about it knitting up really big. After some thought, and a good swatch session, I decided to knit two sizes smaller that I normally would and went down to size 4 needles.

As of yesterday this is where I am at. The "slanting" cables going up the front are complete. I've just started the center cable pattern now.

After reading ahead in the Slanting Gretel Tee pattern yesterday, I came to a part under the "Yoke and Sleeves" section where it says I need to create two crochet chains. As soon as my eyes saw that I let out a huge sigh. I know I can handle it, but gosh dangit, can't I get away from the crochet thingie for now?

So what did I do? I balled some luscious yarn I had treated myself to on a mini Brooklyn yarn crawl with Shameka the weekend before Christmas. It was Brooklyn General that kindly took my money in exchange for the Malabrigo Sock Yarn. Not only was I drawn to the yumminess of this yarn, but the color was calling my name very loudly. It's called Terracota. This just happened to be one of the colors I was drawn to during Rhinebeck also.

Anyway, I told Shameka that this yarn was just too nice to be going on my feet. So instead, it's going on my head. I remembered seeing a finished pic of a hat Kim posted on Flickr and thought it would be perfect. Here is the beginning of my own Sockhead hat.

Don't worry, this is just some instant gratification knitting happening here. Slanting Gretel won't be waiting long for my return.