new school year...and a hat is done!

"There is no limit to the human ability to create arbitrary categories." Mark Hale

That would be my favourite quote so far from a textbook for a course I'm taking this fall. It's really an excellent book. I think I will have to buy it sometime, rather than just borrowing it from a friend. School has started again, and it's going to be harder. They really make grad students work hard for those funny hats that we get to wear when we graduate. But I want a funny hat, so I'm going to do the work for it. (And yes, I'm there for quite a few other reasons than the funny hat, not the least of which is that I actually do want to work in analytical linguistics. Plus, I only found out about the funny hats after I applied, so they weren't exactly a factor in my decision to continue with school).

I finished the llama hat! It is done, and it is wearable, but remind me never to do fair-isle with superwash yarn again. It stretches too much when it's washed. The hat is also reversible, since it has a knitted-in lining. I might post a pattern for it, or I might just post the charts, since they'd probably fit into a standard hat pattern easily. My husband likes the hat, and it was done just in time for his birthday. The next knitted object for him will be a sweater. I'd like to knit an Aran sweater, but I don't want one myself, and he does. Specifically, he wants an Aran sweater based on the one the character of Wash wears on Firefly. There's already a pattern out there for it. I'm not starting that sweater until January or so, though.

Right now, I have a pair of socks on the needles, and I've just barely gotten started on a lace shawl. It's my first lace worked with lace-weight yarn, and I can only do a couple rows at a time so far because I haven't adjusted to it yet. I also need to start thinking about Christmas knitting. My brother wants a Jayne hat. Those are pretty much instant gratification knitting because they knit up so fast. I just have to go buy more yellow Cascade 220 first. I have enough red and orange left over from the other hats. I have one gift finished already, and another is in hibernation. I should start it again. I'm mostly doing things like hats and mittens, because those are fast and easy and I enjoy knitting them. My dad's been promised a pair of argyle socks, but those don't have a deadline. I should learn intarsia anyway, so why not knit something classic, hey?

We'll see how much knitting I can actually get done, though. Between school and work, I'm going to be pretty busy.