Yarn Along -- Casting Off in Order to Cast On

If you're a more industrious knitter than I've been lately, you're going to think I'm nuts (or have a very short attention span) for getting so stinking close to finishing a hat and then putting it down and moving on to something else.  All I had to do was draw the yarn through the remaining stitches, secure and weave in ends!  It was so long ago that I can't even remember if it was before Thomas was born or after.  Maybe after.  That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

In my defense, I had put it down in a drawer that I never go in.  So.... there.  Yeah.  I stumbled upon it a few weeks ago, noted that the hat was in there (oh yeah, I remember this hat now!) and then promptly closed the drawer.  Wow, I really had lost interest. 

Just the other day I got an idea for a worsted weight cabled sock pattern and went looking for my size 7 DPNs... and found them in the hat.  So I sucked it up and finished the hat.  (You can see how threading the stitches onto waste yarn only to reclaim the needles would have been double work and a waste of time.)

And I'm so glad I did!  This hat is soooo silky soft, made of alpaca and silk yarns held together (yarn choices and pattern are listed on my Ravelry project) and the haze from the alpaca is warm and heavenly.

The pattern I'm creating is a women's version of my Handsome Men's Slipper Socks, so if you've been wishing for a pair for yourself, just hang on.  I look forward to knitting these again.

Try to ignore the fact that my Cadbury Egg gets center stage in the photograph.  And that it's an Instagram.  And that I Instagrammed a photo of a Cadbury Egg.  You get the idea.