Sensing Avoidance

I am still having trouble settling down to work in an orderly fashion.  There is more going on than just the busy day.  It's the border on my shawl.  Remember how I said, I wasn't sure about it?  I think all this avoidance is my unsure taking it's most massive form.  While my hands are busy with other things, I am giving it a good rest while I think it through and right now, I am leaning to changing it a bit.  That outer edge is too thick to do the valleys. 

But my hands are staying busy even if I am not quite ready to take apart my lace border.

I spoke earlier about my neighbour.  She has kept us in vegetables all summer and has been such a lovely welcoming person.  I asked what I could do for her and she suggested a hat with ear flaps.

This is what I have come up with.  I started with a free pattern on Ravelry, the Norwegian Star Earflap Hat.  Started anyway, but left it behind because my gauge is different than the pattern, my goal for this hat is different than the pattern and I hate knitting bottom up when I don't have a really good idea of what size I need at the end. 

I'm using the hat pattern, mostly for the lovely star on the side.  I could have looked in my books, but sometimes, when it is presented fait accompli, you just want to run with it. 

I want this hat to be lined so I need it larger than the pattern suggests.  Top down, will hopefully give me a better chance of knitting the right size.  I have a couple of ideas about the inner yarn, but I won't decide that until I know how it all fits.   

The yarn, the rich green is Schoppelle-Woolle Gradient, which is a sort of felted yarn.  It has a kind of crisp air about it.  It's quite lovely for working in stranded colourwork, but it is great for plain knitting too.  I am knitting it on needles that are just a little smaller than the yarn recommends, but I am aiming for really warm here. 

The white yarn is from the leftover bin and I am not really sure which of several very similar yarns it is.  There is lots left for a project of this size so I am running with it. It is deliciously thick and wonderful where it is stranded.  Really nice.

The colour I have is called Papagei.  It is a little unfortunate in that it has a section of white in the centre of it, right about where the colourwork is supposed to be, so I am doing a very little bit of colour manipulation. Later in the skein there is this amazing turquoise and I really want to show that off before the hat is done.  It is possible that the turquoise might only be on the border around the outer edges, but c'est la vie.   I really do hope to have some of it in here.  If not, the soft green colour changes please me, and with a little luck, will delight my neighbour and her gardener soul.

All in all, as a way of avoiding other knitting, a hat is not such a bad thing to end up with.