Finished project (charity hat) and some potential new projects

I finally decided it was time to finish off this particular charity hat.  I decided a bit too early -- it could have used another inch or two of knitting -- but that's OK.  This style of hat fits everyone and adapts to a lot of different ways that the hat can be worn.  Hopefully someone will find it suitable.

It's my usual charity hat pattern for worsted-weight-ish yarn -- a k1p1 rib on 80 stitches with a very quick decrease at the end.

That's it for all of my knitting projects that existed a month ago!

But I think I've made some decisions about future knitting projects, whew.

First off is the next travel shawl.  I'm taking a bunch of small batches of hand-dyed handspun and just doing a bunch of stripes, in a top-down half-square V shawl.

The pattern is pretty basic.

Generic Half Square V Shawl

cast on 9 stitches, probably with a long-tail cast on but it doesn't really matter.

row 1 (and all WS rows): k

row 2:  k3, yo, k1, yo, k1, yo, k1, yo, k3

row 4: k3, yo, k3, yo, k1, yo, k3, yo, k3

row 6: k3, yo, k5, yo, k1, yo, k5, yo, k3

row 8: k3, yo, k7, yo, k1, yo, k7, yo, k3

Etc.  The two wings will grow by 2 stitches each time (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, etc.), the border is k3, yo or yo, k3, and the centerline is the yo, k1, yo.  When I'm nearly out of yarn, I'll cast off, sew the cast-on halves together, and it'll be done.

I expect this to be fairly large since I aim to use around 1000 yards of worsted-weight-ish yarn.

Here's a pic as I've laid out the skeins.  It's a terrible pic that doesn't quite show the colors accurately but it gives the gist.

The yarns are a mix of self-plied yarns and barberpole yarns which have one ply of dyed yarn and one ply of undyed yarn.  All of them are Romney, from the large bump of light gray Romney I bought, well, quite a while ago.  All of them were dyed by me in various synthetic dye colors.  All are roughly worsted weight, give or take a bit.  I believe they are a mix of wheel spun and spindle spun but hopefully that will merely add to the interest and/or will be relatively unnoticeable.  In general, my wheel spun yarn is spun Z and plied S while my drop-spindle spun yarn is spun S and plied Z.  I keep it that way so I can tell the difference with a glance rather than needing to look at my records.

From start (left) to end (right), the color progression will be:

orange/metallic barberpole

gray (undyed)

garnet

garnet barberpole

purple

purple barberpole

blue

turquoise/teal

green/teal (leftovers from another project so it's already balled up)

green barberpole

green

That's the plan, at least.  I've balled up the orange barberpole, chosen a needle size (#5, because I have a 60" long circular needle in that size), cast on, and done two rows.  I've done very little so far but I'm not in any hurry.

I have a couple of longer skeins of hand-dyed handspun Romney but at this point I'm not planning on putting them in this project.  And if necessary, I can spin up more of this Romney for the cast off, and even dye it in something vaguely compatible.

And another project!

I have a skein of gray Romney yarn that was given to me as a souvenir from a trip (thank you again, Phoebe!), roughly worsted weight.  There's a relatively recent cabled hat pattern that came out in Ravelry, and that might do well for this yarn.  The pattern calls for Aran weight yarn at about 4.5 st/in, but I'll adapt by doing the larger size and/or adding an extra pattern repeat and/or adjusting the width of the repeat.  I need to choose a needle size and then I can cast on and get going.

And yet more!

Dunno for sure yet, but I really do want to do a sweater.  So maybe I'll get a batch of handspun and try a sweater from Knitty that came out many years ago (Winter 2018).  Or if not handspun, something else that is nice and sturdy such as my leftover Briggs & Little yarn or equivalent.  The sweater is called Chalcedony and I like it because it's a garter rib/waffle rib kind of thing.  It's also top down, which always reassures me when I work with potentially limited amounts of yarn.  It can be more straightforward to improvise top-down rather than bottom-up.  We'll see how it goes if/when I get started.

Finally, I still have more of the heathery blue acrylic, so I'll start another charity hat when I need to work on something but don't want to think.  Even so, I need just enough time to count to 80 so I can cast on the approximate correct number of stitches.

There's always more -- socks, mittens, fingerless mitts, cowls, etc.  Plus I've taken up nalbinding and that too provides hours of yarn-filled entertainment.  I don't have any current crochet plans, but I do have a couple of spinning projects I want to do.  I've also been thinking that it might be time to string up a loom and weave some cloth.

(and maybe I should finally cast on the amazing Gloxiniaeflora doily without fretting about the usual things I fret about)