It's been a while since I posted, but in that time my husband had a birthday. Not long after I started spinning, I got some merino roving that was super soft. After it was spun, Jason commented how it would make a nice hat. From then on, that's what it was destined to be. While looking for a hat pattern on ravelry to make for him, I found one that I thought just screamed "Jason". It is called "Hubby's Decoder Hat." The idea of this hat is that is has a secret message in binary. The knit stitches represent "1" and purl stitches represent "0." So, you decide on a message, figure out your sequence of 1s and 0s then cast on. Once the first row is knit, you just knit the knit stitches and purl the purl stitches all the way around. Unfortunately, I couldn't try it on his head since it was a surprise and it turns out he has a longer head than I thought. When he tried it on and folded up the brim it didn't quite cover his ears. So, I ended up ripping out the decrease section on top, adding some rows and closing it back up. In the end it looks like this:

I even made an extra challenge for him when I sewed in the end and forgot where the binary pattern started. Oops! In the end he figured out that the message spells out "I Love Jason." Happy Birthday!

Tree Skirt

Another project I have been working on is a Christmas tree skirt also known as the never-ending Christmas tree skirt. The pattern I found is here: Tree Skirt. I got some Red Heart Shimmer yarn and grabbed the crochet hook listed in the pattern. This was my first mistake. With both knitting and crocheting I have a tight tension and always need to go up at least 2 needle/hook sizes than what the pattern lists. But did I think of this at the time? No.

I crocheted and crocheted and all of a sudden I was almost done with the pattern but the skirt seemed really small. I had one row to go and the skirt was only something like 12.5 inches wide. I look back at the pattern and it says the finished length is 18.5 inches. Ok, fine. It went pretty fast so I ripped it out and started again with a K hook (2 sizes bigger) thinking that this would fix the problem. I get to the last row again and it's 14 inches. Ok, it's a pretty straight forward repeat, so I'll continue the pattern with one more repeat. Finally it was 18 inches wide.