Not my fault

Nope. I will not take the fall for this one. It's most definitely not my fault.

It all started with Ellen. She knit this. Gorgeous, isn't it? I read her posts about knitting it, and I followed the links to Solveig's website, and I lusted. To be fair, I'd already gone through a small period of smit with these beauties when Stephanie Pearl-McPhee knitted one, but this was full-fledged luuurve. I held off, though, for any one of a number of reasons, not the least of which being that there is very little opportunity to wear a very warm, yoked and stranded sweater here in San Diego. I put it on the list of "someday" projects and ignored the little twinges of want and regret.

And then along came mom. Her birthday's coming up, and it's a big one, and when we were talking about heading up north to celebrate with her, she made a birthday request. (As an aside, I actually like getting birthday requests, especially when it's for knitting; then I know what someone wants before I commit a lot of time knitting something else.) She wanted a tam, because she really likes them and only has one. Well, no sooner had she said that then I remembered the tam for which Solveig has a kit (go to the Bohus* link, and it's the large lace tam and scarf; but guys, I just went over there, and she's got a whole new slew of hat kits available. Who knew? No. Wait, must focus).

It was serendipity. Fate. I had to get one of those kits and knit my mom a tam, right?

Right. See? It's not my fault. (Shades of Belushi, here.)

I should say right out that these kits are amazing. Solveig was so wonderful on email; she wrote right back to me with a price and had it shipped out in no time, and I had it less than a week after I'd ordered it. The yarn was all there, in little skeins, with a beautiful chart. The pattern couldn't be clearer, and everything was so well organized. I wound everything up into little (sometimes very little) balls, found my size zero needles, and cast on.

That's right, I said size zero. Ellen, can I just tell you that as much as I truly admired the knitting of your sweater, I didn't really understand what went into it until I cast on for this tam? All I could think as I was knitting the two inches of ribbing on those little bitty needles was that you had done this for a whole sweater. That's just craziness. I mean, I know one moves up to size one needles after the ribbing, but still. There is a certain zen in the whole thing, though; I found that it wasn't nearly as painful to knit all that ribbing as I'd thought, and of course once the colorwork starts, it's tremendously compelling. I finish a row and I think, I wonder what the next row will look like? And before I know it, I've found another ball of yarn, and I'm off to the races.

Races here, by the way, is metaphorical. I am the tortoise, not the hare. I've been working on this for days, and I'm about 16 rows into the colorwork (out of 69). I should be able to get this done before March 6th, right?
There's my progress, with all of the little balls of yarn. (That ribbing gets doubled over at the end, by the way.) Because this kit was originally meant for a tam and a scarf, there will be extra yarn. I'm selfishly hoping that there might be enough for another tam, because I love this hat. I weighed all of the little balls before I started, and I'll weigh them when I'm done and then evaluate my options.

The chart is very clearly labelled; each yarn has a number associated with it, and there are little ends of yarn next to each code color. And each skein of yarn came with a little label attached; I wound the yarn so that the label would stay on the outside.
See how well-organized this whole kit is? I love it.

I have more knitting to show you, including the mitts I gave to Younger Daughter's teacher, and the incipient project that's sitting on my desk, taunting me (I will finish this hat before I do anything else), but this has already gotten long, so I'll save those for next time. I did want to say thank you again for all of the question suggestions that you've been posting; I'm making note of all of them, and starting to formulate the questionnaire in my head, and I truly can't wait to see the answers to these insightful questions. It will be a while yet before it's finalized and I've got all of my ducks in a row to send it out, so if you think of anything else, please do let me know, and if you know of anyone else who'd like to comment, send them along. In essence, the two questions for the moment are:
1. What would you like to be asked about being a knitter/knitting/the knitting community?
2. Why do you think writing about knitters is useful or important?
(If you want to refer to my original, and longer, asking of the questions, the post is here.)

Thank you all so much!

(one last close-up shot, just for fun)

*Linguistic diversion: I realized that I'm not entirely sure how to say "Bohus" - Ellen, maybe you could tell us? - so I headed to Wikipedia. People. There is no entry for Bohus knitting, or Bohus sweaters, or anything else like that anywhere in Wikipedia. When one enters "Bohus sweater" into the search field, one gets a return query: "Did you mean: bonus sweat?" Why no, no I didn't.

Someone needs to write an entry. Post haste. Any volunteers?