Caitlin's hat is almost done!

I love this kind of Saturday, where I get to wake up without an alarm, then spend several hours "puttering." Today I exercised the Flylady technique of setting the timer for 15 minutes to do a chore, then 15 minutes playing (read: knitting), back and forth for as long as you want.  When my brother called, I ended up talking to him for about an hour and a half. Thank goodness for headphones, I was able to keep knitting and get SO MUCH DONE!! I also cooked up the yellow beets I got this week from Rogue Valley Local Foods. It's way cool that they are linking up local farmers' items for sale with buyers - like an on-line farmer's market, and it's open year round!  I had never heard of yellow beets before so I wanted to give them a try. I find that cooking things like this ahead of time, then keeping it in the fridge to use for meals in the next couple of days makes way more sense for me than cooking everything at the time of the meal it's intended for. Here's a picture of the beets. They taste just like red ones...  and they didn't stain my hands while peeling them!

So, I did have time to get quite a bit done on the hat today. When it was almost up to the top, the insecurities set in:

Hmmm, these ridges are poofier than I thought they'd be; what if Caitlin doesn't like it; after all, it's not exactly like the one she saw in the picture; yeah but the one in the picture was decidedly masculine so this one is more "girlie"; this one looks so big; well it fits me just fine - must be the horizontal stripes! but what if she doesn't like it; well they're the colors she chose; I know how picky teenagers are - especially if their friends might not think something's cool; what if she hates it??

The thing is, I'm well aware of how some hand made gifts can be. If you're wondering what I'm talking about, check out this blog: http://uglyknittingpatterns.blogspot.com/ It's good for a laugh. And like my sister Marji says, "Wouldn't it be horrible if you make something you think is really cool and see it like this:

And the person receiving it sees this:

Well... I'm hoping if Caitlin doesn't love the hat, she keeps it to herself.

...Or else tells me, so I can make the fair isle design even if it makes her head sweat. I do happen to know that some people will in fact endure a fair amount of discomfort for the sake of a "coolness" factor.  Aidan totally fits into this category in case anyone is wondering.

Tonight Rich is out of town and Aidan is out with friends so I'm settled in to watch Julie & Julia and finish up Caitlin's hat.



Okay... just need to finish pulling in ends and make the cord thingys that hang off the earflaps... should be easy to finish tomorrow.  Good night!