Hello!

Just a quick post to say hello again. I'm not quite finished with my dissertation writing, but my analysis is complete, my results are in and I've one chapter left to write. My girls have started at their respective schools and I've got some days each week to focus again - the transition out of summer childcare to kindergarten and preschool was intense, but we made it to the other side.

It was a productive blog break too. I did some knitting, but mostly my head has been elsewhere; mostly inside SPSS and Microsoft Word. It will take me some time to get back up to speed on my crafting/knitting again. Truth be told I'm not sure that I will really jump back into things until after my final defense, but I am ready to be back in this space again: sharing, writing and a bit of show-and-tell.

And who am I kidding afterall? It's fall weather around here again and that just plain makes me wanna knit!

To get things started again here is a hat I made awhile back. In my year-long quest to work solely from my stash, I was looking for a project to use up my one ball of Malabrigo. The Star Crossed beret by Natalie Larson was perfect. You can see my project notes on ravelry, but it was portable and quick (two of my favorite qualities in a knitting project). It involves some light cable work too, which used up just a smidgen of my left over brain power. I did fiddle around with the needle sizes to make sure the hat wouldn't stretch out too much and I'm pretty happy with the final result. The color really is lovely and it will look great with my black coat this winter. I didn't block it yet, and the photo was tough to take - how do you photograph your own head?! - but I highly recommend this project as a quick fall knit for those one skein yarns you have floating around.