I've been busy

I realize I am seriously overdue for knitting pics, so I decided to kill three proverbial birds with one stone.

On the upper left is the roll-brim hat I knitted with homespun yarn and handwritten instructions from Liz. It came out significantly larger than I expected, even the second time around, so I felted it slightly. Now it fits the s.o. pretty well, although *pout* it is still a bit too large for me. The s.o. loves it--the picture doesn't do the lovely coppery heathered color a bit of justice.

On the upper right is my first sock ever, almost completed. The final Socks By Magic Loop class is tomorrow evening. We'll be doing the toe, of course. Can I just say how stunned and amazed I am at how well this sock fits me? It is a thing of beauty. I only hope I can make another one that comes close to matching it.

The bottom piece was my vacation project: the Cherry Garcia cabled neck tube from Hello Yarn. I picked the project because it looked like an easy, self-contained way to learn how to knit cables, and indeed it was! I knitted it mostly on the beach, using Ironstone Yarns bulky yarn in "Harmony." I still have another skein of it, so I may ask my instructor to help me figure out how to make a cabled hat to match it.