Another Noro Hat

Does anyone else have a pattern they just love knitting?  Something simple?  Something you can make three or four, or perhaps more of, without getting in the least bored?

For me, that pattern is Saartje's hat.  It's a delightfully simple pattern.  Knit eight rows, then purl four, knit four throughout, including in the decreases.  Saartje makes her patterns available for free, as an added bonus.  The rich texture of this pattern — the purl rows poof out — makes it look like an incredible feat of knitting.

This hat

is the second one I've made using this pattern.  It is for a favorite cousin who is fortunately not a blog reader (it gets so hard to blog at this time of year without giving it all away!)  I love how it looks like a beehive viewed from the top.

And the colorway is sufficiently rough and tumble to insure no loss of mancards (if you don't watch Scrubs, you should, my teenagers put me onto this show), which is apparently an important thing if you want to get guys to wear things you knit for them.  I'm hoping to finish this one tonight and it's going to be a struggle to wrap it up, as I would really love to keep it.

My Artwork and Knitting are still largely limited to projects that are portable enough to go along to Ellie's ballet rehearsals.  Although this constraint has been difficult in someways — I have a growing pile of knitted items that need to be blocked/seams sewn/finished, it has also lead me to take on some smaller interesting projects, like the soldered oranaments I've done for the kids' teachers, that might have not come into being otherwise.  Next up are some presents for some of my closest girlfriends.  I don't want to give away much of the surprise, so I'll just leave you with one little picture of the start of the projects, and you will have to guess, until they are unveiled.