Stranded

I'm taking a page from my friend Michelle who is letting her gift knitting this year just happen.  I love that concept ~ you know, simply free to be inspired by whatever comes my way. I haven't made any solid plans for knitting gifts this season; rather, my thoughts about casting on presents for knitworthy loved ones hinges on feeling excited and letting the finished object tell me who it should go to.  Yes, I believe that my knitted objects sometimes tell me such things.

So, over the weekend, I came across the most adorable motif of a reindeer's head and as I've always wanted to try my hand at stranded knitting, I grabbed my circular needles and two balls of worsted weight yarn, and dove right in.

I posted my work-in-progress on Instagram and got the nicest feedback (thanks Gail, Libby, Bonnie, Kelly, and my sister Esther! Kelly asked if I was hooked, and I can't even describe how utterly obsessed I am now that I've conquered a technique that I've been thinking about for so long. You see, I've always been an English knitter although I've secretly wished to master continental knitting, too.  So, when I decided to give this hat design a try, I put the main color yarn on my right side and the contrasting color on my left and voila, I became an ambidextrous wiz!

Needless to say, my Saturday afternoon was completely eye-opening and I reveled in my new-found skill.  In fact, I seriously couldn't put my needles down and finished my hat in a record two hours (thanks to this podcast).

You probably can't tell but this hat is child-size being blocked on my hubby's adult-size head!  Now, I'm in search of a little person to gift this to....