Stickin' with the Plan

My plan for Holiday knitting was to stick with Hats and Cowls. And if at all possible, to use what I can find in my stash. I mean, we are in a bad economy and being one of the vast group of downwardly mobile Americans has made me feel poorer. In better times I was lucky enough to stock up on yarn so now I can hunker down and put it all to good use.

So far, I've been spot on with the approach and I'm knocking off the gifts in record time. Last week's Cowl was so pretty I decided to repeat the adventure. I have an ulterior motive as well.

The Malabrigo Worsted has been in my stash for nearly two years. I made a scarf with two of the skeins, one of my earliest projects.

The other two skeins have been sitting around, waiting for a ripe moment. These cowls are a great way to use them up. With the passage of time I am less enamored of the variegated colors. As I've mentioned, my intent is to go with their semi-solid colors from now on. Yea, I say that now. And the next time I walk into a yarn shop (when the cash allows) I will surely spot some gorgeous skein in a million colors and just have to own it immediately.

So this one is a quick repeat and it's just as purdy as the first. And even after knitting this up, I still have 1.5 skeins left! I predict more variations on this theme...

The next thing up is a hat I've wanted to knit since the pattern came out earlier this summer. Being a huge brooklyntweed fan, I was sure this project would be as much fun as all his other patterns.

The Turn a Square hat is really easy and really fast. This was done in a little over four hours. I have several skeins of Noro Silk Garden in that stash, but I didn't want to break into them since the thrifty me said to use up some scraps of Noro Kureyon left over from the Lizard Ridge Afghan project. And the gray Cascade was a spare skein purchased when I was evaluating yarns. I'm not sure this was the wisest decision.

The hat has a decidedly '70's retro look to it, thanks to the colors I pieced together (lots of spit splicing going on last night!). When I look at it, I am reminded of all those appliances done up in that Avocado-Pea green ubiquitous back then. (do you remember?!?...). I haven't decided if I really like the hat. And it definitely needs blocking, as Jared urges in the pattern notes. It's also a tad too big! Which surprises me because I thought I was knitting it rather tight. The whole time I kept thinking, "wow, I'm moving so fast I hope this isn't too tight" -- I was actually worried about the gauge. I ended up using exactly the amount of yarn specified in the pattern.

What do you guys think? Are the colors a little...um...off? Should I crack on with another one using different color combinations?