Running to keep up

Love Knitting has a Frog or Finish challenge running; the yarn version of put up or shut up.  If it's something that's working - get on and make it work and finish it up.  If it's not working, get rid and make it into something that is.  This may have been running for just January, but I'm going to take it into the rest of the year.

So, I was all keen to get on with this, and get rid of the neon scarf thing I started in March 2015, using the initial section of the gallatin scarf.  

The original neon scarf, before ripping out

Whilst was fun to knit, the fabric is too stiff and it's highly unlikely that I'll ever wear anything quite so bright around my neck - even if the 80s do make a come-back.  So, it's time to hit the frog pond and free-up a set of needles.

At the same time, I'd been sort-of-training for London Winter Run.  My running hat is 100% acrylic, and I don't particularly like it as a result.  So, the plan was to get the neon yarn knit into a new running hat.  Hopefully being a higher percentage of natural fibre would make it more comfortable to run in.  And what better place to début a new running hat, that at a winter running event? 

It sort of did and sort of didn't go to plan.  I ripped out the scarf, as it was.  I did some editing of the yarn.  I did a gauge swatch, I did the maths and started knitting.  Then had a major flap about whether I'd left enough ease and whether it was going to be big enough, so ripped it out and started again with four more stitches to the row.  Four.  Freaking.  Stitches.

Had I not had the freak out and rip out, the hat would have been done in time, even if it didn't properly fit.  As it was, the 10k was finished before the hat. 

Before the run - with the acrylic hat

At the end of the run

The new hat

I did try a photo of me wearing the new hat, but it basically looked like I was wearing a condom on my head.  I've not run in it yet, but it feels like a good fit. 

You'll notice that the hat has a decided absence of pink.  I'd love to tell you that I don't have anything against the colour, but that's a lie.  There's very little in our flat which is pink, and it's not a colour I choose to have around me in swathes.  I don't dislike pink as a colour; I simply loathe the fact that it's become the colour of gender stereotyping. 

Today, I've spent most of the day in bed with a cough, cold and general lurgy.  What I'd really like to knit is another Sick Day Pi Shawl just to see how easy it is when ill.  Ironically, despite the size of my stash, I'm not sure I've got any yarn...