The Countdown Begins...Only 11 Weeks Until Christmas

OMG, I cannot believe we are already in October.  I was in Big Lots two weeks ago and the Christmas decorations are already out! There wasn't a lot, but the fact that they were out in September blew my mind!

My goodness I'm so behind on my holiday knitting. I got started on these colorwork team spirit hats just to try my hand at designing and knitting in more than one color and I've gotten so many friends asking me if I could make them a hat.

What am I going to do? I love that my knitting has improved to the point that I'm actually getting requests to create or design knitted items, but I always do this to myself every year, I get bogged down with special request items that I fall behind on my gift giving projects because well there are a lot of people who want to give handmade knitted gifts to their friends and family too and either don't have the skill or just don't have the time to make it themselves.

Also, I've been trying to get items done so that I can post them to my Etsy Shop for purchase and everytime I complete a new project, I get a request to make one for a friend and I end up not getting it into my shop. Which is wonderful and exciting but my online shop really suffers because it isn't getting the exposure I'd like to get because I'm not posting new product at least weekly. But on the other-hand I'm not complaining because with the requests from my friends and co-workers comes more orders from their friends.

I'm hoping at some point, probably after the holidays, I will have some time to write down the pattern for the ear flap hat that am using to create my custom team/school spirit hats so others can make it too!

Happy holiday knitting to you all, and I hope you have gotten started on your gift knitting or if you haven't you are planning to soon - Christmas will be here before you know it!

Team Spirit Hats

I've been having so much fun with colorwork these days! I've been inspired to create team spirit hats. You saw from my previous post the Pittsburgh Steelers team color inspired hat - my son was crazy about it, so I had a thought - what if I made more of these kinds of hats?  My son gives me the ideas and I try to create a hat from the color scheme of the team.

For instance I came up with my own colored chart to create a hat for the UW Huskies:

Go Huskies!!!

Reminiscent of the early football helmets of the 1900's
Earflaps are knitted double-stranded for warmth

Made with Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Oxford Grey,
Violet, and Gold 

Learning colorwork has been challenging yet fun and its opening up more design ideas. Also, now when I come across colored charts I'm not so intimidated. In the past I have steered away from patterns that require me to read a chart and especially any that had colorwork designs!  Now that I've designed a few of my own colorwork patterns, I say, "bring on the colored charts - I'm not afraid of you!!!"

I am currently working on of course UW's rival team - Washington State University Cougars, for which I have also designed a colorwork pattern for and of course I can't leave out the Seattle Seahawks - I designed a really cool pattern for the team color scheme for them. I will post pictures of the hats when I'm done, but in the meantime here is a sneak peek at the design I created for the Seahawks team spirit hat: 

Have you started your holiday knitting?  Have you decided on patterns and designs for the colder weather yet?  Would love to hear from you, come on and drop me a comment.  Happy knitting!!

Update: Finished September 28, 2011

As promised here is the women's WSU beanie with pom pom that I designed and below is the colorwork pattern for it:

Model: Vanessa, a friend at work

Update: Finished September 30, 2011

Seahawks, Sounders FC, or Thunderbirds Team Spirit Beanie

Close-up of colorwork design