Meet Sir Octavio Inkwell, Esquire

Please meet my newest FO: Sir Octavio Inkwell, Esquire.

I finished him the day I wrote my last blog post (he was mostly done at that point). I had to try out a few different yarns for the hat, but decided on this creamy-white KP Wool of the Andes that has been in my stash forever. The body of the octopus is made with Cascade 220. The black trim is Berocco Ultra Alpaca, leftovers from a linen stitch scarf I made 2 years ago. I love him, and right now he's sitting at my desk at work, hanging out.
I did buy 3 more mustache buttons (one large, two small), so I'll be making a few more of him in the future, but I needed a break from all that leg knitting.

After I finished him, I finished the first sock I was working on (see last post), as it only needed the toes sewn together. Then started on sock 2, which right now is also languishing because only the toe decreases are left. I need to just sit down and finish that, and I'm thinking I'll do that this weekend. I will definitely have enough yarn to finish, but I'm thinking I'll probably only have 5-10 yards extra after all is said and done. We'll see!

In the meantime, while I ignore the last two inches of my socks, I've been knitting a Jane hat. It's coming along pretty quickly, as I'm trying to complete a repeat every night (I don't have much knitting time during weekdays, maybe only 30-60 minutes). Last night I finished up body repeat #5 and started working on #6. If I go on a knitting binge, I should be able to finish this in the next few days, but I'm not in a hurry.

Here is a WIP pic from yesterday. I'm knitting it from some Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece that I've had in my stash for a long ass time (4-5 years I think?). Here is the best part, I have four skeins of this stuff, in two different colors, and I've never even used it! I've been hoarding it (albeit, a small hoard), but never even bothered to test it out and see if I liked it or not.
When I discovered Ravelry back in 2008 and realized just how many different yarns there were out there, I went a little crazy. I wanted to try ALL THE THINGS at once, which led to a huge increase in stash in a very short period of time. I knew I didn't "need" all this yarn, but despite knitting for many years, I was inexperienced with all this new and beautiful yarn and really wanted to test it all out. Now I'm finally getting through a lot of it, and finding that while I do love a lot of it, there is a large chunk of my stash that I just don't like or will never use. I've tried to be really honest with myself about it, to marginal success, but have been able to part with a lot of stuff recently. The more frustrating part of this, though, is realizing that I have so much more to go through before I will allow myself to buy new yarn. First world problems, right?
Anyway, back to the Jane hat. I'm loving the pattern so far, so we'll see how it turns out. If I like the end result, I might make another for one of my friends (they all love slouchy hats), but maybe not.. as I found another really pretty Jane Richmond pattern recently. Hmmm...