Nearly instant

An e-mail from a wonderful friend on Saturday morning was just the excuse I needed to cast-on that immediate gratification project I'd been looking for! My friend, who was out of town visiting her daughter, couldn't wait to share the good news - her long-awaited first grandbaby is on the way!

A quick search for a pattern and an even quicker look through stash resulted in a likely combo - purple is a good, gender-neutral color, right? And if I double-strand the Malabrigo worsted, then I'll pretty much have a bulky weight - perfect. This is the Jacinto colorway - fluffy soft and gorgeous to work with. The hat is blocking now, and needs a big fat pom-pom on top, but otherwise it was less than 3 hours of knitting, start to finish. I'll be having lunch with my friend on Friday, and I hope she'll love it - at worst, she'll appreciate it as it's intended - a goofy, can't-wait-to-celebrate gift.

Quick note to self - by counting the strands in the hank before winding, then carefully re-counting to divide the hank in half, I came within inches of rolling a perfect, doubled ball, with the 'fold' buried in the middle, so I may have 30 or so yards left - enough for an Ipod cozy or some other teeny thing. Sometimes things work out!

Another bit of e-mail good news received Saturday was word that my SFS package arrived safely, and that my socks had been pronounced 'perfect' by the group's founder, organizer, and cheerleader, Kim - otherwise affectionately nicknamed 'Sarge.' I'll admit to being a little intimidated by her at first -she seemed awfully picky and at times, quite stern about insisting that knitters get things right. The more I've read from her on the Yahoo group site, though, the more her generous heart shines through, and it's clear now that she just wants to provide items that are of consistently high quality for our troops. I can't imagine being in her place - trying to manage hundreds of knitters of varying skill levels who are all working remotely, plus collating and packaging piles of socks, beanies, other goodies of all kinds - what a woman! Her praise and appreciation really mean a lot.

Guess it's back to the single-digit needles now, though it will be a while before I get back down to 0's, I'm sure. I'll get there eventually, but maybe not just yet.