Validation from a real knitter

It is 2 am on a Saturday night, and yours truly is eating nachos, watching the Olympics (oddly enough, more ping pong.  Perhaps I have finally found my muse?), and blogging.  The party never stops at 151.

I have a coworker who is a fellow knitter and we often talk about our projects and bring them in, although she almost always has some sort of project, whereas pre-Ravelry I could go months between mine.  A couple months ago she signed up for a top down sweater knitting class.  Not long after I started a hat for Paul-John.  This has provided constant conversation, since she had never done top down before, and I made my first (crochet) top down cardigan and a top down sweater (currently hibernating) just last winter.  She has never done fair isle knitting and this was my first foray into it, so a lot of excitement all around about new techniques.  

In this time she has finished two entire sweaters, and I am halfway done with this hat.  I have always been a slow knitter, but this also includes the time it took to design a pattern (I have made plenty of hats just winging it, but this turned out to be a completely different monster) make half a hat, frog, redesign, and am now once again only about halfway done.  Still, she has knitted two entire sweaters, and all I have is half a hat.  

Since the pattern was visible enough to not look like just a lot of random color changes, I finally brought it into work.  Although proud enough of my work, on the needles and pre-blocking it is pretty bumpy and not necessarily as awe inspiring as i expect it to be when finished.  Even still, Nancy was very impressed with my technique and just as impressed with the pattern (yes, dorky enough to bring in my excel worksheet) and the fact that I designed it myself.   She asked me to show her how I hold both strands, and I felt much too clever showing her my top thread and bottom thread and I how turn them in opposite directions in order not to twist them, and she said it made so much sense now that she has seen it in person.  She was even impressed with how the inside looked.  

And although ripping out the first hat nearly crushed my spirit, it really did help in the long run.  Revamping the pattern meant shorter carries, and more intuitive knitting with less time looking at the pattern.  And I am much more comfortable holding both strands while knitting instead of dropping the one I wasn't using and trying to guess how long the slack should be when its picked back up.  I am now zooming along - halfway done in rounds, but only 5 rounds away from decreasing, at which point it should really take off.   

Originally my goal was to finish the hat by next weekend, but based on my progress, I'm hoping to move that up a couple days.  Tuesday would be awesome, but I'll aim for Wednesday.