I am so out of the habit of writing anything but trip reports here that I completely failed to mention something significant I did at home last month: I knitted something. Started it and finished it. A friend was having a charity drive for hats and gloves and mittens, and I used that as motivation to pull out my needles and basic hat pattern and made this:

I admit I had to look up a tutorial on how to do the stretchy cast on but once past that the process came back to me. I was even pretty happy with how the decreases came together on the top:

I haven’t put this into Ravelry yet; I visit there even less often these days than I write here. The yarn I used was from the part of my mom’s stash I brought back to Idaho with me after my brother and I cleaned out her house. One skein had lost its label so I had to make an educated guess as to its fiber content. That same skein had also suffered some fading at one end, which made for very subtle flecks in the blue sections. I decided that was fine; just added extra visual interest. But I haven’t added that yarn (or plenty of other yarn that’s come into my life in the last several years) to Ravelry either, so that’s another hurdle. Maybe I’ll get over it; maybe not. Regardless, it felt good to get something on and the off the needles; I want to start something else soon.