FO: a prototype

Though I haven't been posting much (either to here, or to Ravelry), I *have* been knitting a lot this summer, I swear! In between my two part-time summer jobs, I finally had the chance to finish this hat prototype, and - more importantly - decipher my scrawled notes and turn it into a pattern, which I just put up for test knitting this morning.

I both love and dread test knitting; it's a huge rush to see people make your pattern (or, as I triumphantly pointed out to Iain the first time I saw it happen: "Look at that scarf! I TOLD HER TO DO THAT!") But, the moment I send the PDF off to the testers, I can't stop worrying that it makes no sense, that it won't fit, that I accidentally did that weird thing I can apparently do in Word where you drag bits of text around without realizing it, which totally happened in the final draft of my English honors thesis on the Faerie Queene back in college, and is now preserved for posterity in the basement of the library archives. Anyway. Still, ever-present murmur of anxiety aside, I always get super excited when it comes time to get something test knit. It never ceases to amaze me that there are people willing to donate their time and yarn, and I've always found it to be a really positive experience. 

As for the hat - I drafted the leaf pattern at the start of the summer, but it took ages to get here! It was originally supposed to be a hand-warmer using a totally different pattern, but then I found this slightly crooked leaf in a Japanese stitch library, and tweaked it to come up with this instead, which, as it turns out, looks not so great in a hand-warmer but much nicer (I think, anyway) in a hat. Still undecided as to the name, but - in the Thisbe vein of Ancient Greek lady names - I am tentatively calling it Phaedra.