hats and blankets and freeform, oh my...

I'm sick. The winds yesterday were so strong they took my power out a couple of times, which was mildly annoying. Worse, they seem to have brought some sort of illness with them as both M and I are now sick. My throat hasn't hurt this badly since my tonsils came out when I was 10 and I'm running a fever of 102. Last night I asked M if he had turned up the gravity in the apartment as everything seemed so...heavy...
Speaking of the apartment, they left a note on the door yesterday saying they'd be coming by today for safety inspections, replacing air filters and checking fire alarms and extinguishers and such. They've been doing this on the various buildings all week, so why couldn't they provide a little more notice? So I had to do a quick cleaning of the laundry room and such. The rest of the mess they'll just have to deal with. I'm too sick to vacuum or throw all the yarn back in the closet.
Yarn... I joined up with Jenny Dowde's group on Ravelry (and also the Yahoo group) and am now participating in the Think Pink Challenge. I've had her book for quite some time, but had never really gotten the appeal of freeform knitting. Well, I actually tried doing some of it the othre day and it is so much fun! Strangely liberating and addictive to learn that I can just do it as I bloody well please and the knitting police are not going to show up and tell me I mustn't do it thusly. I'm doing it the way I want to and it's not wrong at all. How delightful. Here are some pictures of my first freeform fragments (the color of course is because the finished item will go to breast cancer research charities.)

This was my first one. It used a pattern from the book Freeform Knitting and Crochet by Jenny Dowde

This is my second attempt. No pattern here, just playing with the yarn.


And this is my 3rd piece. I think I grasp the concept now.


And this is all three pieces sort of assembled.

I think I could use this technique to make things my mom would adore, but it might be a little too much for me personally except in very small bits. Maybe a bag or even a scarf, but anything more than that would be overwhelming on me, imho.

I began the stained glass window hat last night while M was watching wrestling. My favorite cast on for hats is the tubular cast on found here. The cast on is all I managed to get done, but I have a plan... oh yes, I have a plan.
I have also finished the first hex for the baby blanket M promised a coworker of his. They are expecting their first in the summer and he volunteered me to knit a baby blanket for people I've never met. Of course I couldn't just do something simple, that would be too easy. So I have chosen the Mountain Laurel Counterpane. It isn't as hard as I feared it would be; I had M bring me a clipboard with a sliding ruler thing on the side to keep track of what line I was on and that made it even easier. I would have used the spiral bound index card trick again, but since this one will never be a travelling project (moving a project with 6 dpns in it is just begging disaster to strike.) I'm using Caron Simply Soft in red. I would have preferred a deeper red than the one I got, but they just didn't have the right color in a yarn soft enough and affordable enough, so this one will work fine.
I think I will change my Ravelry blog listed to this one. I haven't been to my livejournal site in so very long that I think it can be considered abandoned. And since I do hope to continue posting here at least once a week, this would make more sense.
I need to go lie down now. I'm feeling kinda woozy and the apartment people should be here soon.