Love this yarn

SO much that when I finished these...


I went back to the yarn store and bought another skein so I could make a matching hat...

which I started at the beach today...


I did plan to knit this hat top down, and fiddled around with a few stitches on my double pointed needles, but I wasn't sure whether my attempts to increase for the crown were going to result in a nice smooth rounded result or a weird bumpy effect. In the end, I whipped out my #5 (3.75 mm) Boye interchangeables and just cast on 120 stitches (I think my gauge is 6 sts to the inch, but I didn't have a ruler or tape measure with me to check the gauge on the mitts).

This evening, while watching a British police drama on DVD, I made much more progress - about three inches total now (an inch of ribbing, then stockinette).

Which reminds me....I wanted to tell you how I measure things when I don't have a ruler around. My hand, from the crease at the wrist to the base of my middle finger, measures 4 inches. Then each section of my middle finger measures one inch. So I can quite accurately measure 4, 5, 6 or 7 inches by just using my hand. (Ahem, I use it to measure my KNITTING, so stop that tittering in the back there!)