A bunch of FO's - and more on the way!

Yes, I've been MIA.  No, I have not been slacking off.  In fact, I've been so busy that I haven't even had time to post!

I've been doing some major cleaning and reorganization of my craft room, which included the purging of stuff I know I was never going to get around to using, as well as finishing up a few old projects that have been hanging around.  I've also been working on the biggest sewing project of my entire life (yes, bigger even than the Christmas quilt), which has consumed pretty much all my free time these last few weeks.  I'll have to save the details for a separate post.

First up, a granny-square afghan.  I originally started this as a gift for someone about 7 years ago.  I love the pattern for this square, but it was extraordinarily time consuming because of all the color changes. I got about 1/4 of the way done and realized it was going to take me a million years to make it as big as I wanted, so I abandoned ship and did a different, faster (one-piece) design.  Which left me with roughly 1/4 an afghan that then sat in storage, forgotten.  Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, when I found the squares in a bin and thought to myself, I may as well stitch these together and see what I can do with it.  I think it'll make a nice little lap blanket.  Or maybe baby/toddler afghan.  Still not sure what I'm going to do with it.  I thought about trying to sell it, but I'll probably gift it to someone instead.

Then here's another hat that I actually finished a while back but just never got a chance to post.  It was a commission by a friend for her son, who wanted a football hat.  I had to come up with the fair isle football design myself, and I'll confess, I'm not 100% happy with it.  But I'm also not sure how I could have improved the shape of it.  I do otherwise love it though, especially the yarn I used, which was a wonderfully soft & yummy wool/bamboo blend.

I have two more finished hats too, but I keep forgetting to take pictures of them. One is a hat I started last month as a gift for a friend's daughter.  It has a fair isle heart design all around it, which I adapted from a pattern book.  I love the hearts, but unfortunately, it turned way too big, so now it's probably going to end up as a hat for E.  Or I may put it away and sell or gift it next winter.

The other one is a hat I made for E.  After seeing the owl hat I made for a friend's son, E requested one of her own.  Knowing how rough she is on her things these days, I opted against using the same wool/cashmere blend yarn and instead picked up some Lion Brand Thick & Chunky Wool-ease.  It turned out a teeny bit bigger than the original, but she seems to be ok with it.  I still need to sew on the face, which I've been rather lazy about.  I'll try to get pics up soon.

Edit: here's the heart hat!