Happy Tuesday, people! I am happy to report that I discovered two of the circular needle pouches that were MIA: one crammed in a corner of the notions shelf (understandable) and another in a pile of papers on my desk (just wrong). I may need to do a stash deep-clean soon: in addition to the circular needle mess, I noticed that my Ravelry stash is falling out of step with my real stash, and notions are beginning to migrate all over the place.

But we can worry about all that later. Today, I have a finished object to show off!

Behold my Gothic Arches beret. Properly named Northanger Abbey, the twisted stitches on this beret remind me of the pointed stone archways that would have featured prominently in the Gothic novels that Miss Catherine Morland loved to read.

There’s not too much to say about the knitting: I went up a needle size, as always, and knitted the beret version. The entire pattern is charted–no “knit until piece measures” here. My row gauge is *always* short, so I threw in some extra length in the ribbed band. As fate would have it, the beret version of this hat is super slouchy, so I am now the proud owner of a hat that verges on hipster-toque-dom.

But it is very warm for being knitted with sock yarn, and it fills my need for a basic hat. When it was still cold, I discovered that I have hats in every color family except neutral, and it is never cold enough in Phoenix to go for that “I’m a crazed knitter and I made all my winter things” look.

I need to mention something about the sock yarn: It came out of my stash. This is big, people. Seven out of 12 projects last year were stash projects, but while smidges and single skeins were coming out of the stash, lots more was going back in. I didn’t keep track of how much, but trust me. It was a lot. I can promise that even more yarn will go in this year (let’s not discuss how much already has), and I will indubitably buy twice as much yarn as I need for some large project. So hey, if I can knit at least some things out of the stash, we can call it a win.

Maybe Melba needs a new sweater.