Two Finished Things

I finished two things this week. This is one of them:

(old broken image link,oops)

(My first hat! My first cable stitches!)

This is the other:

(Blurred for Spoilers, and because first drafts are not meant for Mortal Eyes)

With both the hat and the novel, I found that I started going faster and faster as I approached the ending, and that has led to the last bits of both projects being a bit messy and wild. Fortunately I can revise the novel, and the top of that hat doesn't really show when I am wearing it, unless I happen to be around enormously tall people.

[Tangent question for my knitter-friends: is it sensible to assume that if the leftover yarn I have weighs more than the finished hat, I could knit another one with it?]

In other news:

My husband and I went to see Cirque du Soleil last month when they were in Boston. The show was Amaluna, and I loved it. The underlying story was loosely based on The Tempest, but with a mostly-female cast (Prospera played a mean electric cello, and had an all-girl backup band and a host of Amazon warriors).

One of my favorite acts of the entire show was "The Balance Goddess": one performer, holding the entire audience captive as she built an enormous structure of carefully balanced wooden ribs. There was a bit of music to start, but eventually it all fell to silence, until all that was left was her breathing. It was absolutely mesmerizing!

And now I am off to wander around listlessly in post-novel ennui for a bit.