Hat-a-week, day 15

I have not had much time for knitting, and even less time for blogging, so here is a quick update on my latest project. I spent Saturday afternoon sorting through my stash; after only two hats I realized I could make a hat every week for a decade and still have too much yarn. So I went through my various sources of yarn and filled a bag of remnants and yarn I know I'll never use (lightweight yarn for baby sweaters, anyone?) to donate. I found an unholy snarl of yarn at the bottom of the chest that I ended up just tossing, along with a couple half-started projects full of dropped stitches because I pulled out the needles to use on another project. The chest of yarn now looks like this:

Some of the yarns I sorted into bags, like wool for felting and red, orange, and yellow yarn that I want set aside for a hat I have in mind...stay tuned!

I also started work on my brother's birthday gift. He requested a ski cap with the Mario logo. I decided the easiest way to knit it onto a hat was to start with a picture of the logo and transfer it to knitter's graph paper (which is different from regular square graph paper, since knit stitches are wider than they are tall). Here's the  logo pattern:

The main yarn I'm using is KnitPicks Swish Worsted, which is a superwash merino wool. I had a couple balls left over from a sweater I made my mom a couple Christmases ago. The white is the Hobby Lobby brand acrylic, which is also nice and soft. I worked the white circle using the intarsia method, which can only be done by going back and forth, so this is another hat I'll need to sew up the back when I'm done. For those interested, the M in the middle was done with Fair Isle. It could also be done in duplicate stitch after the hat is finished.

And here are some progress shots of the hat! 

Close-up of the logo:

I have until early next month to finish it up, so this hat will definitely be done on time!