Birthday gifts done-early!

My daughter turns 10 on Friday. 10! Anyway, she asked for a cardigan and since it's trying to be nice outside I figured a warm cardigan isn't something she would need right now. I went for this lace, short-sleeved cardigan that will come to just above her waist. Something for a chilly morning or cool evening. I think she'll like it. I used some leftover baby sport yarn so it is soft and light. I might need to make more of these for some of my 7 nieces. You can find the free pattern here.

I also knitted up this little hat for her. I used leftover baby sport weight yarn again, so this hat is more of a fashion statement than something that will keep her warm. She's a bit of a girly girl but she also requested "punk rock" and "skull" stuff for her birthday. I think this will do.

Close-up of the beaded skull. I think this was my first time knitting with beads and I think it went ok. If I made this again I would knit  a round after the border before starting the beading since the first row of beads doesn't sit as nicely as the others. You can find the free pattern here.

Now that I have these 2 gifts done with a few days to go before her birthday I'm not sure what to do with myself. Should I try to make her something else? Work on gifts for my 2 nieces who also have birthdays in June? Or work on something for myself? Or perhaps even quilt?

Well, of course self-knitting won. I started these socks Wednesday during my daughter's piano lessons. None of the above projects were really portable at the time and I wanted something easy to work on. I worked on them some more yesterday after I finished the skull cap.

I've also made some progress on my cabled cardigan. This pattern is from the book "Contemporary Irish Knits". It's a lovely book. I don't own it, yet, but copied this one pattern when I got it out of the library.

First pattern repeat is finished and I've started the second. You can see by the slight curve at the top that I have also started the waist decreases. I have 3 more waist decrease rows to do then I'll set it aside and work on other projects