On February 2, 2020, the Washington Post reported that Punxsutawney Phil of Ground Hog Day fame had failed to see his shadow. According to weather prognosticators in the know Phil’s failure to see his shadow means that we are due for an early spring.

That was twenty-three days ago, which means that there isn’t much time for me to get any more hats done for winter 2020, so yesterday and today, when I had time, I worked on the two scrap buster hats that are my current front burner projects.

With the realization that there might not be that much of winter left, I decided to reduce the number of color decisions I had to make and when I reached the 10th stripe, I decided to simply repeat using the colors that I had used in the same order–until I changed my mind.

Here is how the two hats looked after the ribbed foundation and ten rounds of crochet:

I started to execute my new color plan. Two rounds of crochet later, I found my commitment to the new plan wavering. While I liked the striping result for the hat with the red foundation, I was less enamored of the effect on the with the pink foundation.

So, I left well enough alone with the red foundation hat, and I frogged the pink one back to the ninth row and executed a new plan for the pink foundation which, I thought worked better than my previous plan:

I now have four rounds left to crochet, a couple of dozen ends to weave in, 60 or so lengths of yarn to cut, and then two braids to plait, but it looks as though I will probably be able to finish them both in time to beat the deadline that Punxsutawney Phil has set for me and crocheters all over the northern hemisphere.