The last few rows of the souvenir Icelandic shawl were hard to get through. Each row was taking upwards of fifteen minutes to complete.
Last Saturday my youngest brother had the family over for lunch, and I didn't want to be mucking with hundreds of stitches, on a streetcar, in a heat wave. So instead I crocheted a hat:
The pattern is the Zelda cloche from the Spring 2014 issue of Interweave Crochet. The hat is worked sideways, instead of the usual bottom-up or top-down, and it actually fits very well (see the previous link for a photo of a model wearing it).
The lace motif is only on one side, although it wouldn't take much to make it symmetrical and on both sides. The total working time was only something like four hours, which is pretty good considering over two-thirds of it is rows of single crochet.
As for the yarn... it's left over from a shawl I made my mum last year. It used up just over the half the yarn I had left, and was a good reminder that sometimes stash-busting happens one small item at a time. With the grey yarn left over from the Icelandic shawl, I'll have a new hat/scarf/glove set.