Hats. Wowee.

I’ve been down with a case of the “not feeling so good”, so I’m blogging to you live from my couch, wrapped in my owl blankie, sipping mint tea with a candle burning in hopes of eradicating the “aroma” produced by Cheech and Chong next door (note: it’s not working) . I made a silent New Year’s goal to get back with the blogging on a more regular basis, since my little corner of the internet is so quiet I’m not even getting spam comments anymore, but this week has not been so very kind to me. Stomach revenge and a service light shining brightly on the Coche dashboard, not so much fun. Anyhoo. We all come for the finished objects, right?

The Cabled Beret has been finished since the Great Blizzard of Ought Eight, about a month ago. It kept my head warm during numerous mornings waiting at the bus stop while the snow was falling, and didn’t let my head get wet when the snow melted after I got on the bus. A fine hat, indeed.

I’ve been told not to apologize for my cooking, and sometimes I think that sentiment should extend to other aspects of my life, but not this photograph. I apologize profusely for the blurry, odd angled, emo-kid-with-a-web-cam-ness of this pic, but it was the only one I took that got the whole hat in the frame, so there you have it. I’m a horrible self portrait photographer. Alert the press. But allow me to point out the reasons I love this hat. My head is apparently huge (22 whopping inches in circumference), and I have a hard time finding a hat to encompass my ginormous bobble head, so I’m pleased that this hat covers my head and my ears. Nice. Also, I think the cables to be quite nifty. Even if C did say it gave me a mushroom head.

A better view of the hat? As you wish.

This hat was so well liked by a similarly large craniumed co-worker that she requested one of her own. Who am I to refuse hand knits to solve a problem, especially one I know so well?

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to capture the color of this one, an aptly named “Italian Plum” colorway by Cascade, but trust me, it was so juicy and purple I wanted to take a bite. Are specs really necessary? Ok, fine.

Yarn: Cascade 220 in some green color and “Italian Plum” (yum!)

Needles: Crystal Palace Bamboo DPN’s US size 6 and 8

Pattern: Cabled Beret

Mods: none

Another Cabled Beret is in the works for another big headed co-worker (Sisterhood of the Buffalo Skulls, anyone?), and after that I think I’ll have to stop with the made to order knitting. It’s a bit draining when I can’t call my knitting time my own, and I think that’s a lot of the point with knitting for me. It’s time to call my own.

I have a few other projects in the works, but I do have a touch of the startitis right now, and keep thinking distracting thoughts of lace, while I already have the Lace Ribbon Scarf over 2/3 complete, and having daydreams of cables when I’m over half way done with the Druid Mittens (lazy lazy Raverly links, I know).

More of the same

More snow. More hot chocolate. More hand knit socks and boots. More hat hair. And more gauge problems with new hats.

I seem to have an “every other” success pattern with hats. The last one I made, for my boss, came out beautifully. The one before that is half finished in the scrap yarn and odd ball bin, and will never see the light of day until I decide to frog it and reuse the yarn. The one before that was Le Slouch, which I’ve been wearing all week. Before that, this happened.

With hat karma firmly in place, I cast on the Star Crossed Slouchy Beret (Ravelry link) on Sunday night, hoping to have another hat to wear this week. The first attempt was far to small. I ripped that out and added a pattern repeat. That was far too big. I went back to the original stitch count and went up a needle size. That seemed to be working, so I kept going. But instead of a cute slouchy beret like all of the hundreds I’d seen and drooled over on Ravelry, I got this.

Notice the lack of slouch and the all encompassing beanie-ness of it. I don’t do beanies. They give me a pinhead. And since I’m not a tiny little wee girl, the pinhead look isn’t a good one for me. I wanted to fling this down in disgust and never look at this yarn again and just get on with other projects…. but it’s cold out there, and I’ve been wearing the same hat all week. I need a new hat. The worst part of all this snow is the fashion problems, at least  for me. So I thought long and hard about the temperature outside at 5:30 am. And I thought about the Yarn Harlot’s questions to ponder when you create a bad hat. Is it a tea cozy? Is it a purse? Is it a skein of yarn? I decided I had a skein of yarn on my hands, and started over on another pattern, saying good bye to my dreams of Star Crossed Beret wearing. Star crossed, indeed.

I cast on with the length of the ball of yarn, and knit until I ran out. Then I unraveled the top of the Star Crossed Beret and joined it in. I didn’t feel like unraveling and winding it all into another ball. I have to admit, this method is working out nicely. So now I’m knitting the Cabled Beret (Ravelry link) in Cascade 220 as quickly as I can so I don’t have to go out in the snow again in the same hat. (As a foolhardy act of rebellion against the ugly jeans, I went out today in a dress and tights. I couldn’t feel my toes when I got home.) I’m thinking I’m going to have to block it to get it in the correct shape, which is just odd to me. Who blocks hats? I mean, generally, not if it’s stranded or lace or something. It just seems odd to me.

Hopefully, this will be done by Monday, so something new can give me hat hair at work.

I’ll leave you with a picture of last weekend’s jaunt through the Ladd while it was snowing. Today was much the same, but far less charming.