More hats.

There comes a time in every knitters life when she has to seriously sit down and think about her choices.  To evaluate the yarn which she has spun and worked into beautiful things and ask herself why?

Why the hell am I surrounded with more hats than I can ever wear?

I mean I *do* look good in them, and I *do* try to give them away, but cleaning my piles of clothes this evening has uncovered 18 knit hats in one small vicinity, with two more fresh off the needles.

Maybe I should sell hats?

Anyways, here is my go at the death hat, mark 2.  I love me some Fair Isle and I like the Binary Cable Pattern, so here is Death: Sweet Black Cherry Flavor using Black encore and the Cascade 220 from the death hat.

This is me, looking diabolical and plotting death:


I adore the way this turned out.  I am now in a mission to make one (probably slightly bigger) for Ruben in green and black; just like an old fashioned computer screen - then we'll see if he can read the binary.

Experimental Clara.



This pattern was given to me by Judith, a lovely knitter who makes the most wonderful things - none of them from a pattern. Yet every once in awhile a pattern piques her curiosity and she tries to make it.  When she gets frustrated with pattern reading she gives the pattern to someone else who will make it and then tell her how it works.

Somehow she was coming up with the wrong number of stitches per round, which I can't quite figure out why because my stitches per round were perfectly fine.  Maybe because some people read patterns differently?  The directions aren't wrong, per say, but they aren't the clearest directions out there.

Anyways it turned out pretty nicely - nicer than I thought it would when I started it.  But it's Lopi and it's slightly rough and slightly small.  It fits my head - but how many hats do I really need?

Wait a second...

Judith has a small head.  She doesn't mind rough wools.  This whole thing was her idea in the first place...

Experimental Clara is now her hat.



As a sidenote; I know alot of people don't like Lopi because it's scratchy, but it is warm.  disturbingly so!  I was knitting it and I wanted to see how the stitch pattern swirled so I put my left hand in the hat to hold it up and held it in front of my face.  After about ten seconds I realized my left hand was getting noticably warmer while my right hand was cold.

Remind me to make mittens out of Lite Lopi and knit a nice soft lining for them out of something yummy... because shit is this stuff warm!

Death, by hat

It's official.  I am D-E-D dead.

I have launched my weapon, killed my target, but I am also dead.

~*~*~*~*~*~

(Sit down, kiddies, it's storytime!)

So, we got the hat patterns on Saturday sometime just before 9 am.  If I had been living in PST like I was two years ago, I probably could have gotten the hat knit and mailed before the post office closed; but I now live in EST so I didn't sweat it.  Too much.

I opened the pattern (binary cables, how geeky-cool is that?!) and read it through, and looked at the yarn in my lap.  Chianti Lamb's Pride, Dark Magenta 220?  I had gotten the Cascade 220 wound up the day before, and it was lovely and soft.  I think I chose it because it was going to give a better cable stitch definition.  It was very nice to work with.

There was a knitters retreat that day in Hanover NH, and I went.  I told alot of very wonderful older ladies about my (somewhat crazed) competitive knitting.  They were highly amused.  I finished the hat itself later on while basking in the sunshine lights of White River Yarn's knitting den.  (They are those full specturm-mimic sunshine lights.  Most happy!).  Finished at 7:15 pm EST!  Post offices closed at 11:30 am EST.  BOO.  

Later, at home, I was looking at the hat, paranoid at all the posts saying the hat was short.  Well, I have a teeny head (and I hoped my target did too, which she does!  perfect!)  but I wanted something that gave a small edging, add a little weight, add a bit of a finished end, so I grabbed my trusty crochet hook and some baby brush alpaca (mmm, leftovers from the spiral hat) and crocheted as carefully as I could around the edge.  I had lots of time left!  That Sunday I decided I wanted me some Doctor Who.  And there is one place that carries it used... and also carries tons of other quirky things; so we picked up some amazingly fun skull key covers to go with the hat o' death, packaged it all up and shipped it out Monday morning eaaaarly.

Monday went by and I was informed (gleefully, I might add) by my target that she read my assassin was done.  Done?!  Oh no!  I had launched a weapon, but I was dead woman waiting!  My Target lives in California... my Assassin lives in Massachusetts.  That's practically in my backyard >.<

So I knit hats.
Alot of hats.  
And I wear every single one of them at least once.  Sometimes I wear them a few times.   But of all my dozens of hats, I usually end up wearing just one. This is my signature hat.  I love it.  It lives on my head:


Despite my better judgement I opened the package.  What have we here?  It's white!   It looks somewhat hatlike...


I should have known then and there that it was dangerous.  But I had my suspicions...


And then all of a sudden... it ATTACKED!  It flew at me, eating my signature hat!  Eating my head!  Aaaaugh!



Later they found me, my hat on my head, D-E-D, that spells dead.



I am consoled by the fact that my target is also dead, and her blog post about it is hilarious!

And My assassin?  haven't heard hide nor hair from her.  But from her blog she's a published author (She's got a website)  So I can say I got killed by a famous person!