Can You Stand Another Hat?

Well, I guess you don't get a choice because we're all hats, all the time. (Is that the royal "we"?)

I made this little chapeau for another newborn, Solomon, who just hatched Thursday. I used Shine Worsted in a discontinued color that looks like pale ice blue in real life.

Am still working on the Mason-Dixon baby kimono in the same yarn, getting much further on it and have begun to seam it. I wish I had remembered before from the first one I did that it seems too short when done, and that I wanted to stop increasing but continue to knit the length. Nothing that a little picking up stitches won't fix, but I hope it will look nice.

I started a little hat for a child yesterday out of another Knitpicks yarn, a superwash sportweight in light cornflower blue. It's stockinette at the edge so it curls nicely and then after several more rows of stockinette I did about five rows of moss stitch. Now I am finishing the crown but haven't started the decreases yet. Last night was a movie and knitting extravaganza! (I guess you can tell that my shoulder wasn't giving me trouble!--I am resting my arm on a pillow and taking more breaks, so far so good!). DH and I watched a movie that DD#1 recommended, Guantanamera, which was great! And then we caught up with the times and saw another movie that she had recommended from 1990 called Awakenings, about people with severe impairment from encephalitis outbreaks in the 1920s who were helped (for a while) with levodopa. Pretty good movie, fascinating medical science (to me anyway) and also somewhat sad because much of what they suffered from and were relieved of for a time is part of Parkinson's, and my DSM has this. While she is not nearly as advanced as these people were with their symptoms, it is easy to see how a person could feel frozen and imprisoned by one's inability to make anything happen--movement, speech, even eye blinks.

On that cheery note, got to go get the weekend chores and errands done, because Monday night I go to New York! I'm taking six kids on a field trip to the Big Apple for a yearbook/newspaper/ literary magazine conference. We have a smashing literary magazine. 8^) But we want to make it better!

Another Rainbow Hat

And here we have hat #2 made from scraps of the Bazic wool left after the Diversity scarf. I believe I have come up with my worthiest recipient for the hat, someone who will 1) wear it and 2) like its fun and perky qualities. Who might that be, you ask? Stay tuned. Don't want to give it away. If you're wondering, no, there will be no more hats (or anything) from that wool because I have finally USED IT UP! But I bet there is something else Bazic in my future because I love love love that wool!

DH took this picture of me on Friday last week when I came home and curled up with my laptop and shared a glass of wine with him. Ahhhhh.

Almost finished the M-D Baby Kimono this past weekend but stopped when . . . you guessed it . . . I started getting too much shoulder pain. It's getting boring. But I'll finish it up in time to gift it to JA who is expecting a first little boy any day now.

I did some work on the double knit slippers I started 'way back when for Leonie. They are presently too big for her but by fall will probably not be too far from the right size. The knitting is going fine and I'm on #2 now, but with the variegated wool I find I'm confused sometimes about what row I should be knitting.

Rumor has it that there will be a Guest Blogger on Stacie's Adventures within the next day or two, DD#1 who is home from school on spring break. She is doing two color knitting now (in cream and yellow--the hat looks like fried eggs) and lording it over me because I'm "not adventurous enough." I think the fact that all she knits are HATS and nothing else says it all. And I think I'll get out the cable needles and show her a thing or two she doesn't know how to do. Not that it's a contest! ;^)

An Ode to a Gift of Knitting

(It would be a wonderful world if everyone given a hand-knitted item felt as blessed as he does!)

Ode to my Socks
By Pablo Neruda
Translated by Robert Bly

Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder's hands
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as though into two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin.

Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.

They were so handsome for the first time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that woven fire,
of those glowing socks.

Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere as schoolboys
keep fireflies,
as learned men collect
sacred texts,
I resisted the mad impulse to put them
in a golden cage and each day give them
birdseed and pieces of pink melon.

Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the very rare green deer
to the spit and eat it with remorse,
I stretched out my feet and pulled on
the magnificent socks and then my shoes.

The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty,
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.

Happy knitting and gifting of your knitting!
PS Still resting the shoulder (now shoulders) and thinking maybe the doctor is in my future. 8^(

FOs and a little quick knitting

I have been trying to knit a little again and test out the old shoulder. Not terrible but not pain-free either. A pillow under my elbow is a good thing, I've discovered. Sometimes I am getting pain in the other shoulder as well, in both cases across the front of my shoulder and collar bone. I notice the pain when I'm driving, interestingly enough. But enough about me. Here's some of my knitting.



Remember in December I finished a hat for Big Brother Chance? Here he is modeling it for me. His dad says he wears it all the time, which is a good thing because it has been darned cold in NoCal this January and February. My guess is he won't need it from here on out, but I'm thrilled he has worn it so much. I promised him another hat in any color he wants when he outgrows this one. Note to self: time to make something for Little Brother Ryder (born in December) that can be worn in warmer weather.

I have also finished the Diversity scarf from Purlescence, and am pretty happy with it except that I don't like tassels and the finish work doesn't please me (my own finish work, I should point out). I also struggled with the too tight bind off, which is a bitch with horizontally knit scarves. Something I need to learn some tricks for (use a huge needle to bind off with?) if I'm to make a horizontal scarf in future. I'd love to do the Diversity again, as it is so gorgeous and striking. I am also a big fan of Bazic wool (superwash too) for its amazing texture and softness.

From the remnants, I knitted this little four-row/color skater-dude cap for a baby--don't know which yet. It's not a good one for flipping up with a brim, so its stretchiness will have to save it, unless the baby is a peanut head. 8^)




Another FO: Here's the Beribboned bonnet that I made a few weeks ago, with the right ribbon threaded through it now. I found it at Stitches West actually, and it's probably rayon. Very soft and shiny, pretty. I had tried something I got at the craft store which had a nice pattern but was so stiff and scratchy, and soaking it did nothing to improve this. So out it came, and I waited till I could find a better option. This little hat is for my BFF Robin's granddaughter Lilly, who is about 7 months old now. It will fit her this spring and no more, but it's a nice hat and I am actually proud of it!

Last FO:
Finally, I made a mindless drop stitch scarf out of some leftover Homespun and another carrying yarn, which resulted in a soft scarf, but I am totally over the novelty/acrylic/homespun type yarn thing. So someone who needs a warm scarf in those colors will enjoy it I think.

Hope you're all knitting happily when you get the chance! Wishing you warmer, nicer weather too.