Lina

There are times in life when you are forced to discard your expectations-- in a way, Lina here is a microcosm of my life right now:

I call it "Lina Meets Irene"*

She's still a lovely hat, she just won't fit the adult head I had intended her for. I'm sure there's a young girl (or young man) out there who loves this color as much as I do.

Project Notes

Yarn: String Theory Merino DK-- not quite enough left over from the Ramona Lace Helmet, but too much to waste. It's such a joy to work with beautiful hand-dyed yarn.

Pattern: Lina by Johanna of Joko Knits-- a very well-written pattern that includes an excellent description of how to cable without a cable needle. I'm always interested to see how different designers manage crown decreases with intricate pattern stitches-- these ones were particularly ingenious.

The Bottom Line: As my pile of yarn remnants grows, I'll be looking for more creative ways to use them up-- and I'm going to have to be flexible. The same can be said of the storms-- literal and figurative-- blowing through my life...


*Irene wreaked havoc on my weekend camping plans but, thankfully, did no worse to me-- if you've been flooded out, lost power, or otherwise sustained damage to limb and/or property, my sympathies!

Racing Stripe Beanie

The hats have been flying off my needles lately-- I finally decided to take the tersely-worded advice of one of my knitting friends: "Beanies." The one-hat deficit that August inherited from July has been made good... yes, friends, the word of the day, week, and month is beanies!

Starting with an utterly boring but (I think) stunningly perfect example of the genre, made from stash and scrap yarn and my own basic recipe:

For the record, he asked to be posed in front of the flowerbed!

It took me three tries to get the stripes just right-- isn't it funny how something as simple as a stripe can be so tricky? How one row more or less of a color can be either horribly wrong or magically right?

The yarn is Knitpicks City Tweed-- with a wee bit of Quince & Co. Osprey.

I have also been pondering the ideal depth of the beanie-- should it cover the ears entirely? Or leave just a bit peeking out? A folded brim cap gives one options, but the beanie must take a stand. Personally, I like a beanie that grazes the top of my earlobe-- any longer and my earrings get caught in the brim.

An earlobe is a very strange looking thing, no? Perhaps it should be covered...

I still have some July (and June!) hats to catch up on, but I'm nearing the home stretch-- only 16 hats to go!

Tying up loose ends

Quite literally... har har

My feelings for this project have been on quite a roller coaster for the past, well, month-and-a-half-- but I think I may finally be over the hump. This weekend I sat down and wrote a list of the people I still want to make hats for, as well as potential yarn and pattern pairings. Lo, and behold-- I have only 18 hats left! It was sort of an "Eye of the Tiger" moment.

And today I got another little boost-- I made Project of the Week on the Kelbourne Woolens blog! This thrills me to no end-- I love The Fibre Company yarns and Courtney and Kate are such talented designers.

Still, it's been a while since I've posted a finished hat-- when I think how long I start to hyperventilate a tiny bit-- but I'm hoping to fix that very soon. As for all those ends... if I weave in at least one per day, I should finish by December 1st!