January 3, 2006

Oops, I Did It Again

Happy New Year! I hope you all have a truly wonderful and prosperous 2006.

On Friday I asked if any of you had Loop-d-Loop. It turned out the LYS had a copy, so I went over at lunch and took a look. I found a couple of cute sweater and hat patterns, so of course I bought it. No self-control! But, what's a girl to do? The LYS didn't have any yarn that was wool or alpaca that didn't have a large percentage of acrylic. So, I left with no yarn for my hat. I briefly considered my stash, but didn't have anything in the proper weight for the particular hat I wanted. I stopped by the yarn store in Laramie before I went home and walked in the door right before they closed. Fate, I tell ya. They had something I thought would work, so home I went. After a couple of hours (I had to start again to get gauge), I had this:

Project Specs:

Pattern - Corrugated Asymmetrical Hat by Teva Durham from Loop-d-Loop

Yarn - Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande in color 500 (black) - less than 1 ball

Gauge - 12 stitches and 18 rows per 4 inches

Needles - US #11 Addi Turbos

Thoughts - The hat is very soft and comfortable. I'm not sure how well the alpaca will hold up, but it's such a quick knit it wouldn't be difficult to knit another one. The pattern has you knit the hat flat, but I'm sure it could be knit in the round to avoid the seaming. That's what I'll do on the next one. It's a looser hat, which I think is beneficial for wearing to work - you avoid the whole hat hair problem, but the alpaca is warm enough that it doesn't matter if it's a bit loose. I was a little nervous about the horizontal "pattern", but I think it counteracts my little head quite nicely. As Claudia so nicely put it, I have a pin head and this hat is a good solution.

Just so you all don't think that I've been taken over by the desire to knit hats (which is kind of true), I made significant progress on Ombre and the Sock over the weekend. However, some of my knitting time was taken up with this:

Travis' cousin's daughter thought knitting looked fun, so we spent about 30 minutes playing with knititng. Supplies were limited to what my Mother-in-law had on had, but we eventually found some cotton and had fun for a little while. Then the fun wore off and we played Go Fish. Man, kids are a lot of work. I don't know how you moms do it. I was so tired by the time she went home I had to have a drink and fell asleep on the couch.