Hats and Skullies and Beads, Oh My!

The Beaded Cable Hat is done. Pix on Ravelry and Flickr, but those are duplicates of here and previous entry.


The next project is another pirate hat for a niece who hopefully doesn't know about this blog. This is my second Pirate Hat. A teen niece who loves lime green AND pirates. How could I not do this, and how could it not be perfect for her?
I think I will only do two repeats of the skulls, due to all the stuff at the brim. I used the last of the beads from the pink hat to make the eyes (or, I guess it would be eye sockets) for the first set of skulls. I have some metallic gold seed beads that might look good for the next repeat. I think RED ones would be awesome, but I'm trying to use up what I have.

Finally, a bit of STUNNING news -
My daughter found my wedding ring, which I thought was lost forever about 3 months ago. It is a little snug right now for my ring finger, so I'd been wearing on my pinky finger. Obviously, it's a little big for that. I noticed it gone right after returning from grocery shopping. I called the store but of course they hadn't seen it. It is not a large stone, but it's conceivable that someone still might have seen it on the floor and helped themselves. Or, it could have been swept up in the trash. I also called the restaurant - we had treated ourselves to brunch that Sunday morning. In fact it might have been Father's Day and that was why we went out, as DH usually cooks a big breakfast on Sunday morning and he "got the day off." I also did a cursory check around the car, with no luck. Once we started tearing up the yard end of June - details on the remodel blog - I knew that if it HAD fallen off then, it was hopelessly gone - it was needle in a haystack time, and soil removed from one place was being replaced somewhere else. Turns out it never left the house. She was looking for her ipod headset and went rummaging under my computer desk and there it was. Whatever frustrations there may be with a no-longer-teen-but-still-adolescent daughter, they were all forgotten for a while when she called me so excited I couldn't make out what she was saying at first. Life is good.

Ahoy mateys...

Nearly finished object. The hat is actually quite large. I started with a provisional cast-on to pick up for the lining as pattern suggests. But it's already nearly double-thickness because of the stranding. It's very deep already. So, I've decided to pick up the provisional cast on I will do two rounds each of white and then black in garter stitch - I started with a garter ridge as the "fold" point. I think that was already in the pattern.

Do you see the error, repeated in each panel, that I am leaving in there? Ooh, I feel so naughty.

And just to show that it's not all about knitting - we also have quick and dirty cooking. This is no-boil lasagna and it turned out pretty darned good, for a Thursday night, when my fave option for dinner is, "Meet me at Wendy's."

If you haven't checked out the remodel blog (link on the house button in sidebar), then take a look. We are on our way!

Thanks for checking in.

Frustrations with Fair Isle

I love Fair Isle. I do. I love the "bang for the buck" with color, etc.

But, I'm a little concerned over the uneven stitches. They are not puckering, and I don't have floats because I use the method espoused by Philosopher's Wool, so yarn is caught every other stitch.

Will soaking and a little gentle "guidance" during blocking resolve this? Using black and white, there is bound to be some view-through and I'm not so worried about that.

The other frustration is, I got complacent by the time of the third row of skulls, and made the same error 4 times, once in each panel repeat, because I really didn't pay attention to the chart. I tried laddering it back, but with 6 rows x 2 strands, trying to minimize floats and the idea that I would have to do it *4* times, it truly was faster to just frog back the rounds and do it over. I'm back to where I was, and I see I made the VERY SAME mistake. This time, it stays.