Cute Hat, Sports Hat

Sounds very Seussian, but that's what I've got for you today.

I made myself a very cute spring time hat:

The pattern is Sockhead and I love it so much.  The colors are pretty, the weight of the hat is just right for this time of year and the slouchy style makes me feel trendy and stylish. Never mind that I'm wearing sweatpants and a 10 year-old coat to walk the dog, I just assume that all anyone sees is my cute and trendy hat.  It certainly is the brightest part of my exercise get-up.

The yarn is Fleece Artist BFL.  I bought one skein, knit a shawl and had a lot left over.  So I knit this hat and I still have a lot left over, enough perhaps for a pair of gloves to match.  That's one big skein!

And now for the sport hat:

It's a Thorpe, made of Cascade Ecological wool (also a big skein) and it's for a fan of the Wolverhampton Wanderers.  Merv is doing me a favour and in exchange, I agreed to knit him a hat.  Thorpe was a great pattern. If you've got to knit a large men's hat in black, this pattern works up super quick. Merv's got a team badge to sew on to it and I think it will look very sporty. 

After two weeks of renting a wheel and working on spinning thick, I've got a few skeins of handspun that I'm dreaming of knitting up into more Thorpes. It's a potato chip hat: betcha' can't make just one!

Thank you to everyone who wrote in with their own stories of silly parking accidents. It really does feel better knowing I'm not the only one.

Snap Shot

Grumble, grumble, grump, grump.

I'm in the demoralized zone. It's the weather. We've been walloped with more versions of precipitation than a teen-aged boy has excuses. Though on Friday morning the images coming from Japan were enough to quell my grumbles. It was quite frightening enough to me when we had a wee tremble last summer that left me feeling nauseous. Words fail me for this disaster, but I'm watching..

It's been a full month since I last posted here. There's been plenty going on, perhaps too much.  So here's a quick snapshot of my month:

• The body of Folklore is done and I'm sick of knitting navy sock yarn so that project has stalled.
• I finished a pair of socks and a hat.
• I'm taking some spinning lessons and rented a wheel which resulted in that brown skein of yarn up there. The fiber is from Hopeful Shetlands farm and it's the lamb's fleece of a Shetland/BFL cross.  It spun up beautifully but smells like a barn when wet.
• I bought an iPad and quickly became obsessed with playing Pocket Frogs and now Infinity Blade. I love my iPad and all the things it can do.  
• I started knitting Jim Kilronan from Cascade 220 super-wash sport, purchased from All Strung Out.  The yarn is lovely and soft and not navy. It makes me happy to see those cables pop and all that texture.

Now, I have a story to tell of my idiot moment.  Yesterday I was out and when I came back I always park my car in the garage. I have to get out of the car to open the garage door and then get back into the car to drive it in.  But yesterday, as I started to drive in, I saw a roll of aluminum flat-stock sticking out a bit in the path of my car.  So I quickly hopped out of the car to move it and saw my car slowly rolling towards me! I'd forgotten to put it into park!

I jumped back into my car and my brain failed me. Instead of stepping on the brake like a sane woman, I panicked as I watched my drivers side mirror slowly get crunched by the wall of the garage. What's worse, my leg was sticking out of the door of the car. I'm yelling no! about the mirror when the door started to close on my leg.

It sounds worse than it was. The pressure was quite hard, but my leg kept the door open which stopped the car from rolling forward. I collected my scattered wits, hit the brakes and put her in reverse. Once out of the garage, I turn off the car entirely and went into the house to freak out.

My leg is fine, my door is scratched, my mirror is toast, and my self-respect is on the floor. I was moaning about this incident most of the day yesterday till Jim told me his story. Over twenty years ago, he parked his car outside of a variety store and left it running (you could do that back then). When he came back out he found it at the other end of the parking lot, stuck in a big bush. He still doesn't know if he forgot to put it in park or if he knocked it into reverse as he got out. I gave him a big smooch and thanked him for being as big an idiot as me. And we both agreed, it could have been worse!