Elfy Leaf Hat

It was pretty warm this year on Thanksgiving–I didn’t even have to wear my puffer coat. The day AFTER Thanksgiving, however, was very cold. So cold that I said to Adam, I am going to buy some yarn right now, even though I have a huge stash, and knit myself a hat. He scoffed, but I did it. I knit this hat in the two days after Thanksgiving, watching parts of Legally Blonde, Sleepless in Seattle, and Monster-in-Law, and strangely, all of Can’t Buy Me Love, which I had never seen before. (Yes, Adam has cable, and specifically, Oxygen or Lifetime, or some other woman-oriented channel. Can’t Buy Me Love was so cringe-inducing that I could barely stand to watch parts of it. And the fashion! Apparently high school seniors dressed like 40-year olds in the 1980s, with strange suede blazers. Monster-in-Law, well, the part that I saw of it, was ridiculous. I do, however, have a fondness for Legally Blonde, so I watched that happily.)

Pattern: Falling Leaves Chunky Hat, by Karen Clark or Choo Choo Knits. It’s free on Ravelry.

Yarn: Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Bulky, in Misty Blue. Okay, this yarn is a great value–I bought it for $8 at a new-to-me yarn shop, Annie & Co, on the Upper East Side, and it knit this whole hat, with earflaps and pompoms, and I still had some left over.

Needles: Set of 5 size 10 bamboo DPNs.
Elfy Leaf Hat

Here’s a photo of the back.

Notes and mods: First, I knit two or three rows of purls after casting on, to give the hat more of an edge. After I finished, I knit two short-row earflaps in reverse stockinette, added two i-cord cords and some pompoms (not shown) at the end. Voila! Super-cute. My sister says it looks like a Hershey’s Kiss hat, which is kind of true.

Elfy Leaf Hat

The pattern was fine for me width and height-wise–some people found it small on Ravelry, but just right for me!

Posted in Finished Objects 2009, Hats, Uncategorized at November 30th, 2009.

Sherbet Socks

After my most recent comment from a member of what the late William Safire would have termed the Gotcha Gang* I did some internet research and found out that sher-BERT, though an accepted spelling variant of sherbet,  is considered the less classy pronunciation among linguists. (Well, at least according to some listserv that I cannot find again.) Who knew?

* The other day, Adam was like “There should be a German term for things you dislike, but read/listen/follow anyway, because you enjoy disliking them.” Things in this category for me include William Safire’s column (well, when he wrote it) and the Ethicist. Yargh, how I dislike thee, the Ethicist. I do, however, love Savage Love without reservation. I think that the people who write to Savage Love at least have legitimate problems–often crazy, but legitimate–whereas the people who write to the Ethicist have extremely ridiculous problems, like, “Can I use the address labels that come in the mail without donating to the cause?” Here, totally apropos of nothing is my ranking of advice columnists:

1. Savage Love (hilarious and mean)

2. Miss Manners (hilarious and mean)

3. Dear Abby/Ann Landers, back when the founding columnists were still alive (not particularly hilarious or mean, but at least people wrote in with common problems)

4. Dear Prudence (okay)

5. The Ethicist (Nooo!!! I think the NY Times should totally get someone else instead of the Ethicist to write this column. Even that catty social Q & A guy in Sunday Styles would be better. Though I do enjoy groaning out loud each week at the horrible puns made by the Ethicist in each week’s answers. Also, the questions that are not totally ridiculous–like the one about address labels–are essentially the same question over and over again: “Someone in my life is racist and wants me, the letter writer, to do X [some kind of vaguely prejudiced activity]. How can I deal with this?” I do not feel that the Ethicist has yet come up with an actually helpful solution to this legitimate problem.)

On another note, I am clearly the only person left in the world who still reads newspapers and the advice columns in them.

Sherbet Socks

Pattern: Peak Experience, Mount Hood, by Betsy Lee McCarthy. (This is a pamphlet with two patterns.) I bought this pattern at a yarn store, but it seems like you can download it too.

I also learned to knit two socks at one time from the book  2-at-a-Time Socks. This book has errata, so be sure to download that first. I just followed the instructions in the book, but used the pattern stitch in the pamphlet.

Yarn: Luna Park by Ornaghi Filati, color 205, dye lot 77071. I used two balls at $7.50 each, from Seaport Yarn. So, $15 total.

Needles: I think I used a 40″ size 1 needle from Knit Picks.

Project started/finished: I think I started this project in early August and finished on Thanksgiving, so about four months.

Notes/modifications: Knitting two socks at a time is sort-of useful, but because it takes SO much longer to see any progress on the socks, it’s hard to feel like you’re actually achieving anything. On the other hand, it is impossible to lose a needle, and when you’re done, you’re done. I knit an afterthought heel and a round toe instead of the heel-flap heel and regular toe in the pattern. I also eliminated one pattern repeat in the leg (possibly not necessary), due to the comments on Ravelry that this sock knits up loose, and thus, decreased away the half chevrons necessary on the foot.

Also, I think because of the way I cast on, I was always one half of a round in the striping pattern ahead of the other sock in the patten, so as you can see in the toe, the stripes don’t quite match up.

Stay tuned for another surprise FO tomorrow!

Posted in Finished Objects 2009, Socks, Uncategorized at November 29th, 2009.

Socks

I was inspired by this Fig and Plum post, which she called “The UFO Chronicles, Part I.” I, too, have many Un-Finished Objects, so perhaps blogging about them will inspire me to get a move on and finish them. If only I didn’t have startitis.

Anyway, the socks. They’re almost done–I’m doing afterthought heels on them, which kind of makes them look like they have gross carnivorous plant mouths:

Socks

“We have come to eat you!!”

By the way, I had dinner on Friday on the Cafe on 2 at the Museum of Modern Art (free on Friday nights! Well, the museum, not the food) and these European tourists were fascinated by my mesh bag in which I keep my knitting. (You can see it in the top photo.) They were all “where can we buy this bag?!?” I was like, “Well, they are both easy and difficult to find. Easy, because you can find them in many stationery/office supply stores, but they often run out or don’t have the right size.” And they were like, “Ohhh, Staples?!?” And I was like, “No! Not Staples.” I always find them in mom-and-pop stationery stores, Japanese $1 stores, and occasionally, Sam Flax, the art store. But never Staples–they’re strangely hard to categorize, and Staples must not consider them true office supplies. Adam thought maybe Muji might have them, but that’s part of the joy of owning these mesh bags…you gotta look! (Plus they’re cheap–generally between $1 to $4.)

Posted in Socks, travelingproject, Uncategorized at November 22nd, 2009.

Traveling Project at Leonard Cohen

Hello blog readers! I am still alive! I sort of fell off the blogging wagon there for a while, for a variety of reasons, most of them good–I’ve been working on a big freelance project in-house (meaning I go into an office) and I had a bunch of other freelance assignments, all of which were leaving me little time to blog. Anyway, I’m hoping to get back into blogging this month, blah blah blah.

Anyway, I am still knitting–here’s a quilt square at the Leonard Cohen concert that we went to last month (it was great, even though we were sitting in front of the very loud and somewhat smelly concession stand, aka the very last row in Madison Square Garden).

There’s a bunch of new yarn/yarn-esque stores that have opened in New York, so I definitely need to visit and to blog about that, plus some other stuff. I’ll be baaaaaaaaack, as the Governator would say.

Posted in travelingproject, Uncategorized at November 15th, 2009.