What I did .....

....on my Christmas vacation.


I knit hats, not one, but two!! I'm kinda hat picky. I have a head for hats. But not those tight cap type thingies that can be knit up in a snap. I look best in something with a brim that doesn't make me look like a pinhead. So I opt for hats with brims. One is B. Marie's bucket hat. The more intrepid among you can page back to last winter, when I made not one, not two, but THREE of these hats. (I'm no quitter.)All three were made with Patons SWS because I was enamored by how well it felted, soy and all. However, I was not enamored by how disproportionately the stuff felts--too much in length not enough in width. My buckets looked like hippie felts. Not bad, but not the look I wanted. So I tried yet another, but this time two things were different: 1) the yarn. I used Patons Classic merino and 2)I bossed my felting around. Even though the stuff tried to felt too short, I yanked and pulled and the proportions are so much better. It only took ONE skein of Classic merino and felted like a dream. I cast on on December 30 and was finished the evening of January 1st. Happy New Year indeed!

On the left is the cloche from Elegant Knits. It also only took one skein of Classic Merino, with a second for the contrasting stripes--but I used hardly any. It also has iris beads in the stripes. This was my traveling knitting, and literally only took a few days even with sporadic knitting. I was a tad concerned about how the neutral and white would felt, but I need not have worried. Everything felted beautifully.

This next photo is of a cat tunnel from "Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair". Every year I make something for the "kids". One year, Pi Beds, then catnip filled mice, this year a tunnel.


I'm told that "Velcro" has taken to hiding in the tunnel just to ambush his arch rival "Demetia". Glad everyone is happy....We aim to please.








And finally the Sock Monkey Hat was a huge success. Doesn't she look happy?



















So my final Christmas knitting tally is:

A Multidirectional scarf. (Fun knit will do it again)
Monkey socks (already started another pair)
Moebius scarf (many more in my future)
Two Sock Monkey Hats
Two ribbed hats
Fuzzy Feat
Cat Tunnel - which was remarkably like knitting an afghan, and which I will never do again.

So there you have it.

Now what the heck is in the water in Iowa?