A veritable hat factory.

While there has been much time this weekend devoted to my last dreadful project in my Cataloging class, there has also been knitting! Some of it even in public! In South Pasadena, no less! Sadly, the subjects doing the knitting are a bit camera-shy, so no documentary evidence of their public activities is available.

However, their finished objects love the camera. First up is the Russian Wool Hat:

Supporting it is an orange and blue Debbie Bliss Chunky Merino stashbuster:

And my personal favorite, in red Cascade Pastaza:

The red hat began life as the Devil Hat from the first Stitch ‘n’ Bitch book. But after playing around with it for a while, I decided I liked it as-is. unadulterated by devil horns or earflaps. I knitted it a bit longer than recommended, allowing for the option of turning up the seed stitch brim, or pulling it down over my ears. You know, for those cold Southern California winter days…

During the dwindling remaining hours of the weekend, there may be progress on Branching Out or Misty Garden. Or not, because of the Cataloging Project That Ate My Brain. There will, however, be dreaming of waking up on Christmas morning to this sight*:

(Um, yeah. That’ll happen.)

*Lifted from The Knitting Garden website. If the giant media conglomerate for which I work provides its staff with holiday bonuses this year, I am *so* buying that. The chances of this actually happening, however, are somewhere in the vicinity of impossible-to-none.

 

When I grow up…

…I want to be an alpaca farmer!

Well, you know. If the librarian thing doesn’t work out.

Why the sudden alpaca love? Well, having finally splurged on some, I may never knit with anything else. Alpaca kicks cashmere’s butt! So beautifully soft, and not quite so outrageously expensive – what’s not to love?

Add to that the fact that, according tho the Blue Sky Alpacas site:

An alpaca is a small, rare and curious and intelligent fiber-producing animal sheared once a year for the most luxurious fiber in the world.

What could be better than spending the rest of one’s life around small, curious, intelligent animals that produce soft, soft fiber?

One can dream, can’t one

 

Manos del Uruguay hat.

It’s done, and I’m quite pleased with myself:

Now underway: wristwarmers to match.

 

Russian wool.

I finished the Manos hat, except for the earflaps and I-cord – waiting for my boyfriend the UPS Man to bring me some DPNs. So in the meantime, I’ve decided to become my own personal hatmaking industry – here’s the start of the roll-brim hat from Last Minute Knitted Gifts:

I’m using this Russian wool that I bought on eBay – it’s called Rovnitza, and I *think* I love the stuff. It’s the first wool/synthetic blend I’ve encountered that I actually like – the stuff feels like merino, totally soft and un-scratchy. We’ll see how it wears, before I declare my undying love for it… If you want some colorful cheap yarn, though, I suggest you head on over to eBay and search for "Russian yarn" or "Rovnitza" and see for yourself.

I especially love the label on this yarn. The Russian woman spinning wool just about sums up why, when I took a year of Russian in college, my fellow students – mostly immigrants from Odessa looking for an easy A – kept insisting that since I was technically ethnic Georgian, I was *not* Russian at all:

She’s a rather, um, statuesque blonde. Unlike the short, stubby brown- and black-haired folks I’m descended from. Interesting how the blonde ideal persists in countries other than the U.S. of A., hmmm…

But I digress. Russian wool. It kicks Lion Brand’s ass!

 

Wildflower.

Hey! I’m still knitting! Slow no progress on the leaf scarf, but last week’s all too brief visit to Black Sheep Knittery resulted in the purchase of some Manos del Uruguay in Wildflower, which is quickly becoming an Earflap Hat from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts:

I absolutely cannot wait to finish this and wear it! Just looking at those pretty colors is enough to make me forget that library school is conspiring against me.

Well, almost enough. It helps, anyway

 

Baby sock?

 

Do not adjust your monitors.

I’d like you to meet Flora – she is neither green nor orange. True, she *contains* green, but, well, that’s different:

Then there’s her mindless and nameless companion,  your basic Noro seed stitch number:

And – back to autumnal shades of orange – my pathetically slow progress on Branching Out v2.0:

I’d like to be spending the rest of the day with one or more of those fine ladies, but instead, it looks like it will be spent with this man:

Oh, Mister Dewey. Why were you such a jerk? I actually *like* your classification scheme, despite its western-centric focus. It has symmetry! It has logic! But that personal stuff of yours with the womanizing and the antisemitism, well – eew. Just – eew.   

 

Nice pair!

Why yes. Yes I am obsessed with socks.

 

Sock it to me!

Yeah, you knew I’d say that, right? But look! I made a baby sock! And it’s – green!!

It was fun. It was easy. It was worth learning in a class rather than trying to muddle through on my own, because although it’s easy to do, it’s not necessarily easy to understand the written instructions.

Next up in Sock-Land: the Comfy Socks from Knitscene. Already started, in fact, in yet another color that is neither green nor orange.

 

Ready for her close-up.

Here’s a detail of the leaf scarf, all blocked and ready to wear:

Note to library-science types: the AACR2 comes in handy while blocking; it does the dual job of weighing down your knitted object *and* keeping cats off of it!

And here’s the yarn for Leaf Scarf v2.0:

I’d like to say I’ll start it this weekend, but – between lib school homework and the sock knitting class I’m taking on Sunday, I doubt there will be time. So, next week maybe.