Is your holiday knitting finished? (for this year, not last year)

I am famous for thinking that I 1. Knit faster than I truly do 2. Have more time than I truly do and 3. Will not bore of knitting a dozen of the same project. (I'm sure there are others but at the moment that's the best I can do). Shortly after Christmas last year I decided that the perfect gift for my husband's two sisters and their husbands would be lap afghans. My mother swore that knit on big needles this light and lofty, or soft and fluffy or whatever the name of that terrible yarn is, would knit up super fast, after all she knit up a couple of them. So I optimistically bought the yarn and cast on. Nearly 12 months later after avoiding knitting on this albatros I finished up one, smaller than it should be, lap robe. It will go to my sister in law with the 4 kids that I swear break everything they can get their grubby little hands on. My other sister in law with the grown civilized son and her husband are getting a lovely pottery garlic holder from a local potter. My sister is getting a pair of socks and a pair of fingerless gloves. My husband is getting a pair of fingerless gloves (he requested a new pair a few months ago) and that dear reader is the extent of my holiday knitting. I have knit a few tiny sweater ornaments and given away, but this year I am not madly knitting up until Christmas Eve and then hoping that my knitted object will block dry before Santa shows up and I can hide and wrap it. Nay dear reader, this afternoon I have cast on a sock for myself and plan to knit on it over the school holiday while my kids are home and my mother (who talks through any movie or tv show you try to watch) visits. I plan to drag my mother to a yarn store in Boulder that I've never been to, but hear is fabulous. So yep, my holiday knitting is gloriously finished. (okay, but the house still needs a good cleaning, and I've done no baking or candy making.....but...the knitting is done)

I hope you have a wonderfully relaxing Christmas!

Madeline has a new sweater

Girlchild loves her Madeline dolls. I remember seeing them in a toy store a couple of years before she was born and thinking how fun it would be to have someone to buy these neat dolls for, they had so many clothes, and they were so much cuter than Barbie. Flash forward a few years and I have a daughter to buy these cute little dolls for. The toy store where I found these dolls is gone, but no problem right? There's lots of neat toy stores out there right? Well, this is when I found out that my beloved Madeline dolls have been discontinued. Yes, just as girlchild is getting old enough to have the dolls you can no longer find them. So you visit ebay. Often. You buy a couple of dolls from a local toystore that still has a couple and you visit ebay to get your Madeline fix. Then at Christmas time you knit up a few sweater ornaments and you realize that with just a few modifications you can make these sweaters fit Madeline (forget trying to get the Barbie sweaters to fit her). You spend a morning knitting instead of doing the myriad of holiday things you should be doing and this is what you end up with:


I am sure that there are plenty more Madeline sweaters in my near future. Perhaps the next one will be a cardigan. This little number was knit from the top down and completely seamless. There is a slit in the back because there is no way that big ol head of Madeline's was going through the little neck opening. It was knit with Bernat Sox yarn on size 2 needles (size 1 for the ribbing, such that it is)

Girlchild's felted hat

Okay the pictures came out backwards, the hat didn't grow, but boy did it ever shrink!! This would be the yarn that girlchild and I dyed the other day with Easter egg colors. I felted the hat this morning and she modeled the still wet hat for me. It's first trip through the washer it barely felted at all. I was disappointed because it was still pretty big on her (enormous) so I threw it in again with a pair of jeans I keep for this purpose. It didn't do much and didn't do much and suddenly it was tiny. So I pulled and stretched and the child now has a very bright, very felted hat. I had considered poking some holes in the top of it, running some i-cord through and calling it a purse....

Easter Egg dying in November, and an old dog

Miss K and I decided to dye some yarn today. We used Easter egg colors (I probably have a few more boxes squirreled away, and now that I know how easy it is to dye yarn with them I'll probably go wild at Easter time!). We stuck the yarn in the crock pot and left it for a good portion of the day while we ran errands (dropped half a dozen hats off to the nursery at the hospital, and gave blood for the first time, me not K) When we came home we were met by the smell of cooking yarn, well the crock pot was on low so the yarn was just hot. And here is our yarn, and Miss Stella modeling for us (she's not a good model, she won't hold still and can't hear instructions, and she doesn't see so well anymore either, but I think the yarn necklace suits her). This yarn will be knitted up into a hat for Miss K and felted.

A semi-successful day at the LYS

Most of the yarn shops around here are closed on Sundays and Mondays. There's one that's open on Sundays, but that's because it's in a very "touristy" spot. And there's one that's closed on Sundays and Tuesdays (go figure, the yarn shop got a new name and a new owner a little over a year ago and she's kept the old hours) maybe she figures that if someone needs a yarn fix on Monday they won't resort to Wal Mart, Joann's, Michael's or any other discount store with a limited selection. So the girl child and I went to buy a tree permit (family tradition we go to the mountains and cut down a tree), and it's in the same part of town as the LYS that is open on Mondays. There's a couple of patterns I want and I know that she carries a good selection from the company's so in we go. One of them she doesn't stock (to be fair it's fairly new), one of them she's out of and is reordering. Drat!! But I did find a nice book on crocheting with wire that I think I'll give my mother for Christmas, so it wasn't a wasted trip.

Not much going on in my knitting life. Just finished middle boy's fingerless gloves and am still knitting away at girl child's dress. I should call it a tunic because I don't think it's going to be long enough for a dress, unless you're my mother who used to dress me when I was little in dresses so short I couldn't move for fear of my panties showing.

Maybe next week I'll have something exciting on the old needles. With Christmas staring me in the face (no, I'm not knitting any gifts, the ones I did for this Christmas are done and ready to be wrapped), I'm not sure how much time I'll have for knitting (tho, I could call it my therapy and become really really crabby and maybe no one would lift an eyebrow when I sat down with needles in hand....)

Giving thanks and surviving the holiday (barely)

Wednesday night after karate class and swimming at the Y the husband and I decided to do something different. Normally on Wednesdays the husband does not meet us at the Y and we go straight home, but this being a holiday weekend, we shook up our routine and treated it like Friday when we go to the Y for the boys karate class, and play racketball and then head on over to Whole Foods to grocery shop and eat pizza. Wednesday night we decided to swim, then head over to Macaroni Grill and cash out a couple of gift cards. Robert wanted fried calamari for an appetizer. Robert and I shared the calamari (mistake #1 for me). For dinner I had "make your own pasta" (whole wheat penne, artichoke hearts, roasted bell pepper, pignoli and shrimp), no dessert, but I did have an Italian margarita. Thursday I am fixing thanksgiving dinner, but Wednesday night I'm not thinking about fixing dinner, I've done it enough times to know the routine (good thing as it turns out). Late in the evening I'm still feeling full, as a matter of fact I'm feeling overly full even tho I didn't eat to that over stuffed feeling. Thursday morning I'm feeling....well....pretty crappy. I get the bird stuffed and in the oven. My brother and his family come over. We eat, we visit, but I still feel like nothing is digesting. I am miserable (miserable enough that the husband asks if I need to see the doctor, when I'm too sick to even knit he starts to worry). Yesterday afternoon I started to feel a little better. In the evening we went to some friends house for dinner (I'm still really not eating), and I thought that I was over the worst of this (I was). This morning I took the husband to the airport as he is to be gone for the next 4 days, so I simply can not afford to be ill. I spent a portion of my day shopping about the outskirts of Denver simply because I was there and it was convenient and I didn't feel like I was going to die. This afternoon I've eaten a little and my stomach isn't very happy with me, but nothing like Thanksgiving night or yesterday morning. I blame the calamari, I blame the fact that it was fried and fried food and I don't mix well.

But thank goodness I feel alive enough to knit, because a lovely box of yarn arrived from Knit Picks and it's miserable when you're too ill to be excited about yarn (wish the family understood that!)

The holidays, knitting frenzies and time

I don't knit gifts for the holidays. Really. Okay, that's not entirely true I did knit a lap afghan for my sister in law and her husband. But in my defense (even tho I don't knit afghans) was that my mother said "It's really easy and quick with this yarn and these really big needles", and I'm such a putz I believed her. I started that damn afghan in February, and finished it a couple of weeks ago, and it's not even very big! And I did knit my sister a pair of socks (sorry if you read my knit blog Crissy), but they didn't start out as a gift for her, they were going to be mine. But other than my true lapse of judgement (the afghan) I don't knit gifts for the holidays, and I often don't knit them for birthdays (tho, I did knit my sister in law a pair of socks when she turned 40 and a lace scarf for Chris's oldest sister when she turned 50). People often ask "do you sell your stuff?" (uh, no, but I'll happily teach you how to knit), or think that because I knit (and sew) I must give home made gifts. I did knit my dad a sweater for Christmas many many years ago, the neck ribbing was so tight he could barely pull it over his head. I do knit gifts. I've given socks and scarves to friends and family. I've knitted lacy baby dresses for new babies, baby hats, baby booties. I knit a baby afghan for a pen pal's first baby. I knit if I know that the person will like and use the gift, I try to match the gift to the person no point in making something that the recipient will accidently felt or ruin (gotta match the yarn and care of the item to the person).

Which brings me to these holidays, the ones staring us straight in the eyes and taunting us with the speed with which they will come. Had I considered knitting more gifts? Not really. (oh, I forgot to add the fingerless gloves I knit for the husband). I had thought about knitting some fingerless gloves for Robert, my middle son. He loved the pair I'm giving my husband. He requested some, but only out of the same yarn that his dad's are knitted from (alpaca). I thought that he was going to start stalking the post man as he waited for my yarn order to come. It's funny to see a 15 year old boy asking if your yarn has arrived, and then daily ask you how his project is coming along. No, the holidays are coming and I am refreshingly free of the stresses of trying to finish up that last sock/glove/sleeve/whatever before Christmas morning. I'd love to say that my holidays will be free of stress and tantrums, but ask me about them in mid January.

The finished project

Snow days were made for knitting. Unless, like me, you have kids then snow days are made for drying the snow off the floor and feeding the masses (or at least what feels like the masses when your teenager has a couple of friends over, the little kids didn't eat all that much). I spent a small part of my morning finishing up my leaf lace and blocking her. (yesterday you got to see her pinned down-side up on my living room carpet, today you get to see her over my gym clothes). I was amazed at 1. how simple this pattern really is especially if you knit with a fingering weight yarn so you can rip back if needed and 2. how quickly it knit up (okay, I may have been obsessed with getting it finished and therefore invested more time knitting on it than I should have in the last few days, the dishes in the sink seem to think that). But now she's done and I will go back to Miss K's dress, Robert's fingerless gloves and this weeks hospital hat.

Flower basket lace

I love this pattern. I can't find any lys that stocks this pattern on a regular basis, so I knit it from the spring, or fall 2004 Interweave knits and just adjusted the number of repeats. It is knit from a little over 4 hanks of Rowan Donegal Lambswool on size 6 needles. Here it is down-side up, blocking on my living room rug. I promise to take a photo of it right side up when it's dry. I love the pattern and may make a full blown shawl using the pattern eventually! But for every pattern that I wish to knit, I have kids who seem to find a pattern that they would like, and while, yes, I could teach them to knit, I really really like that no one really has an interest in stealing my knitting needles. And yarn. But really in the big picture, I do a fair amount of knitting for everyone. At the moment, even with this scarf/shawl blocking, on needles I have a hat for the hospital, a dress for the daughter and a fingerless glove for the middle son. Not an inordinate number of projects, but enough to keep me busy! Snow day today, so I have kids wandering around the house which really makes it hard (well, harder than usual) to keep one train of thought going.....

Spin spin spin

Night before last my knit meetup group had a sleepover. Not much of a turnout, but that's okay the few of us that were there had fun. We visited, we knit, I learned how to spin.....on a wheel! Now I want one, even tho my yarn looked like...well (crap comes to mind) let's just say my yarn looked bulky. But I am oh so proud of my first spinning attempt and so I shall inflict a picture of it on you.... (well, it's above my words because I can't seem to control where the pictures end up here). I may dye it (we learned that too) or I may leave it in its natural color and just pet it since I doubt I'm ever brave enough to try to cast it on and make anything (pot holder) out of it. Yep, spinning.....just what I need, another hobby!! (what I'd really like is to be able to spin beautiful yarn like my friend Heather does!)

Knitting enemy # 1

I know a lot of people would say that moths, or the washing machine or the cats are the # 1 enemy of yarn and knitting, but I know better. A basset hound is the #1 enemy. Oh I know that she looks all innocent with those sad droopy eyes, those oversized ears and the feet the size of Thanksgiving platters. Yup, innocent-look is her middle name (her first name being Jenny). She very calmly walks past you, brushes up against you so you'll pat her back, you don't notice that as she passes you she very gently grabs a skein of yarn and not the cheap stuff, she has good taste doncha know. Shortly after she passes quietly by you, you hear her playing and wonder what it is that she could be having so much fun with. You look. What is that, that she is throwing up in the air, and chasing? It looks like.....it looks just like....Good Lord it's your good yarn!!! You wind it back into a ball and while you're doing that, she's scoping out her next opportunity for her fiber fix.......

The faster I knit, the slower I go

Girl child decided she wanted this dress after I bought the book "Hand Knits for Kids" by Lucinda Guy. This is the dress featured on the cover of the book. It is the one that sucked me in. I am not a great color knitter. I have spent all of my life knitting things where changing colors is relatively simple (stripes and such). I've knit a couple of Christmas stockings and a Hello Kitty purse. I must have forgotten my inability at this changing of the color mid row thing, because here I am again. All in all I think the dress will be cute, and I've learned a lot. And it has dominated my knitting time lately (well, it and a Christmas gift for the husband), but at least it hasn't gotten boring.

Small hands

Fingerless gloves for a 4 year old princess sure do knit up fast. Now Robert wants a pair. I never thought I would see the day when my 15 year old son would be interested in yarn. Not, naturally, for him to knit (perish the thought of him knitting!! He doesn't think it's "cool"), but he was eyeballing some alpaca on the Knitpicks sight that would match his fleece jacket saying "Mom, could you make me some fingerless gloves to match this jacket, and that alpaca is so soft". Maybe for Christmas, if I get on the ball and get my other Christmas projects finished. Who knows.

Computer boy (the hubby) brought me home a ball winder (it says "wool winder" on the box....whatever).....late for my birthday. I think he was tired of watching me hand wind hanks of yarn onto toilet paper rolls. Sweet guy (I can't believe he braved a yarn shop!) The kids and I rolled a couple of hanks into little cakes to be knitted eventually.

Today B has off of school so we shouldn't have to rush like we usually do to get to karate. Computer boy and I have a racketball court reserved while B is in karate and K is bouncing on the bounce house the Y puts up on Friday evenings. Then our weekly trip to Whole Foods and then home......

Online Friends are the bestest.....

Several years ago I was drug kicking and screaming into the computer age. I saw no use for email, web pages, and never could figure out why I'd want to "chat" with someone on the other side of the nation (or planet for that matter)! We moved 3 states away from family 14 years ago. I kept in touch the normal way, phone calls and snail mail letters (which I still love to find in my mailbox). As my family was dragged into the computer age (my husband is a computer guy so we were pretty on the ball computer wise), I (grudgingly) learned more about this thing called email. Then I discovered Amazon, but that's a whole 'nother story. So I started emailing the few family members with email. Friends I made here moved away, so I started emailing them too. Pretty soon I was introduced to "the web". Good Lord!! You could look up anything! You could use it kind of like a gi-normous encyclopedia. Slowly I learned that there were web sites you could join, message boards!! You could BUY stuff on the internet and have it shipped to you, things you couldn't find in your little town and ordering stuff on the web is so much faster than waiting for the paper catalog!! A couple of years ago I discovered this thing called a blog. I found other people's blogs. I found that I cared very deeply for people who live all over the world, whom I don't know other than what they write on their blog (I'm still not a "chat room" kind of gal). I have found out things about the area I live in that I would never have discovered (a wonderful knit group, yarn stores, vacation spots etc).

All of this above brings me to this. We all have birthdays, whether or not we wish to or not. Husbands may manage to miss this day (he's trying, really he is, he did bring home a divine cake), but friends, even the online ones you've never met always seem to step in, as did Heather my dear online friend who lives too far away, but someday I do plan to pack up the camper and head east. A wonderful historic sock book, that even if I never knit a pattern from the book (I at least plan to use several of the stitch patterns from it and some of the toe treatments and some different heels than my standard.....okay, there are several patterns I'm planning.), is incredibly interesting and one I'd thought about buying for myself. 2 skeins of Lorna's Laces!! The color is incredible the yarn is....amazing. I've never bought myself Lorna's Laces, partly because only recently have I found an actual store that carries it, partly because....well...I don't really know why. She also included some most wonderful knitwear wash. AND a pattern for a beautiful scarf/shawl (how did she know that I have some yarn wanting to be knit into a shawl, but hadn't found the perfect pattern yet?) And the card was just something that fits in to what my family would send me. She is officially my sister of the heart.

And now for the knitting portion of this blog. Miss K has asked for some fingerless gloves. In pink. She is so tiny I should have them both done by tomorrow night barring some other thing that needs doing first.

Birthday day and other anniversaries

Today is my birthday. Tomorrow would be my parents 47th wedding anniversary and my grandparents 70th (or 71 I can never remember) wedding anniversary had 1975 happened (the year of the big divorce in my family). Every year for my birthday for many years my grandmother would say "Ted and I would have been married for x years had he not run out". Funny thing is he didn't run out on her and she kept the house while he lived in a travel trailer behind his sister's house. But the whole divorce thing is not something I wish ever to dredge up, so I'll leave it and my nana's voice in the past where that ugly scene belongs.

Today is also the marks the 7th year since dad died. I miss him every single day. Lord knows he wasn't perfect (who is?), and it took him a long time to grow up, but dad was a good person and I wish that my kids could have known him (Colin and Robert have some memories of grandpa, B and K have none).

So, at some point today I shall have a drink to dad, but in the meantime I am going to finish up my coffee and take K to the Y to exercise, run some errands and possibly, just possibly (probably) squeeze in some knitting.....Maybe even squeeze in some knitting for me instead of on the myriad of projects I have going on for others!

Cold hands, warm heart

I am not a hand model, my hands will never be mistaken for a hand models. My hands are just like a slightly smaller version of my dads hands (I liked my dad's hands). I have made several pairs of fingerless gloves, or hand warmers, or whatever you wish to call them. But, I've never made myself a pair. Finally I have decided that my hands are deserving of some fingerless gloves (and I'm hoping that with fingerless gloves I can knit, something I can't do with gloves on). Don't mind the errant strands of yarn, I've not gotten around to weaving in the ends, I'll do that when I finish the other glove, which is on my needles at the moment. The bowl in the picture is from tonights empty bowl supper. I stood in line chatting and knitting and this is one of the bowls I picked. Chris and the kids didn't get to the school where they were having the supper in time so I got to pick out 4 bowls (Robert took his ticket and got to pick his own bowl).

Snow and knitting projects

Not much to show project-wise since I finished my scarf a couple of posts ago. Just a couple of hats for the hospital. I've got a fingerless glove on the needles at the moment, hopefully I'll have two finished fingerless gloves before too long. It seems I've made everyone else a pair (the hub has asked for another pair, his met with an untimely accident while Chris was helping my brother with a building project. Chris got 6 stitches in his thumb and I can't remember if the fingerless gloves survived, I do remember blood on everything) except myself. So that's about it.

It's snowing. Tonight we're supposed to get 4 to 7 inches tonight, then 6 to 10 inches tomorrow. Then 1 to 3 inches tomorrow night. Normally I'd be thrilled. I'd be chanting "snow day, snow day" with the kids (if anything so there'd be no reason to leave the house). I'd make hot chocolate, bake some cookies and knit. So, kids, what do you think I'm doing tomorrow? Well.....funny you should ask. My son for civics class must do community service. A friend of his (whose mom is one of my dearest friends) also must do community service. So at 6:30 tomorrow morning my friend and her son are picking up my son and me and we're driving half an hour (if it wasn't snowing, hopefully it won't take us an hour) to the soup kitchen and volunteering from 7 until 2 in the afternoon. And if that weren't enough yucks for my day. Chris will pick Robert and me up from the soup kitchen and we'll drop Chris off at the hospital, because Chris is having sinus surgery tomorrow. I'll drive home, situate the kids and drive back to the hospital to fetch Chris and bring him home. Hopefully we won't get so much snow that the only way to accomplish what I need to get done tomorrow will be with a dog sled. (I can guarantee that my old golden and the little basset are not good sled dogs). I am hoping to squeeze in a little knitting tomorrow.....if anything for my own sanity!

g'night all, the snow is sticking and tomorrow is going to be a busy day, I need my beauty rest!

It's Yarn (and magazine) day!!

What a surprise it was today to walk out to the mail box and find a package!! Thank you Susie, and I'm glad that your auction went so well that your hubby doesn't have to sell his pride and joy project!! 8 skeins of Elsebeth Lavold silky wool in black.....I'm thinking some kind of sweater top (short sleeve? sleeveless? plenty of time to figure out the particulars) a bunch of Interweave knits, some of which will be sent on their way to Belgium where I hear you cannot buy them. A lovely smelling candle (I don't think I'll burn it, I think I'll put it in with my yarn so that the yarn will smell purty too), and......some of the most lovely yarn for hospital hats!!!

Girl child "helped" me with my hospital baby caps today. We made a pom pom for the top of one, and she promptly spilled drops of blueberry juice on the cap, so it's freshly washed and is drying so that it can be pom pommed. I think tomorrow when I cast on the next hat I shall cast on the lovely new yarn. I had thought about trying to have 2 more hats done by Monday and dropping them off at the main hospital (I am a volunteer knitter for the same hospital, different location). But Monday is looking a bit crazy. Robert and I (and one of his friends and his mom, who happens to be a dear friend of mine) are leaving here about 6:30 am Monday morning to volunteer at the soup kitchen from 7 until 2. Chris will meet me in town and I will drop him off at the hospital at 3 for his 4:30 surgery (sinuses), I will (more than likely) go home, situate the kids, or bring them back to the hospital with me about 6 (I figure that B and K would think it very very cool to have dinner in the hospital cafeteria. Robert being a teenager, probably won't think it neat, I may leave him home to eat cereal). Hopefully Chris won't have to stay in the hospital very long and I'm hoping that I can have whatever prescriptions he needs filled done at the hospital pharmacy. No, I'm thinking that I'll just wait another week or two before I turn in the knitted hats. I'll probably be lucky just to remember my knitting!

One of those days.

You know, you plan your day. A trip to Farmers Market (the last one for the season), thinking you'll pick up a few veggies for the week, a couple of errands, a workout at the Y. You don't bring your knitting with you, because, after all, you're running errands and exercising for goodness sakes! You don't need to throw in your knit bag. Besides you can knit tonight. But what you don't plan is finding pickling cucumbers at the FM, you figured that the season was long over for those. When your mom was here you gave her a jar of your home made bread and butter pickles, leaving you with only 2 jars to last until next season. (it is your mother's grandmother's recipe you're using, so don't even mention those nasty excuses for bread and butter pickles sold in the stores). So you buy a couple of dozen pickling cukes and a bunch of onions, knowing that tonight you'll be slicing cukes and onions and salting them to pickle tomorrow.....bites into the knitting time, but you really don't like store bought bread and butter pickles (you picky thing you) and you've had a hankering for them and everyone that used to make them for you is dead, leaving.....work for you if you want them. And you do. Very much.

So. You pick your son up at the bus stop and you stop in to the neighbor's by the bus stop and ask her if she'd mind if you picked her apples, as the trees are loaded and it doesn't appear that she uses them. She says no she doesn't mind at all, that she's never done anything with the trees and gives you a couple of bags so you don't have to walk home and grab bags. So. You come home with 2 grocery bags of apples (I actually may go down and pick some more in a couple of days). With which to make applesauce (I was raised on home made applesauce, and if you haven't guessed home made pickles and all sorts of home made stuff, I am spoiled that way). B is planning....apple pies, apple crisps, applesauce. The boy is disappointed because there is going to be no apple pie tonight.

Where does knitting fit in here. You see, it doesn't. K and I went to Farmers Market, then to the mall for a short errand (think shoes and socks), then over to Target. We mustn't forget the quick stop in Hobby Lobby. The Miss K just thought she'd die if we didn't go to the Y. So she went into the child care (her idea of heaven) and I rode the bikes and lifted weights for an hour. I came home fixed dinner, helped with homework sliced up cukes and onions (I thank God for the mandoline my MIL gave me because she couldn't use it). I have merely gazed upon the 2 bags of apples, they can wait until tomorrow while the pickles are in the water canner. This is a night for knitting on a hospital hat. I can knit them in my sleep. I wondered how I'd manage when I set the bar for making one hat a week. I know it doesn't sound like much. Just one baby hat a week, all of the kids but one are in school so I have more (yea right) time. But you know, I can knit gifts, I can knit for the kids or for me. But that hat a week. That's my peace of mind. Yes, I've skipped a week here and there, but I've also knitted 3 hats in a week. I love walking into the hospital with those hats. I think the feeling is much like the one my mom feels when she sees a bald woman and asks "I hope you don't mind my asking, but do you have cancer? Would you like to have one of my hand knitted chemo caps".

And now, my faithful reader(s?) I am rambling because my eyes don't really want to stay open, I'm off to sip some tea and put another couple of rows on this darling lace (simple pattern I've been knitting so long I don't even keep a row count) baby hat. G'night

And here she is!!!