I have made some progress on my quest to knit all the things. Yes, I only have one FO, but I think that’s reasonable given my WIPs. One is a Sockhead hat, yes, a hat knit with sock yarn on tiny needles. It’s my brainless knitting so it doesn’t come out all the time. But I do love knitting on it. It’s so pretty and the yarn feels so nice. I have about two inches left before starting the decreases.
I also worked on my KC Royals Crackerjack scarf, and I’m all caught up to last night’s game. We only have eight games left, which is 16 rows, and then I’ll graft the ends together and it will be done! And I’ll probably set it aside and not want to wear it right away because I’m tired of looking at it. I just should have made it last year, when we won the World Series. Oh well. Who knew, right?
Here’s the FO, the Bittersweet Birthday Cowl. I worked on this during lunch at work and really enjoyed it. I modified the original long cowl to a short version, and I think it’s perfect. The lace pattern is beautiful. And this might be some of the most gorgeous Malabrigo I’ve used yet; it’s Rios in the Sabiduria colorway. The photos don’t even portray the color honestly. It’s deeper, darker, richer. Just gorgeous.
It’s not blocked yet. It will look neater when it is.
I didn’t work on any of my other WIPs this week, and I might not get much done this week. I have a couple more chemo caps to make, special color requests, so those come first. But when they’re done, I might be casting on a new project. Check out The Secret Way of Patterns. It’s a beautiful buttoned cowl pattern, but the story touched me too: a young girl who wants to be a fashion designer, who lost her grandmother and now wants to support her grandma’s charity. Yep, I bought the pattern, and would have even if I hadn’t thought it lovely. But I do, and I’ll enjoy making it.
Until next time, I’ll leave you with a nice thought from a movie we watched last night: “Have courage, and be kind.” Just about says it all, doesn’t it?
The pattern is called 
With that done, I made some more progress on my Color Block Wrap. I’ve got the first block done, but I only made it to 65 stitches instead of 69. It’s fine, though. 
It’s delicious to knit and I’m looking forward to moving on to the second color tonight. It will be my reward for revising my query letter!
The pattern was written for DK, so I lowered the number of stitches to cast on with this worsted weight, but not enough. It’s a little looser than I would like, but it will do. It fits well enough on my noggin.
The girl and I went to watch Room with my mom yesterday, and I got this hat up to the decreases while watching. It was a good movie, grim but moving, definitely wonderful performances. I still liked the book better.
Maybe I knit more tightly than Jen, maybe my “super bulky” yarn wasn’t as bulky as hers, I don’t know. But I still love the hat, and I still want to make an adult version at some point. But for now, I’m going through the book to decide which pattern I want to try next! Until I decide, I cast on for another lacy cotton slouch hat, this time in a peachy pink. 
Yesterday was National Puppy Day but I didn’t have the time to blog, so Grace and Jack will send you belated happy puppy wishes! 
This was knit with size 6 needles, as the pattern recommends. But it was too loosey-goosey for me so I frogged that and started over with 5s, and I like it much better. I learned how to do picots and those are pretty darn nifty. But guys, there’s a trick in this pattern that I didn’t discover until I started knitting. When you start the first garter stitch stripe, you do the first three stitches in the other color and then pick up the stripe color. Well, that left a big stupid hole in my knitting! That irritated me so I frogged back (and frogging picots are interesting) to before the stripe. A bit of investigating showed another Raveler recommending the intarsia technique of twisting the yarns at that point. I’ve never done intarsia but I’ve carried yarns up the side of my knitting; is the twisting the same as that? I’ll do more investigating before going back to knitting this but I’d love any advice you have!
I used Malabrigo Rios (the recommended yarn) in color Teal Feather, and knit to 8.25″ before decreasing. I think it’s the perfect amount of slouch and I’ll definitely be knitting this pattern again.
These are lazy pics, sorry. The lighting inside wasn’t great and I didn’t want to go outside, but these still show the awesome pattern. This is the 
Oy. This dog. So yeah, she was in the doghouse (figuratively) for the rest of the day. At least until it was time for me to stretch out on the couch with my blanket. Then both puppies thought it was cuddle time with mom. Fine. They’re warm and snuggly. 
Fortunately, I did have some good to counteract the bad. The yarn store was indeed open yesterday and I did indeed find some yarn. More than I meant to find, honestly. (That’s always what happens, isn’t it?) Last night I hid in my craft room and wound yarn. It was lovely. Please note: not all of this is new yarn! Some of it was in the stash and I decided it needed to be wound. Mostly to make room for the new yarn. 
This is the new yarn. Yes, I have plenty of cotton now, in a nice variety of colors. 
The three on the left are Berroco Weekend, which my LYS has for 35% off. It’s a crispy yet soft cotton/acrylic blend and I’ve made several hats with it in the past. The two on the right are Universal Yarn Cotton Supreme, which is a deliciously soft yarn. I’m hoping to get one adult hat and one baby hat out of each skein. I don’t have patterns picked out yet, so some of today will be spent perusing Ravelry.
Ravelry notes are 
But this head is pretty slippery, plus it doesn’t have any hair to fill out the hat. Why not try it on a person, you say? What a novel idea! Nobody was around when I finished it, and somehow it didn’t occur to me to try it on myself. And right now it’s upstairs and I’m downstairs and it’s not worth it to go fetch it. It will fit someone, I’m sure. And it’s pretty and I had fun making it. You can find the details on the 
You might remember I mentioned I was going to babysit my wee nephew yesterday, and I was afraid he’d be very cranky? Well, I did and he wasn’t!! Sure, he had a few fussy moments but overall we had a lovely time. He’s about 8 months old and desperately wants to be more mobile than he is, so he gets frustrated. But he seems to be warming up to me and has a perfectly charming grin.
Speaking of Jack: he’s pretty sneaky. Both pups sleep with the girl at night, but they think they want to sleep in my bed. Every night they sneak in when I’m getting ready for bed and jump up and make themselves all cute and comfy so we won’t have the heart to kick them out. (It never works. The husband is stern in this regard.) Last night Jack jumped up and promptly claimed my pillow.
“Dis is pillow for me, right?” Ha. Right. (Actually if it weren’t for the husband, I would let him have it. Even though I don’t sleep well with puppies in the bed either. He’s just that cute.)
I’ll also be driving right by the yarn store again today. And I’m pretty sure they’re open on Tuesdays.
The pattern is 
Yes, that’s a knife on my couch. Grace is a knife thief. Usually it’s butter knives, because she’s obsessed with butter, but we’ve gotten pretty good at keeping our sharp knives out of her reach. Last night we must have gotten lazy (I was watching the Oscars. I couldn’t leave to wash dishes. Seriously.) so sometime this morning she was probably thrilled to reach the chicken knife. She’s fine. She didn’t have it very long, and I know that because the handle hasn’t been chewed on. She’s grown up a lot but I guess she’ll never lose her love for knives.
bonnyknits 