it's official

i have a problem.

ok, maybe not a problem, really. it's not like my habit is dangerous, or unhealthy, or even terribly expensive. it's just time-consuming and a little odd.

i cannot stop making hats. my free time is now completely consumed with making hats. and now that it's spring, that means lighter weight hats in cotton yarns with pretty spring-like flowers. i just finished one today that is a variation on the blue hat from my last post, with burgundy ribbon and a pale yellow felted flower detail. now i just have to decide whether to keep it, give it to someone, or try to sell it.

lazy sunday

i had a million things that i could have (and should have) done with my day, but instead i got sidetracked looking at patterns and found this picture in someone's blog. i absolutely adore the sweater and the hat, but there was unfortunately no pattern available. since i'm obsessed with hats, and most of my hats are geared for winter, i decided to work on a hat in cotton yarn to resemble the one in the picture. this is what i came up with:



here's a close up of the flower detail:



as you can see, today was not completely unproductive - just not productive in the way that i needed to be. at least i got another hat out of my laziness!

lovely stuff

i am now about three quarters of the way done with this beautiful scarf for my friend holly, who recently moved back to her home in georgia.



it's been fun times, what with the fancy cables and such. the center cable is called "the homes of donegal" cable. (it's totally easier than it looks, but your friends don't have to know that...)



the cables on the edges are just simple 3x3 (a.k.a. "six stitch") cables, wrapping towards the center cable.



i can't wait to finish it and sent it to her! although, it will probably won't ever get cold enough in georgia for her to actually need it...

turtles and more

poor blog... it's been three weeks since i wrote anything, and i have no excuse for it other than i just couldn't think of anything interesting to post. my life hasn't suddenly become more interesting either, so i'm just going to have to talk about my semi-interesting saturday.
matt and i had decided we were going to hang out this weekend since mimi is out of town, so i called him yesterday morning to see what he wanted to do. our options were:
1. hang out and tan in his yard while listening to music and drinking cold, refreshing beverages
2. drive to fayetteville and see TMNT (we were inordinately excited about that movie... fond memories from childhood of mutant turtles that also happen to be teenage ninjas)
3. check out the flea market in fayetteville
4. just rent a bunch of movies and do nothing
we opted for two and three, since both involved driving to fayetteville, and the weather was kind of gloomy so tanning wasn't necessarily the best option.
the flea market was extremely interesting for people-watching and for the wide array of crap that was available for sale. they even had pets for sale! i don't know about you, but i don't think i would necessarily want to buy a dog from a flea market. that just seems kind of strange to me. but that could just be me, maybe tons of people buy pets at flea markets...
after the flea market, we decided to check out movie times for TMNT. we missed the 3:15 show by about 20 minutes, and the next showing wasn't until 5, so we went to a sportsbar type restaurant to kill time. i had a pretty delicious burger. it made me happy. then we went to the movie, which turned out to be somewhat disappointing. despite all our fond memories of those damn turtles, something about watching a full-length cartoon of them trying to capture monsters and such was not as enjoyable as we thought it would be. so, to temper the disappointment, we rented the original ninja turtles movies (you know, the ones that are live action with guys in turtle suits doing martial arts. no kidding, one of them even skateboards in his turtle suit). now the live action movies are infinitely better than the cartoon. i highly recommend renting the first one - very enjoyable.
i also watched some asian film that i cannot remember the name of, with some amazing martial artist that i do not remember the name of either. fat lot of good i am, since it was a great movie and i would recommend it if i could just remember the name. it was made especially entertaining by the fact that we watched it dubbed in english, because we were both feeling too lazy to read subtitles. lazy, lazy people. that's what happens when you live in the south. you get too lazy to even read subtitles. sad, no?
and that was my fabulous day. it kept me entertained, that's for sure. now if i could only find some time to work on my knitting and such, my weekend would be complete. but alas, i have work to do...

hat in miniature

i just realized that i haven't posted any pictures in several days, so here is one of a child-sized hat that i made for a friend's kid. as you can see from the picture, it really is quite miniature, but i also make adult-sized versions of the same pattern, and it looks great on tiny, child-sized heads and adult domes.



the detail is done in satin ribbon (pretty flower!)

eat, drink, and be merry

yesterday was the annual "rhumba on the lumber" 5k race and chili cookoff. being that i didn't have anything better to do with my saturday, and several of my new north carolina friends were thinking about running, i decided to sign up for the race. so yesterday morning i found myself in downton lumberton with a dietitian and a speech pathologist, surrounded by people and chili and getting ready to run a 5k.
the race went well enough - i finished in just about 30 minutes, which is not too bad considering i hadn't run outside in over a year. once the race was over, i then spent a very pleasant couple of hours sampling chili (most of which was not that great) and drinking beer (which was crappy bud light, but free so i can't really complain) with the two girls i had gone to the race with and my friend matt who showed up just for the chili and beer.
when we had eaten our fill, and consumed our 3 free beers, we went our separate ways, but only after i had agreed to meet up with matt later to play some beer pong and watch sci-fi movies. so after a quick, and very refreshing, shower, i hopped into my car and headed over to matt's.
at this point i should probably explain the background behind my friendship with matt. when i was working at the health department in robeson county, i got to be friends with mimi, who is the high-risk dietitian there. she's super nice, and we get along great - whenever it was slow at the health department, i would end up sitting in her office just talking (and there is a lot of down time at the health department, so we talked a lot). she even invited me to thanksgiving at her apartment, an offer that i readily accepted, since i was still fairly new in lumberton and didn't know very many people yet. it was at thanksgiving that i met mimi's boyfriend - matt. it turns out that i not only get along great with mimi, but i absolutely adore matt, and matt was just glad to find himself another drinking buddy who also happens to share a similar taste in movies. hence the afternoon of beer pong and sci-fi while mimi was at a wedding shower in raleigh.
back to yesterday: i lost the first game pretty miserably. i don't have much practice at beer pong, and it had been quite a while since i had last played, so i was not playing very well. by the second game, however, i had a couple of beers in me, and by some miracle that i don't quite understand, actually managed to win! this is terribly exciting to me - i have never even come close to winning, and usually can barely even hold my own when i play on a team, so you can just imagine how thrilled i was to actually beat someone.
the rest of the afternoon was spent basically just hanging around, eating pizza and watching "serenity" (a movie based on a television show that only lasted one season back in 2002. it's a space western, as in everyone talks like old-timey western cowboys and such, but they all fly around on spaceships and fight with laser guns. go figure.)
in short, yesterday was brilliant. it may be the best day i've had since moving to lumberton.
it's great to have some friends out here, but it also means that i'm going to have a new set of people to miss when i leave.

a little different

the following hat ended up being a christmas gift for one of my younger sisters. it's a felted white wool cloche with a huge red flower attached. i was torn when i finished making it - as much as i knew my sister would love it, i realized that i loved it just as much. sigh... but i wrapped it up and gave it to her (making a promise to myself that i would have to replicate it for myself, maybe in a different color just to avoid the potential embarrassment wearing that same hat at the same time)



i think this may be one of my favorites so far.

fancy hat number one

since i have so many pictures of things that i've already finished, i think the next few days will be spent uploading photos of those things before i add any more of my current projects.
first: the project that started my current obsession with hats.
this hat was knit in several sections: a middle panel, two side panels, and the brim. i will eventually perfect the pattern and post it, but for now, here's a picture for everyone to admire...

glove project

about a year and half ago, as i flipped through some generic fashion magazine, i saw the most gorgeous over-the-elbow length knit gloves done up in a rib stitch. sadly, at the time i was not nearly ready to attempt anything as frightening as gloves.
now, several pairs of socks and one completed set of gloves later, i felt that i was ready to take on the challenge. i found a beautiful plum-colored merino wool at a fabulous yarn shop in raleigh, consulted my old glove pattern for guidance, and started knitting. after much trial and error, and a lot of frogging, this is what i came up with - an (almost) elbow-length glove done in a reinforced rib (to all you sock knitters out there, it's the rib stitch that you use when you are putting a reinforced heel in your sock. k1, s1, across one row, then purl the next row. it makes for a fabric that looks ribbed, but doesn't have the stretch of your usual ribbed fabric). not only is it super stylish, but cuddly and warm as well!




now all i have to do is start the second glove...

finally!

as many (well, maybe just a few) of my friends know, i have been thinking of starting a blog for quite a while. being a compulsive knitter and crocheter with a yarn stash that fills, and overflows, a 4-foot-square box, i always figured it would be a good way to share what i've made with lots of random people i've never met.
so here it is. hopefully it's all as interesting to everyone else as it is to me.