Now, to distract you from my bad Jersey hair, I will show you some current knitting. To the left you can see my Dublin Bay socks (warning: this link goes to a PDF) being made out of Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in the Birch colorway. Thankfully, this is a relatively easy pattern to follow without having to pull out the pattern everytime I want to work on them. Unfortunately, I realized over the weekend that I’m in a DPN funk. Two sock projects going at the same time… all those DPNs. *ugh* I just wanted to knit something that required even less thought… something with just straight knitting that doesn’t require changing needles every 24 stitches.

Something like this (psst, over there on the right). This is a quick improvised hat for me out of Lana Gatto Feeling (70% merino, 20% silk, 10% cashmere). I went to my LYS on Saturday without even bringing knitting with me. A few Tootsie Rolls later I found myself fondling this yarn and wondering what I could make with it. My Lavendar Twist hat is really nice, but if I have to wear it for long periods of time the mohair makes my forehead itch. A softer hat… a hat with cashmere… would make so much more sense. So, after swatching I cast on and got four inches into it before I realized that my gauge swatch had lied to me (gauge swatch: 5 sts/inch, actual hat: 6 sts/inch — just a little bit of a different on the order of 3.5 inches). Out came the needles, rip went the knitting, cast back on went the yarn. It’s quite nice to knit; it rivals the Bouton d’Or Ksar I used last year. The one problem with this hat is I keep imagining what I nice sweater would be like out of this yarn. I come to my sense each time when I think 6 sts/inch… would need about 2200 yards of yarn… 153 yards per ball… $15.50 a ball… *choke* Maybe it’s time to buy another lotto ticket.