Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Yeah, I know, it's one day late - should have posted this yesterday, but I didn't.

Sherrie's Skull and Crossbones hat:

The End Is Near...

Of this miserably hot summer. I barely left the house at all. I don't do well in temps over 90, and we had 60+ days of high 90 temps, and a few in the 100's! Recently, it's been mostly in the 80's during the day, with temps in the 50's at night. Much better, but I'd be happier with lower daytime temps. I'm starting to feel alive again!

Last week I decided to take a drive to Ocean Grove, a lovely town about 35 miles from here on the coast. Unfortunately, it was 96F, but I figured it'd be cooler down by the ocean, right? Wrong! No cooling ocean breeze that day! I didn't stay as long as I'd planned, but I did manage to get some great pictures of the tent colony that surrounds the Great Auditorium. These small tents, measuring about 18x30 ft, are enourmously popular. The waiting list to rent one is 5-30 years, depending on who you talk to. My money is on the longer wait. Although there is no a/c, and the tents are packed in, elbow-to-elbow, people love them. They are well cared for, with tiny gardens, and a sight to see. I'm sorry I didn't get a picture of them at night.

Some of them have been taken down already. You can see two empty platforms in this picture. The wooden structure at the back of the platform serves as the kitchen and bathrooms when the tents are occupied, and then serves as winter storage for the tent itself and any furniture remaining. A few other tents were being taken down while I was there. They'll be back up starting next June.

Haste Makes Waste, And All Those Not So Silly Things Your Mother Told You That You Never Bothered To Listen To

I have been dying to make this pattern since I saw it two months ago. I even bought the yarn for it, several skeins, truthfully, because I couldn't make up my mind when I saw all the color combinations on Ravelry. Besides, these will come in handy in the winter. My family room tends to be a bit like Siberia in the winter, which makes knitting, reading, time on the computer a problematic thing. So after knitting three Skull and Crossbones hats in a row, I felt it was time for a change. Started this pattern at 1 am a few nights ago, knitted like crazy, and then went to bed. Knitted on it some more the next day, and as I was knitting, it dawned on me that the fair isle pattern wasn't lining up correctly. Damn!! Ripped it back to where I thought the problem was, knitted back up to where I had been, and saw the same damn misalignment. Yanked the whole thing off the needles, frogged it entirely, and restarted the next day. Much better, although I will say this pattern is kicking my ass for some reason. I can do fair isle in my sleep, but there is something about this one that always has me ending up with an incorrect count at the end of a row. I still love it, and can't wait to have at least one pair of these done! This one is in ShibuiKnits Sand and Mulberry. I have Ink, Midnight, Wasabi, Bark, Ivory, Peacock, and more Mulberry and Sand waiting in the wings, along with some unnamed Cherry Tree Hill in a gorgeous green, and also several skeins of Koigu KPPM. My only concern with the Koigu is the much shorter yardage in each skein, I think 175 yds vs Shibui's 191. I'll see what kind of yardage I use when I finish this first pair.

Aargh, Me Mateys!

Arrgh, mateys. I know it's not Talk Like A Pirate Day yet, but I have been knitting Skull And Crossbones hats until they're coming out of my ears. Three done, and one more to go. Well, I say one more, but my son wants some editing on his. I had a feeling this might happen, so instead of starting the hats with the earflaps, per the instructions, I knitted the hat first, and picked up stitches for the earflaps at the end. That way, if I had to modify some part of the hat....

I'm psychic, I swear. I finish the hat, he puts it on, and says, "wow, I really like it, but could we (we?? I only see one person with knitting needles here!) change a few things?" Like he doesn't like the ridge around the hem of the hat where it is, or more to the point, he doesn't like the way the earflaps start under the ridge. Move the ridge up, or eliminate it altogether, knit the earflaps smooth from the body of the hat, and put the ridge around the border of the earflaps and hem. To his credit, when he finished with the modifications he wanted, he looked at me and said, "I'll bet you're regretting offering to knit me a hat!"

No, not really.