Update & Thank You

First I need to say thank you to my Secret Pal for sending me a beautiful skein of yarn.

The yarn is Winter Vacation in Tahiti, handspun superwash kona merino by Perchance to Knit. The yarn is beautiful! It's going to take a lot of self control to finish my holiday knitting and do my homework before I cast on with this lovely yarn. It also came with a lovely little stitch marker and a card wishing me an early happy birthday.


My SP must be psychic because I've been on a pink and orange kick. I made a pair of leg warmers for Elah (sorry, no pic) and then made an ear flap hat with the left over yarn.

Elah loves the hat and I love that it only took me a couple of hours to knit.

Pattern: My own, thank you very much.
Yarn: Cascade Baby Alpaca Chunky
Source: The Knitting Studio (be patient, their web site is new)
Needles: Denise, US10 16"
Size: I don't know, big enough to fit Elah
Time to finish: 2 or 3 hours

Notes: This yarn is super soft and a pleasure to knit with after working with lace weight. If you're not allergic to alpaca go get some! The pattern was fairly straightforward. I cast on the ear flaps and increased until I reached the desired size, then I cast on for the hat. After I knit it I did some internet poking around and discovered that most patterns call for you to pick up stitches from he finished hat to knit the ear flaps - what a pain in the ass. I also added I-cord ties and lots of pom poms because Elah loves them.

And finally a note about The Knitting Studio. I often find yarn store folks (at least locally) to be kinda rude and generally unhelpful. There's one store I don't go to if I can help it and another where I cross my fingers and hope the nice girl is working. The women at The Knitting Studio were awesome! They were friendly, funny and sweet. I also saw a woman come in with some questions and one of the women working at the shop was excited (!) to sit down and help her figure it out. It's a half an hour drive but I will definitely be going back.

I feel like I haven't had any time to knit but maybe that's not entirely true. Still to come, picture of Print O' The Wave in progress, another completed hat and a completes Backyard Leaves scarf. I've also done a little on Forbes Forest but that's a back burner project.