About the Alpaca Hat & Gift Giving

When I was home I did give the slippers to my sister, the hat to grandpa, and the scarf to grandma. All were met with much appreciation and admiration (as they deserved). I have had a few people ask what I ended up doing with the hat dilemma. Well, I pull out the corrugated rib section and just did the i-cord bind off. It looked great. I think the hat is perhaps a little big, but grandpa loves it and couldn’t stop talking about how warm it was.

Unfortunately, whenever we visited with Grandma and Grandpa B it was sort of impromptu and I didn’t have my camera with. I’ve asked my sister to take some modeled shots of the items for me but it could be some time before I get those photos as she currently isn’t on the Internet at her new apartment yet. In fact, knowing her, it could have to wait until my next trip back to MN, LOL!

The day after they had recieved their items grandma couldn’t stop talking about my knitting. It made me blush with pride. She kept saying she never knit anything as fancy as me, LOL! She also kept saying, “Imagine what I would have made if I knew Kristi when I knit!” I love that she can appreciate my efforts and be proud of the results. One day we met them for lunch at a hotel restaurant that had free wi-fi so I could help my mom research some accessibile cell phones options for the visually impaired so I showed grandma my knitting blog and the gallery of hand spun yarns and she was very excited and impressed.

While home Mom and I also tried to go to a yarn/fiber shop in a small town near the farm. There had been a write up in the Willmar Tribune several months ago about this shop but she hadn’t been able to find a phone number for us to find out their hours. So, we drove over there and it ended up they weren’t open at all in the four days I was home. Mom said there was an evening knitting gathering which didn’t match up with the hours on the door to the shop, but with no business phone listing we couldn’t find out if it was a night I was there. But, I’ll definitely have to make the next trip land so that I can visit them. It was called Homespun Studio and it is in Lake Lillian, MN. Their hours as posted on the door are Wednesday - Friday 10am - 4pm and Saturday 9am - noon. It is easy to find as Lake Lillian basically has one street and it is kind of on the north end of the “business district” on the west side of the street. If anyone out there (I know I have some MN readers) have been there I’d be interested in what the shop is like. I decided in such a small town that it would be better to not raise suspicions and window shop, LOL!

Tonight is SnB night! Wheee! I’m gonna need it, I can tell. I heard last week was more like the former gatherings before we doubled our numbers after the new year. I suspect though that it was a fluke because I wasn’t there, LOL! We’ll have to see. As much as I love meeting new knitters and such there has been that missing element of *really* knowing the people there and being able to tease and joke and bitch without second guessing the wiseness of letting something blurt out of your mouth. Most of the newer people seem to be a good fit with the rest of us crazy, liberal, scientific bunch.

P.S. I know this is a monumentally boring post today since there are no pictures. I promise there will be pictures tomorrow! You can hold me to that too!

FO Friday? Not Quite!

Aside from it needing blocked, it doesn’t look too bad. That is of course until you measure the size - 11.5 inches across by ~9-9.5 inches deep. My head circumference is 21.5 and I kind of like the fit on me because it won’t cause hat hair, but it’s secure enough it isn’t going to go flying off. Grandpa’s hat size is 7 3/8 which translates roughly to a 23 inch hat circumference. That is of course for hats that don’t have stretch etc. That means the hat just matches his head circumfrence and should fit a little snugger than on me…

However, will those three rows of corrugated rib ever lie flat, even with blocking? That was the end of my yarn. If I ripped back past the last increase round I did (oh yeah, I did this hat from the top down, ala Susan‘s live dangerously, don’t swatch hat pattern - there is PDF link in the right hand column) I would be sure to have it snugger (and it is alpaca so it doesn’t have the bounce back of wool and, might it grow in the blocking process???), the Norwegian Star motif would have to be a little shorter going from the 14 st version down to the 12 st version. Couple that with the decrease in circumference by 8 sts and I should be able to get another 2-3 rounds of corrugated rib in there at the bottom which would hopefully make that curl a little easier to block out…

Please note, the problem with sizing on this hat is all mine, and not of the base pattern. But, I was worried about making the final circumference 10% smaller because of the stranding and the alpaca. I was afraid if I went that small it wouldn’t stretch enought to fit and I figured a little large was better than too snug. Add to that the fact that it’s hand spun and somewhat early hand spun and measuring gauge was really kind of like throwing darts. Thus I have this alpaca hat dilemma…

I did do the entire straight part of the hat yesterday. Though I was pretty dilligent and did not much else from about noon onward through almost 10 pm. Well, I took some breaks to give my wrists a rest, but not much. Oh, and also to add into the equation - DH is staying home from work again today…

So, what would you do?