Hats, Boots, and Oopsydaisy (or the perils of non-communication in the human male).

Recently I seem to have been knitting a lot of baby stuff. I finished off the Debbie Bliss cardigan and I still had a ball and a half of yarn left, so I decided to use them up on a matching hat and bootees. The hat took a few attempts to get the decreases right - the first attempt was a bit pointy, like a sort of woolly medieval pikeman's helmet, but I was fairly pleased with it in the end and C even joined in and made the bobble.

Then I got an email from an old friend I hadn't spoken to in ages saying his wife had had a baby on New Year's Eve, so I used up a few oddments to rustle up a couple more pairs of bootees, which were duly dispatched and seem to have gone down well (at least with the parents).

No doubt the bootee theme will continue presently, as I know at least two other people expecting soon, but for the time being I've gone back to C's seemingly never-ending socks. I'm hoping to finish them soon, not only because they're boring me stiff but in the hope that a Finished Object might in some way make up for my accidentally scalping him at the weekend. Mind you it was his own fault.

A while ago he bought an electric razor-clipper thing for me to use in cutting his hair (since he has so little of it these days it seems ridiculous to go to an expensive hairdresser). I was trimming his hair with it at the weekend and said to Chris I thought it could do with going a shade shorter at the bottom. Without speaking he handed me what I assumed was the fitting for the next grade down and it was only after I'd laid into the back of his hair with it that I realised it was in fact the shortest possible. So he has a little bit of a chunk missing on one side...only a little one...it's barely noticeable unless you know where to look...well it's more noticeable in the daylight...but it's going to be cold for the next few days, so he can just wear a scarf while it grows back...

However, the socks are progressing rather slowly as I've only really had knitting time on the train recently, and not a lot of that yesterday and today since my dad was visiting for a conference. He got the train down in the afternoon and we arranged to meet at the front of work about 5.* This resulted in a short game of hunt-the-woozle: I went out the side entrance (the one at the front) and turned right expecting to meet him coming the other way. He meanwhile approached the same entrance from the left. When I didn't find him I walked back, while he went round to the main entrance (the one at the side) thinking this must be what I'd meant by the "front". I then phoned him and we each established where the other was. I set off round to the main entrance thinking I'd find him coming back, and he persuaded the man on reception to let him go through the building to get out the other entrance... Round and round they go. Anyway, we finally found one another and made it to the train, but I didn't think it was really very friendly to then produce socks and spend all night knitting, so C will have to wait a little longer.


I soon will have finished them though and will be in need of another train project, so I've also been to trying to find something to make out of this ball of Shetland yarn my brother gave me a while ago. It's 100% Jacob sheep but other than that it doesn't give any information on the label. Since I only have one ball I have been thinking about a hat and I had guessed that it would be about aran weight, so I started knitting swatches for Gretel by Ysolda, but it soon became apparent that it's more chunky than aran, and although the gauge was ok, the knitted fabric was far too stiff and itchy to be comfortable, so back to the drawing board on that one.

On the subject of hats and brothers however, A has sent me pictures of his latest creation. Not sure why he's knitting woolly hats when he's in Oz where the temperature's about 30 degrees, but I'm glad to see he's still knitting (though it does mean I won't get to keep the 8 balls of Rowan Scottish Tweed Chunky I'm looking after for him). I think the hat is probably a variation on the theme of a knitty pattern. Can't help feeling it should be called "Beagle".

* By which time he had been to the Oxfam bookshop and managed to acquire four Odysseys and an Iliad.