FO: Ripley Hat

I made this quite a while ago, while I was still in New York. I wanted to get rid of a few single skeins of yarn I had, as it seemed wasteful to pack them away in storage and bring them with me, as it wouldn't take very long to turn them into a real garment.

This was a skein of long-discontinued, super luxurious Gaia Worsted from the Sanguine Gryphon. The color was "Dew on the Dragonfly". It's 55% silk, 45% cashmere and it just melts in your hands, and it's a precious little 150 yards in a skein. I needed a special something I could whip up quick that would show off the lovely color, and take advantage of how soft and lovely the yarn was.

A quick search around and I remembered a pattern I had been wanting to do for a bit: the Ripley Hat by Ysolda. It had a couple variations you could do, and some optional folds to make the hat slouchier. A perfect way to use up limited yardage.

The pattern was straight forward and a quick knit- even with all the extra folds it took me just a couple days. I opted for the slouchy version with a lacy brim. I packed it in my suitcase and it really came in handy in Iceland. Maybe not the most rugged piece to wear there, but it actually wasn't too cold so it suit my purpose just fine.

Added bonus being that the silk is water replant enough to keep my ears dry in heavy mist/light drizzle.

Lock and Key

On several of the bridges here, you'll see the link fencing guardrails completely plastered with padlocks. They all have inscriptions on them. Basically, you are supposed to write the name of your love on the lock, attach it to the bridge and throw away the key to guarantee lifelong togetherness.

A nice sentiment, and I would like to think that it's creating a nice sandbar of tiny keys somewhere downstream along the Seine.

Le Chat

The place we stayed in for our first month here used to be a grand old hotel, in a neighborhood full of grand old hotels. At one point it was turned them into apartment units, but the place retains a bit of the grandness it once had. Soaring lobby ceilings and stained glass gives you a clue that behind the mouldy smell and threadbare carpets and yellowing plaster, it was probably a posh place to stay at one point.

I'm not a cat person at all, but I was charmed by the fact there is a resident cat.

Opera

Bryan has a really fantastic view of the Opera house from his office.

It's not really all that stunning on a cloudy day, but at night it's all lit up and magic looking.

It gets dark so late here (right now we are edging past 10pm) so I haven't gotten a chance to get up there at night with my camera to document it, and it's only illuminated when there is an event going on. One night I'll get my timing right.

Chalk Art

There is a man who sets himself up on the pavement across from the Louvre almost every weekend.

He makes large-scale art in the square with chalk.

He's out there almost every weekend, making a different piece each time. On this particular day, it was threatening to rain and ruin what he's done so far, but he continued to work.

A couple hours later, I checked in on him.

Sunny Montmartre

I stand by my decision to not live in Montmartre.

It's lovely, for sure. Picture-book pretty. The hilly streets with adorable shops and cafes and charming old apartments, everything winding up to a glaringly white and ornately scalloped basilica.

We worked our way towards the top, getting very lost in the process as the streets here are a little skewed...but we weren't in a hurry and there was lots of good stuff to see along the way. As long as you keep going uphill, you really aren't that lost.

There was a small but good Dalí museum. They had a lot of his later work, wonderfully weird sculptures, doodles,illustrations and a great deal of intimate photographs taken by a close friend. Not as nightmare-inducing as the R Crumb exhibit we saw at the Modern a couple weeks ago, but spend too much time in a surrealist's mind and you start to get a little weird yourself.

There's flea markets that you actually want to buy stuff, more Grand Prix de la Meilleure award winners than any other neighborhood, and a tiny vineyard right across from the Cabaret where Picasso and his cronies were known to spend a great deal of their time.

They have also apparently declared Miles Davis as their patron saint. Nice.

Its a bit of a zoo here on the weekends, with some streets nearly impassable and clogged with tourist getting their caricatures drawn by street artist. The musicians and street performers do make for a lively and fun scene.

It wasn't an orignal part of the city plan, but rather a town on the outskirts that got absorbed eventually as Paris expanded. It retains the feeling of a village within a city.

Scarves

Right before I packed up and moved from Brooklyn, I had an insane urge to make a few bulky-yarn projects in order to:

1. Use up the bulky-yarn stash. I think all new knitters go through a phase where the answer is "bulky yarn" to all their yarn questions. It's fast all right. But damn, if you could get something to look flattering on something other than a waif, you deserve an award.

2. Justify my use of knitting time as making visual progress at a time when I felt like I was getting no where and spending my days on endless hold-music calls. Most of these things were all knitted in the course of an afternoon, and in one case, in the time it took for AT&T to dick me around and not resolve anything at all, even though I was asking nicely.

First up: a handspun cowl. It started out as a braid of Corriedale/Alpaca blend from Spunky Eclectic in the "Thunderstorm" colorway.

Great colors...nice and moody.

Spun it up as a chunky 2-ply.

Then I learned a fantastic new technique...the Mobius cowl.

It's a little tricky to get started, but it's simple once you do it. Randomly altering your knit and purl rows makes for interesting texture, and there are tons of different ways to make this your own.

I loved it so much, I went ahead and dug up bags of scarps of some Rowan Biggy Print (which may or may not have been in my stash for more than 7 years) and made a stripy, ultra bulky one on size 17 needles.

It's enormously warm, and I love the texture that the thick-and-thin yarn produced. I randomly alternated the two colors I had until I ran out of yarn, and poof! it's magic! Really, it would have been pushing it if I invested two hours in this.

So I kept on rolling with the Biggy Print, and made a mistake-rib scarf with what I had left:

The pattern (if you could call it that) is Franciose from "French Girl Knits". Mine came out short, so a pin or a button might be added at some point.

One more:

A VERY GLITZY alpaca batt from Loop!

I bought this ages ago, when I first started spindle-spinning. 2006 or '07. I spun it up pretty quickly, but then the yarn just sat in a bin for all these years. Shameful!

Spun up and plied, I only had 74 yards.

So I made a wee necktie out of it, based on this pattern (which called for laceweight yarn).

It does need a good blocking, but it used up all my yarn. Mission accomplished.

I felt clean and purged when that was done. No more odd skeins of overweight yarn to slow me down! Overly warm neckware to the rescue.