FO: A couple of hats....

I think I might have expressed this before, but I do love making hats.

They take very little time.  I can usually crank one out in four hours or so, unless it is with very skinny yarn or very complicated.  That's about a week's worth of commuting time, or some idle tv time in the evenings.  Speaking of which, 2007 called and I'm really into the Danish show "The Killing" right now, and it's NOT JUST BECAUSE OF THE AWESOME KNITWEAR.  Why am I watching a dark, wintry, Danish crime drama in high summer?  I can't answer that, but the UK Netflix doesn't get nearly as many films as the US counterpart, and it's mostly loaded with British sitcoms, which, like almost all sitcoms, I find insufferable.    

Anyway, hats make fantastic gifts.  Everyone could use one.  Or eight.  I made these both as gifts.  They also take up odd skeins of yarn- a ball leftover from a sweater, some scraps from your scrap bin, a skein that you impulsively bought with no real project in mind for but you just had to try it.  

First up is the Nantes hat from Interweave Knits Winter 2011.  

It's got the perfect amount of cables and lace, making a lovely cathedral-like pattern.  I loved this pattern and will be making it again in the future.

I made mine slouchy, but you could go down a needle size and make a beanie and it would work as well.  I do love slouchy over-sized hats.  I tend to not wear hats with the brims straight across my forehead, but I rather like to push them back so they cover my ears.

The yarn is Rowan Pure Wool Aran, a soft superwash wool.  It comes in 186 yard balls, and I shortened the pattern by three rows so I would have enough yarn to finish it nicely.

Next up is the Nottingham hat.  I used a skein of Quince and Co Osprey leftover from my Aidez cardigan that I made last winter.  The color is pea-green, which, honestly, is a tough color to pull off this close to your face.

It's slouchy as well.  Almost rasta-like, but I did want to use up every last bit of wool.  The lace pattern makes nice diagonals, it was simple and it looks fantastically hip if you can pull off this color green.

These will both be gifted eventually.  The right person, the right season.  No one I know is allowed to be cold.  

FO: Aidez

Hello!  I haven't had a lot of free time or reliable network lately, as I am still in a hotel waiting to move in to a more permanent home.  It's been...less than ideal.  This might be a personal record as far as living out of suitcase goes for me...two months now.  

 

Did you know this was created by the Ministry of Information to get people through the Blitz?  It makes every other use of it seem trivial.  

I'm liking my new adopted home, but I think I'll just like it more when I feel more settled in these next few coming weeks.  I think I miss cooking the most- not having a fridge, a coffee maker or even a hotplate means I'm getting awfully sick of ready-made sandwiches and salads.  

I made a sweater!  I started it while I was still in Paris and just finished it up and blocked it.  It's a welcome addition to my very limited wardrobe.  A nice little mid-winter pick me up for when I'm sick of the same five things that I have, along with the panicky few pairs of clean undies I have.  Launderettes are few and far between here, as it is pretty standard to have a washer drier crammed in the kitchen.  I guess the good thing about having to make the schlep is I did get some knitting done, and a nice older Italian woman commented, "Oh!  A jumper!"  Sweaters are jumpers here.  Pants are underware.  It's a flat, not an apartment.  The flat has a lift, not an elevator.  

It's the Aidez sweater, which is somewhat ironically the French word for "Help".  "Aidez-moi, si vous plait!" is quite the useful phrase when in France.

The yarn is a souvenir from my trip up to Maine last summer- it's Quince & Co Osprey.  A lovely cushy Aran-weight wool yarn that is really quite fun to knit and the 3-ply structure really made the cables pop.  The color is "split pea", which is kind of an atypical color choice for me as I usually go for greens that are darker- more hunters and forests and olive greens.  It's a fresh, bright color. In wintertime, this makes me insanely giddy.  

The pattern is straightforward- I finished the sleeves in a matter of days, then the back in a few more.  I hit some hiccups as I ended up knitting two left fronts (distracted and drinking when I read those instructions, I was) and had to rip one back, but then that progressed quite nicely once I saw the err in my ways.  

I blocked this piece by piece in the hotel room sink and on the bath mat, and seemed it up using hair pins to keep the pieces in place.  Now that I think of it...it's kind of a miracle that this worked out at all.  

I love it so.  It's very warm, and cozy.  I am thinking about discreetly adding some hook-and-eye closures to the inside once I have my sewing kit.  I think it would be more wearable if it fastens in the front somehow, but I like how clean it looks without a button band or buttons to distract.  The sleeves are very fitted, which I don't mind, but if you like some ease to your sleeves, you might want to go up a size.  

I made the Medium size (40") and used 1020 yards of yarn, which was six entire skeins.  I still have one skein left that I have to deal with, which will be a hat or a cowl eventually.  

I've been taking lots of walks with my camera, especially on the odd sunny days.  I'm having fun exploring and browsing all the shops and food markets and trying to hustle and get things done before the dreaded tube strike this week.  

Jamaica Bay

When I first moved to New York, it took me a while to realize that there was a neighborhood called Jamaica and it had nothing to do with reggae and white sand beaches. There is, however, a Wildlife Reserve on Jamaica Bay that the National Park Service runs. It's a great place to see a lot of birds that you don't normally see in the city limits.



It's also a fabulous place to walk around and spend a relaxing day outdoors. It's relatively quiet without a whole lot of people crowding the path. Most of those who do go there are serious birdwatchers and they tend to be a silent bunch. You are right next to JFK airport though, which means you have a steady roar of overhead jet engines.

The mulberry trees are starting to show off their fruit.



The dark ripe berries are fragile, pleasantly mild and sweet.

We saw a lot of sea birds- ibis and heron and egret, gulls and terns.



There were also a couple of osprey nest. They both had a few fledgling chicks in the nest- every once and a while you could see these huge, awkward wings unfold and beat around for a bit.



We could actually see them being fed super-fresh sushi.  I'm kind of envious.  


















The beach roses were starting to bloom and the bumble bees were going crazy. It was a symphony of buzzing every time you reached a patch of blooming flowers.



We reached another Osprey nest. This one was much closer to the trail, and our presence seemed to really agitate the birds.





This lead to a few really nice close-ups of one of the adult birds who wouldn't let us out of sight.





















I took a few pictures and then we quietly moved on. Raptor talons are rather large and razory.  I'm always in awe of birds of prey and it's always a treat to get to see them up close.