Gremlins giveth and taketh away

Sylvain earned two big hugs this week. The first was for finding my copy of "The Book Thief". According to him, he found it on the desk in the office by the computer. I wonder about that since 1) I looked there already and 2) there was no reason for the book to be there in the first place. I guess I should stop while I'm ahead and finish the damned thing before it disappears on me again....Now, if I could figure out what the gremlins took in place of the book...

Hug #2 was due because I had him stand up in front of the knitting guild and show how he made my sock blockers using these directions. He then manned a table stacked with wire hangers and helped anyone that stopped by to make a pair. I know it's not easy for a kid his age to get up in front of a group and speak, but I'm proud that he did it.

Anyways, I spent the last couple of days in Port Huron for a meeting at the Great Lakes Maritime Center. It's right on the St. Clair River, so was cool to watch the large ice floes drift pass (rather quickly).

My boss and I had an opportunity to see the ice snowmobile racetrack and tents being set up for this weekend's Port Huron Chilly Fest. When we arrived to the Center this morning, we couldn't tell what the large, polished area of ice was for. We debated about whether it was a very large curling rink or an odd-shaped hockey rink, then settled on it being a speed skating track. When we were leaving after the meeting, we saw that snowmobiles were being unloaded from trailers and laughed because the track was ridiculously small and the tents lined each side rather closely. Now that I see this weekend's festivities call for ice snowmobile races, our chuckles were confirmed. I don't know about you, but something a little wrong about standing that close while snowmobiles go racing by on ice, but to each their own...

Oh, and I did see this cool sculpture outside of the Maritime Center.

As for knitting this week: I finished chemo cap #2 (the Off Balance Beanie) knit using Berroco Comfort. I think there is something to be said about my ability to read (or lack thereof). The pattern was easy enough, but for no particular reason, I figured it was worked in the round, even though there was not explicit directions stating such (?!?).

With that said, working the pattern in the round didn’t affect anything, really, except that if you closely compare the photo above with that on the pattern, you’ll see that the pattern rotation is in the opposite direction, which is actually pretty neat, if you knew to notice that. Also, I just needed to knit the purls and purl the knits for every other row of the decrease (or another way to say that was follow in pattern on the non-decrease rows).

Other things that I changed: since this is a chemo cap and the intent is to cover more of the skull, I lengthened the 8-row pattern by adding two additional repeats, ending on row 58 (still working another set of row 1 and 2 at the end). This resulted in a cap length of 6 3/4” before the first row of decreases. I’ll post a better photo when Heda comes to visit…(If you're a friend from Ravelry, I apologize now for the duplication, but what's said needed to be said)

Chemo cap #1 (the Chemo Turban) is still on the needles. When searching Ravelry for free hat patterns, I saw this pattern and thought it was a pretty cool concept, so decided to knit it. After picking out the yarn and working a couple few gage swatches, I settled on an appropriate needle size (8s) and settled down on my comfy couch to get started. After setting up the crochet cast on and the first two rows, I read the rest of the pattern to discover that the pattern called for 4 x 4 ribbing for 40 inches (yep, you read that right and for you Canadians: that's just shy of 102 cm). Dammit! It takes a lot for me abandon a pattern, and I wasn't going to start now. Well, while out of town this week, I ran out of yarn with 12 inches to go. So, tomorrow's plans will involve making a quick run to Stitch in Time to pick up another skein. Yes, I was just there on Monday. No, I wasn't smart enough to realize at the time that I didn't have enough yarn. Head hanging in shame Like chemo cap #2, this hat is being knit using Berroco Comfort, and none of the Lansing yarn shops have this particular verigated colorway.

So, with Chuck upstairs sick in bed and Sylvain out of town, I'm left with some alone time tonight to start work on chemo cap #3 (the Lotus Hat), which will be knit using Berroco Comfort DK. Hopefully, this hat won't take too long. After all, I have quite a bit of reading to do too....