Hat Crafting

So my hat project of last year never really got very far. Mostly I found myself in a standoff with some curly yarn that was interfering with the attachment of some eyeballs onto a frog. So I chose to ignore the project for almost a year.

I recently resolved that conflict by giving up on the curly yarn and doing all the stitching on of details with white straight yarn. This hat, of all my hats, defintely has what we in the yarn art world like to call "homemade charm." It looks much cooler on, and I am pretty pleased with the spots on the back. I will say, that considering the yarn, this is the hardest hat I have made. I am still tempted to removed the eyes and redo them.

 

(Forgive the quality of the photos. My only camera is my defiantly outdated phone.)

 

I also recently completed this bear hat, with which I am quite pleased. It turned out fairly well. 

 

A blanket is also in progress. Take that worldy demand for productivity!

Domestic Adventure in Wichita

Yesterday I was throwing a yarn art party to be enjoyed with wine and a cheese plate. I love cheese. I can handle a cheese plate (except maybe the choosing crackers part), but I don't know a thing about wine. So, again, my friend Kelsie acted as guide to Wichita, and she took me around to some pretty fabulous places. (I don't think I ever posted about the amazing goodies at Juarez Bakery, but everyone should go there.)

First she took me to a great little wine shop in old town. I don't really like wine, so the fact that the vibe in this place wasn't remotely pretentious was perfect. It was a cozy, earthy sort of wine shop with really helpful people (well, person, but Kelsie says the others are great too). Just the sort of place an ignorant wine purchaser like me should go. Unfortunately, the beer selection was kind of lame, so even though it's the closest alcohol selling store to where I live, I will still have to drive a little bit to buy beer I like.

Next stop on our adventure was The Spice Merchant where Kelsie has been telling me to buy coffee, and I have been too lazy to go. (Laziness is my excuse for everything). It has some great little knick-knacks and cooking gadgets, preserves, spices (of course), and the most important part--coffee. I smelled a ton of coffee beans roasted right there, and I fell in love with a rich, earthy, and sort of sweet smelling Organic Columbian. I generally lean towards Columbian coffee beans, so this isn't much of a surprise. It was a medium roast coffee. I think I have discovered I don't like dark roasts because I find I can taste a sort of acrid flavor in dark roasts. It took me a long time to figure this out. Instead, I like a good medium roast brewed dark.

Oh, and don't let me forget the most exciting part! The Spice Merchant has vanilla beans for $1.25 a bean. It's over $5 a bean when you get them from the grocery store. I am ecstatic, and there will be homemade ice cream this summer. I also got some almond syrup because I have decided to quit coffee creamer. I want to live a life of caffe au lait drinking. This morning, I frothed milk in a saucepan using a whisk (it turned out acceptably frothy, but I still need a frother), and I put it in my coffee with the syrup. It was nice, but I need to work on my ratios.

Then our adventure took us to Heritage Hut, where we picked up some crochet hooks and some yarn for Kelsie. It was a small store, so it didn't have a huge yarn selection, but they had really, really nice yarns. Although, I think sometime soon I will hop over to Twist to see what they have. I need to buy some knitting needles because Lindsey (the only guest who showed up to the party besides Kelsie and I) showed me how to knit, but I am currently using chop sticks, and the ends are not pointy enough.

Our adventure took a turn for the mundane after that. We bought cheese, fruit, and crackers at a regular old Dillon's grocery store.  Grocery store camembert might as well be brie. It doesn't smell attrocious at all, and that's just wrong. I need to find a decent place to buy a good foot-smelling camembert. Finally, we wrapped up our adventure by stopping by a Big Lots to get 12 wine glasses for $10 because I didn't have any. Not too shabby. They are very rounded, which was kind of amusing.

Because of tornado warnings, we spent part of the yarn art party in the stairwell in the basement of my apartment complex with lots of my neighbors, yet I think the yarn art party was a success. Most of the guests didn't come, but Lindsey was a delightful find, so she made all Kelsie and my efforts worth it. Social win.

Hobby Adventure!!!

I like to define myself by my hobbies rather than what I do for a living (because what I do for a living isn't that interesting or meaningful to the world), but I think my hobbies are a bit too broad in scope.

I crochet. Well that's nice. What do I crochet? Originally, only rectangular things and only one stitch. This meant lots of scarfs and blankets. I branched out to hats using a cheater method called the "nifty knitter." This past summer/fall I learned a new stitch and began making hats on my own, and not just any hats but animals hats. Of course, animal hats aren't really that high in demand unless you know a lot of little kids. No, what I want to do now is protest crochet following in the spirit of these awesome protest knitters.

Also, I used to be primarily a baker, then I branched out into cooking, and I have lost the touch with some of my baking. It's time to reclaim the world of baking and perhaps emphasize savory things because I don't like sweets that much. Though my first desire is to bake something like what I ate for breakfast, which was sweet. It came from a local mexican bakery and looked like one of those McDonald's apple pie pastries in shape and had the same little breather gaps. However, it wasn't hard and crusty like the tiny apple pies. It was just about the flakiest pastry I have eaten and had a cream cheese filling. Taste-wise, it was like a cheese danish, but less sticky and more flakey. Absolutely amazing. I want to make those first.

Then I will focus more on useful pastries--things I can take for lunch. Little quiches, pot pies, a homemade hot pocket things, stromboli, etc. I better start getting better about stopping by the Y after work.

The Frog Makes Trouble

I thought for sure I could finish my sister's frog hat tonight. I was wrong.

Between the loopy yarn that gets caught up on itself constantly and the fact that I can't quite figure out where to put the eyes, I'm tired of this hat, and I'm giving up for the night.

Stitching one eye on took quite a while because the yarn kept catching. You can imagine my joy when I realized the eyes was not in the right place and I needed to move it. I couldn't just snip the stiches out because I couldn't see where they were. I didn't want to undo the hat by accidentally snipping one of its stitches, so I had to pull the eye off stitch-by-stitch.

I guess I will wear a different hat to work tomorrow for our little Halloween celebration. The bird will suffice.

On a brighter note. I made fried chicken and acorn squash for dinner. It was tasty. After work tomorrow, I'm driving to my parents to visit my cat. Hooray!

On the Road

I've been a bit busy, traveling around the state of Colorado. On my drive through the mountains last Friday, I got to see this mountain turn orange in the sunset.

Then I visited my mom and my twin sister, and we carved a pumpkin. We designed it to be an evil zombie mouse. It has cats walking into its mouth. Molly (my sister) and I had fun designing it. The cats are hard to see in this photo (you can't see the 2nd cat at all).

Now I'm in Denver working. All the travel has worn me out, so I made a pie on Monday to help out with my stress. The crust was super flakey.

Today, I had a decently relaxing day. It was snowing pretty bad, and I am in unfamiliar territory, so I stayed at my sister's all day and VPNed into work. The snow was heavy enough to make the trees droop towards the ground quite a bit.

Moments of stress still influenced the day though. My boss is stressed out. Things are getting rougher and rougher for her. Fortunately, I think we finally found a replacement for me (after several top applicants turned down the job). I'm interviewing him tomorrow because he's here in Denver and not in GJ.

Because of his family, he'll have to work out of the Denver office, which means my boss will be a bit isolated in GJ. I hope he acts as an advocate for her in the Denver office to eliminate some of the tension she is currently experiencing. After hearing about the phone conversation she had with him today, I think we're pretty intent on hiring him. We'll see for sure after the interview.

Worrying about my boss has me stressed out too. If I don't find a job right away, I may act in a volunteer capacity to help train my replacement and perhaps chip away at some of the low priority maintenance tasks.

With all this stress, I need more crochet time. Last night I made cover for a mug Kerrie has that gets too hot. Another sock monkey. Everybody loves those.

I've also started on the eyeballs for Kerrie's frog hat. Hopefully she can wear it for Halloween then.

Saturday I will drive to Manhattan, KS to visit friends. Then Monday, I have an interview scheduled in Wichita. After that I have to make the very long drive back to GJ, but it will be nice to return home, especially because I miss my cat. She's staying with my mom right now, and I will collect her on my way home.

I Have Fun, Too!

I've noticed that none of my posts have been about anything fun lately. No crochet projects, no baking adventures, no weird TV watching, so here is a fun update.

I'm using this weird loopy green mohair yarn to make my sister's frog hat. It causes the hat to be a bit lumpy like the frog has warts, which is perfect and is not impacting the cuteness factor negatively. I purchased the yarn at the Salvation Army for 50 cents a skein six or seven years ago. It's just been waiting in a box for the perfect project. This is the perfect project.

I made another sock monkey coffee cup sleeve for my boss. She did a few rows for herself because I was trying to teach her, so it was a good collaborative effort.

I'm watching Star Trek, the original, on Netflix. Yesterday I watched the episode "Arena," which is based on a short story we read in the science fiction class I took last summer. It is soooo cool how Star Trek revised the story to suit the changing worldview. I also like seeing how progressive Star Trek was for its time. Tis awesome.

Last, but not least, I didn't do an ounce of baking this weekend, so tonight I'm making zucchini bread for my brother-in-law, Beej. Tomorrow I will make peach galettes for everyone else.

Crochet Madness

My super secret crochet project.

It's not so super-secret now that I've posted it on here.

The bird hat for my mom.

The angle makes the one eye look like it has more white than it really does.

It's pretty cool thus far.

Working on a scarf now.

Lined Hats...Crochet Happiness

So here are my first two completed hats. They both are lined with black fleece. Lining hats is hard, but I think it is worth it. I need to work on my measuring of lining though since the lining doesn't have the elasticity of the yarn.

 

First Hat Finished (...ish)

I finished my first fancy hat (well mostly). Check it out! I still need to line it with felt and add the tassles to the bottom of the ties.

Hat Sketches

Here are my hat sketches with some PhotoShop coloring. The baby hat is actually going to be multi-colored yarn, not orange.

So there are the hat plans. I wanted to do something weirder for myself, but couldn't think of anything I really liked, so if you have any ideas, I might change my plan.

Working on Owl Hats

So I am working on owl hats for Kerrie's impending bebe. (Nervous smile face I picked up from hanging out with Chris.) Not too shabby. I'm figuring this out. I have a trial hat with one earflap so far. Then I need to do the other earflap and the ears. I kind of want to do one where the eyes are fabric stitched on, but I might do the yarn eyes.

                        

[Pictures are linked to the their approrpriate sources]

I don't plan for my hats to be exactly like either of these. There are a million owl hat ideas out there, so I am working on something a bit inspired by all.

I also think I might like to do something a bit different for everyone. Not all owls. I think baby alone can have an owl. Planning a bull for Dad, maybe a frog for Kerrie, not sure about Molly and myself yet.

Crochet Day

Right now, I'm streaming NPR while I dig out my yarn and begin to plan some awesome owl hats for my family and me. Sisters, Etc. rocking owl hats this winter. It's going to be awesome!

Who says these are just for babies? I want one. Don't you?