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We arrived in Orange County, CA for Christmas and stopped to pay tribute to Duke at the airport (John Wayne Airport, if you can believe it). Johnny doesn't seem to be very impressed, but that's only because he was on canine sedatives at the time.
Happy holidays from Crabby's casa to yours. I'll be back after the new year to update you on knitting, not knitting, and our trip to Crazyland. Cheers!
...and the dog won. Here we have a simple case of German Shepherd versus Cabled Newsboy Cap, and you can see who lost the fight. You may recall from last year that I knit hats for my nieces and nephew on my husband's side of the family. When they were out here for our wedding I had made a deal with them: if they picked out some yarn and Kool-Aid colors, I would dye the yarn and knit them hats. It was a done deal by last Christmas, and the hats were well received. Everyone was happy.
Then the in-laws came for a visit from Chicago a couple of weeks ago (they live near the hat-recipients), and the remains of one hat and (thankfully) some of the left-over yarn arrived back in Seattle. Apparently knit hats are the new "It" chew-toy this year, and hand knits are vastly more tasty than store-bought, to be sure. Maybe it was the Kool-Aid?
This was my first opportunity to repair something that I had knit, and despite the sadness at seeing my hand-knit in shreds, I was pleased as punch. It is unfortunate that the hat was chewed up (moment of silence, please), but the fact that the hat was in use and not tucked in the back of some closet somewhere was very gratifying. So, I was happy to fix it and get it back home and on someone's head.
I had to pull out just less than the top half of the hat. Once that was done I spit-joined the end of the hat yarn with the working yarn, figured out where in the cable repeat I was, and re-knit the hat. Simple! I soaked the hat in warm water with a bit of wool-wash, and then blocked it over a partially inflated balloon sitting in a bowl. I was happy to see that my dyeing was spastic enough that the old yarn and new yarn joined seamlessly (no long stretches of color to match), and the blocking helped bring back some loft to the left-over yarn that had been wound pretty tightly for the past year. The hat is now back in the hands of it's rightful owner, and the order of the [hand knit] world has been restored.
Other small projects continue, and I'll post about them shortly. There have been successes and not-so-successes, but all is fair in love and knitting. Also - happy Solstice! It's only getting lighter and brighter now, baby!
