Remedial posting

I was thinking the other day that there are several finished knitting projects of which I never posted pictures on this blog. I decided that I would post remedial pictures, but because I am lazy I would use my "kitchen computer" camera to take the shots. Yes, I have a "kitchen computer," a little old laptop (in a house like ours, there are old computers lying around because my technologically-savvy husband must periodically get newer, faster, more amazing computers). The kitchen computer is mostly used to play internet radio stations and podcasts while I wash the dishes and cook. Sorry about the computer camera, no flash, no focus, but you'll still get the idea about the knitting, and better some bad pictures than none at all.

Here is what the kitchen computer usually sees.

Today, however, it got to take glamourous shots of my high-fashion knitwear.

getting the angle right takes some doing with this little camera.

This is a hat I knit out of yarn I bought in England over a year ago. I've lost the label, so I can't tell you which yarn it is, but I pulled it out of the bargain bin at a department store, John Lewis--department stores are apparently the only places you can buy yarn in London. I think this was some Debbie Bliss yarn that has now been discontinued.

The genesis of the idea for the pattern was that my friend Sarah had this really cute hat on a while back, and I was admiring it, and she said, "thanks! I bought it at [some boutique in Brooklyn] and it only cost me [what I perceived to be an obscene amount of money]" and I said, "my goodness, I could make one of those," and I devised the pattern for the above hat, after studying her hat. Sometimes I call this my kitty cat hat, and sometimes I call it my Brunnhilde hat. Ohmygoodness, the flak I got from my husband for wearing this hat this winter. He thought it was just too silly. I don't care, I like it because its warm and I can tie it on when its cold outside

like this. Also it doesn't mess up my hair terribly when I don't tie it on.

The other remedial knitting I have to show are the gloves I knit last fall some time. These I knit using the garter-stitch glove pattern out of that ubiquitous book Weekend Knitting, by Melanie Falick. Nice, relatively easy pattern. The yarn is from Mountain Colors, and the colorway is called Crazy Woman, isn't that great? The yarn made wonderful gloves that kept my fingers warm all winter.

Aaaargh, I'm comin' to get you!

I have to say, I am really proud of these gloves. If you had told me a few years ago that I would knit gloves, I would have said "never". Gloves seemed to me to be the pinnacle of knitting amazingness. Now I know that gloves really aren't all that complicated, it's just a whole bunch of circular knitting on double-pointed needles, all it takes is some basic knitting skills and bits of bravery and coordination. But I am still pleased with myself, because the gloves fit and they function well to keep my hands warm. They do the job they were designed to do, they are a successful, happy little item together. This is nice for me to know, as some of the things I knit are not so useful. My long-term knitting goal is to increase the percentage of my overall knitting which is useful and completed. I think that's possible.