Warm and toasty

Here's my dad sporting the hat and scarf I made for him last Christmas. The hat is based on the Feeling Fuzzy hat in The Yarn Girls' Guide to Simple Knits by Julie Carles and Jordana Jacobs. The pattern calls for using three strands of a chunky-weight yarn, but I used two strands of Lamb's Pride bulky yarn in Sable, which has a sort of dark cappuccino color. The first eight inches of the hat are done in K3 P3 ribbing; the rest of the hat is stockinette stitch. I improvised the scarf in a matching rib, but instead of making long ribs the entire length of the scarf, I made them into blocks, with the result being a nifty checkerboard pattern. This yarn is 85% wool and 15% mohair, so it's very good at warding off winter's chill!

Cthulhu meets the Muppets

Recently I knit a drawstring bag using two yarns held together: one string of a basic brown worsted-weight brown yarn, and one string of a fuzzy novelty yarn in brown tones. The result was a bag shaped like a piece of Southwestern pottery, with the ends of two fuzzy drawstrings emerging from it like four tentacles. It really does look like Cthulhu meets the Muppets.

This bag also happens to be one of Sylvia's new toys. Jan and I discovered that wearing it like a glove and using it to tickle her often cracks her up. If we hold the opening of the bag up to the back of her head, she looks like a little Rastafarian.