Ski trip preparation

Passport? Check. Ski boots? Check. Skis? Check. Warm clothes? Check. Wash kit? Check.
Selection of silly fleece hats? Weeeeellll... maybe just one more...
This hat is brought to you by Patchway Community College and Dr Seuss. I just hope the kids don't spend all week calling him 'the Prat in the Hat'. Although I don't think he'd care...
To see a selection of previous ski hats, click here.
Despite what you may think, since I am continually making him look ridiculous in public, I do love my brother. And he does ask for the hats. Honest.

Very late hat, just in time.

This hat (please excuse the rubbish self-timer photo) is both very very late and just in the nick of time. Contradiction? What do you mean?
I promised to knit a friend of my brother's a ski hat with earflaps, before xmas. What with deadlines and parting and birthdays, I'd put it off and put it off... Now it's finally done, just in time for him to wear it on a ski trip on Saturday. So it will still be of some use in the snow, although not the snow we had here!

Fleece lining. Fiddly, but worth it. All hand-stitched, for stretch without distortion.

The hat before lining and without plaits. Next time I'll start the pattern lower down, but it's ok.

Now I can start on the brother's birthday prezzie... His birthday's tomorrow, but I won't see him till Friday - talk about cutting it fine!

A mishmash of wooly things

The grey mystery shawl has suffered a terrible fate... the lace pattern wasn't working out wonderfully well with the increases (particularly when I did more chatting than concentrating at knit and natter)... so the lace section got frogged. It is being reknitted with a simpler plan, but there's not much interesting to see yet. More to come later.
Yesterday, a lovely friend of mine came to lunch with her lovely fiancé, and brought me two fleeces! There was a label on the bags saying 'free to a good home'. I think I'm a good home.
Washing fleece gets tiresome, but I'm still always gobsmacked by the results...

Unwashed fleece left, washed on right. Same fleece, from same sheep, just soaked in some hot soapy water for 20 minutes and rinsed. Amazing, n'est-ce pas?

Haven't decided what to do with it all yet, but the dark fleece (there was a dark one and a white one) isn't looking like it's spinning/knitting quality. Huge amounts of VM, short fibres, coarse fibres and general cack. Once washed and run through the drumcarder 3 times (huge amount of mess!) it seems to felt quite nicely, so I think it's destined to be felted slipper soles. That way it doesn't need to be soft or pretty. I think a lot of people would probably give up and chuck this one, but I can't see wool go to waste! The white looks like a nice fleece to spin though... no idea what it is, but I may try a bit of detective work later on.

Another random piece of this week: I've always loved the little bunnies knitted by Julie at Little Cotton Rabbits, and yesterday I caved and bought some rabbit-coloured baby alpaca wool and her pattern for a bunny egg cosy. I couldn't put it down! By midnight, I had this cute little friend:

Isn't she gorgeous? I have already had several requests for one (or more!) for Easter prezzies...

The flas photo is a bit washed out, her jumper is actually two shades of pink, and she fits over an egg beautifully. A home-grown, free-range egg, of course!

Lastly, this morning I realised that a hat I've been putting off since before xmas needs to be done by the end of the week, so I put on a burst of speed! It's the snowflake hat from Newton's Knitting, but I've added a pattern repeat to make it bigger (recipient has a big head!) and I'll be adding earflaps and a fleece lining to keep him warm on a ski slope. Hopefully I'll finish this tomorrow.

Last week kind of got knocked sideways by an interview (I didn't get the job), and another application. This week I hope to have a bit more time to think and knit. This may seem like a lot of knitting, but it's all been since Friday afternoon! One more week until half term...