Accidents happen

Pattern: My own design
Yarn: Mystery worsted weight
Needles: 5mm (US8)

This hat will go to Cap Karma, and will be a chemo cap for a local cancer patient.

This is my Accidental Hat. It was not intentional.

I started out with 2 remnant balls of mystery worsted weight yarn. I had no idea how much yarn was in each ball. One was a dark navy blue, the other was a dark burgundy red. An idea popped into my head to turn this into a hat. Surely there should be enough yarn to make a hat if I combined the 2 remnant balls of yarn.

So I started out by casting on 96 stitches (seems to be my most often cast on number for hats) with the intetion of knitting my Utopia Hat, because I like that pattern and have been wanting to knit another. I worked some ribbing and then tried to imagine what this hat would look like with the bottom half in one color and the top half in the other color. I just couldn't see it working out. Now what?

I scrambled to try to find something that I could do to turn this into a hat. So I perused my pattern books and found something that I had been meaning to adapt. Then I started with the color work I hadn't originally planned on doing. I mean, working the bottom half of a hat in blue and the top half in red would certainly used less yarn than stranding an unused color along the back. I wasn't sure if this would work out, whether I would have enough yarn to pull this off. But I went ahead with it anyways. It wasn't exactly the mindless knitting I originally thought this would be.

Well, here it is, my accidental hat. It's a ladies x-small/small size, and a bit snug fitting because I tend to knit tighter when working with 2 colors. I'm always afraid that the unused color in the back will show. The fabric would probably be smoother if I hadn't tried to weave in the unused strand as I knit, however I really do like the neatness of having it weaved in rather than hanging loose on the backside, especially when there were sections where the unused color spanned across as many as 11 stitches before being picked up again.

This is what the back of the hat looks like, neat and tidy. Don't you think this looks better than having loose strands that may snag on stuff (barrettes?). I really do need more practice in weaving in the unused color without knitting too tightly. I'm normally a loose knitter.

I tried taking a dozen photos of Miss M wearing this hat. Unfortunately they all came out badly because she can't be still long enough for me to get a focused shot. I know the photos above aren't very good. I've never been very good at photographing any red knitting, and I guess this hat has enough red to throw off my camera's auto-focusing. My camera just would not focus most of the time, and when it did manage to focus (it beeps) I couldn't hold the camera still enough.

I have to say that it was a refreshing change to do plain knitting after all the cable work I've been doing lately. I still have to share a photo of my latest cable scarf, which you saw a peek here. I still haven't weaved in the ends or blocked the scarf. I did take out my blocking pins and was surprised to see rust stains on them. I guess they weren't rust-proof. Now I need to find some pins which won't turn rusty on me.

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Well, it's been over 3 months since we moved in to our new house. We are still unpacking boxes. We are still trying to find a place for everything (doesn't help that we have less space now). A while back I mentioned not being able to find my camera for several weeks, then I couldn't find (still haven't found) the Terminal Adapter I needed to be able to charge the camera battery (I had to buy a replacement). There are still a few things I am trying to find, like ... The Sims Makin Magic CD and a USB wireless nic. DH was looking for the latter so that he could plug it into his desktop computer. His desktop computer used to have a cable to the DSL modem which sat a on the computer desk. Due to where the phone jacks are in the house, the DSL modem is now by the kitchen/family room, and we are certainly not running a long cable from the computer room to the box. We keep finding odd things about our new house. For example, there is a phone jack in every bedroom except the one we are using in the office, viz. the one where we would have liked to hook up the DSL modem. Another oddity is a light switch that is in the family room which is not linked to any of the power outlets in the room. We call it the "mystery" switch because it doesn't do anything.

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A short while back I mentioned getting a 500 GB external drive since I was running short on space on my little laptop. Well, we have recently acquired two more 500 GB drives (these slightly used HDs obtained at the bargain price of $25 each), however they're internal SATA units (not sure if they're SATA I or II) so we will have to get some sort of external HD enclosure. We're thinking of this Vantec NexStar 3 which holds 1 HD and supports USB 2 and eSATA (not that we have this); the Central Computer website says it only supports up to 400 GB, but this is incorrect, it really supports 1 TB. We're also thinking about this Vantec NexStar MX which holds 2 HDs. Which one to get? Two single drive enclosures or one dual enclosure? Decisions, decisions...

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I'm starting to wish I hadn't picked up that big box of PG Tips. I've been drinking 2 big 20 oz mugs of the stuff after 3 PM and I think it is interfering with my sleep. Even so, I want to pick up a box of the their Special Blend.


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