Didn’t Mother Nature Get the Memo?

This is what we woke up to. Now, please don’t think I’m whining. Over on the east coast, the weather is far more wintery than we have here. They have my sympathy. This little bit of white stuff is already gone and the rain has taken it’s place. It was just a little surprising to see white again.

About the slippers… I think when I make more, I will have to put leather bottoms on them. The last pair I made John lasted two years, even with wearing them outdoors, so I didn’t expect our slippers to wear out as quickly as they are.

Do you think I can use some leather I have on hand? A number of years (and more than a handful of pounds) ago, I bought a pair of Danier leather pants. One day, they got caught on a store display and tore. The store realized they were partly responsible and offered to pay for having the pants repaired. I was given (and still have) the lower half of that pant leg, beautiful soft black leather. There’s more than enough there to make soles for the slippers, but I wonder if it’s suitable. Any thoughts?

I have been knitting this week. Both the cardis for the girls and the Western Seas sweater have seen some progress, but none is ready for a picture update. With yesterday being Sit & Stitch day, I wanted to start something else and there’s been a small project I’ve been wanting to sink my teeth into for quite a while. Friday evening, I cast on!

This is the Mini Mochi Fake Isle hat from Crystal Palace Yarns (straw.com). The pattern is written for Mini Mochi, a yarn with long colour changes, similar (I believe) to the colour changes in Noro. Each hat is worked with a single ball of yarn, working from both ends of the ball. I am working it in two different fingering weight yarns, one, as you can see, with long colour changes (Marks & Kattens Fame Trend) and a gray sock yarn. It will be a fairly muted fake isle (as opposed to true fair isle knitting) hat but if I like it, I have more yarn waiting in the wings to make another, more vibrant, hat (which I may do anyway).

One of the nice things about knitting this hat with this yarn is that if I don’t care for the current colour combination, I can just wind off the colour I don’t like until I get to a colour I do like. It’s a simple fair isle pattern, an 8 stitch, 6 row repeat. If, at the end of the knitting, I don’t really care for it, it will go into my box ‘o knitted stuff and will eventually be given away to keep someone else’s ears warm.