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Dear Ellen,

Sorry I’ve been so absent…but I’ve been very pleased to live vicariously through your knitterly activities.  My life borders on insanity of late.  (Not that insanity is all that unfamiliar for me, but it’s been particularly intense.)  It’s the working Saturday’s that throws off the entire rhythm I had established in Colorado.  It’s just enough to throw off the weekend so that if I have anything else planned I begin the week already behind.  I’m happy to say that I am just now surfacing after three weeks of it.  I didn’t work yesterday and I believe I’m far enough ahead of the game that I can dedicate a few moments here before bedtime in about 15 minutes.  (Yeah, I’m surfacing, but just barely.)

Event-wise, I’ve traveled and given speeches and been on panels, I’ve hosted two sets of company (hosted would be a euphemism for pointing out the refrigerator and towels and then either leaving the house or going to bed), been to a Redskins football game, been to a new knitting group (YAY!), turned in several course assignments, played in the directorate golf tournament, been to the doctor and some other stuff.    On one of the trips I was briefly in San Diego…but long enough to go to a Padres game with Martha.  There she is picking me up from the air port.  There I am having the souvenir beer and hot dog that I promised Dale.

I did finish one of the Fractured Fairy Tale socks on the trip to San Diego.  (I actually had to work on the plane trip out…the nerve of the Joint Staff to expect that!!)  I love the squishy-ness of the stitch pattern and the sock feels great on my foot. I needed some predominantly red socks…think I’ll wear these LOTS!  Of course, that presupposed that I will finish the other.  I have gotten through the toe, but work on it was interrupted by Hat Wars.

I have no business signing up for things like Hat Wars.  It just makes no sense.  Not only do I not have the time, but why gamble on getting something you don’t care for in return for hours of knitting?  Not that I think I am that superior of a knitter, but I do know I’m pretty good AND I know that others may not be as discriminating in their yarn selections.  Heck, I might just not care for the colorway!  Yet, I continue to be sucked in…why?…why?….WHY????  Oh wait, there’s that blood lust thing.  Never mind, my bad.

My target’s dossier said she liked red. The advance info said we’d need a worsted weight. I had Dream in Color “Classy” in the “In Vino Veritas” colorway on my TLE wish list because it looked so rich when I saw it during one of Sheri’s sneak ups. Now I had a reason to try it. Let me just say, fabulous! And superwash to boot.  I chose to use the Isotopes pattern from knotions.com for my weapon design and as soon as I got home from work Friday got going with cast-on. I didn’t do too much that night because I was tired…and had some frogging in the mix. I got through the 1” of K2P2 ribbing no problem, but immediately made mistakes in the first pattern repeat. I did catch it before finishing the first 8 rows, but decided that recovering from that error would be enough for my obviously toasted brain.  (This is not the easy to fix error to which I refer in my comment on one of your recent posts.)

Saturday I took my weapon with me to the Arlington United Methodist Church to join up with a few ladies starting a new knitting group. (Saturday afternoons nearby and no long established cliques…sounded like a good idea to me.) I only felt a little guilty for bringing a weapon into a church. Okay, not at all. I got moving right along and had mastered the pattern by the time I got home. (The group was nice too – tiny, but promising.)  That evening I found myself one pattern repeat and decreases shy of finishing. I knew mail wasn’t delivered on Sundays, so counted myself safe enough to wait till today to finish. Today I did…on my way to, during and on the way home from the Redskins home opener.

I love the hat – very squishy…seems to be a quality I’m after in most everything lately. I did one extra pattern repeat more than called for to account for a deep “pull down.” My target’s ear to ear measurement is the same as mine, so I used myself as a measuring stick. The pattern was fairly easy, despite my misstep. That was all me, not the pattern. And it’s a good unisex pattern. We had a 12 year old boy and 19 year old young man at the house Saturday night and they both said they’d love a hat like that without any prompting. I’d call that a pretty solid endorsement.

So now, let’s mourn pore Donja’s demise. The hat is in the mail.

Love, Jan