Knitted Hats

It's snowing outside, and Christmas is nearly here. Time to knit one of the easiest and best-loved projects of all, the hat. One hat generally takes 200 yards of yarn, or about 1 1/2 skeins. I hate wasting that 1/2 skein that's leftover, so I almost always buy three skeins, and make two hats. Here are the two hats I made out of three skeins of Noro, a yarn from Japan renowned for intense color:

Here's a closeup of the first hat, knit in the round on double-pointed needles:

The top of the hat:


The second hat took longer to make, as it features a slip-stitch pattern. Even though it is the same yarn, the pattern makes the hat feel thicker:



I love the crown of the hat, which shapes itself into a hexagon simply from decreasing:

Tiger's Tale, Taiwanese Style

In case you didn't get the news, or didn't understand what you did hear, this video explains everything you need to know in less than two minutes, with awesome animation:

One of Life's Mysteries

The other day I opened my post office box and found the latest Victoria's Secret Christmas Catalog. As I began looking through it, I wondered how my ordering something from this catalog is a way of celebrating Baby Jesus' birthday. I thought about it some more. If placing an order will deepen my spirituality, why didn't I get a Vicki's catalog for Yom Kippur? Nor did I receive one to help me celebrate the birth of Buddha on April 30. How about you?

Do you get it?

Weekend in Vail

On Friday we drove to Vail, Colorado, to spend the weekend. My husband and I were going there to celebrate the anniversary of when we met. I can't believe how many years ago it was. How many, you want to know? Well, let's just say it's more than all your toes and fingers put together, and really, who wants to count that high? I've been looking forward to this getaway for weeks, as we've not been anywhere without kids in over twenty years.

Do you think that when you've been together for a long time that you can still surprise one another? Surely not. But my spouse surprised me when we got to our hotel and he changed his shoes, putting on the pair of athletic shoes he was wearing the night we met. I had no idea he'd kept them all these years. Later on in the evening when he was taking care of his ski rental for tomorrow, one of the clerks asked him where he got his shoes, because he'd only ever seen Nikes with the Air Jordan emblem on them, which of course, came after these shoes. When my husband told him the story, the clerk was mystified. Why on earth would you save the shoes you were wearing on the night you fell in love?

Moonrise Over Vail

After arriving in Vail on Friday night, we looked up towards the two ski runs that were open and saw a beautiful crescent moon rising. Click on the photo to see the details:

Where's Waldo?

If you're not keeping your eyes open here in Colorado, you're going to miss out. Yesterday afternoon we were heading west on I70 to Vail, and I was determined I was not going to miss out. I was watching the mountains closely and here's what I saw:
Just mountain, scrub, and boulders, right? No.


I looked closer and found my prizes, a herd of big horn sheep:




You don't get to see these guys often, since they blend right in with their boulder-colored bodies and snow-colored butts.

For Deniz: A No-Sewing Knit Garment

Deniz and I are both writers and knitters. We've been chatting back and forth about the sorts of projects we like to knit. And I discovered that she and I DO NOT like sewing stuff together after it's been knit, as in, sewing the front to the back and/or sewing in sleeves.

May I suggest this gorgeous vest? The pattern, called the Raveneli, (scroll down mid-page) can either be made into a vest or a jacket. This vest was created for one of my daughters, and required NO SEWING! It's all done in one piece, and it uses big needles as well, which means it works up quickly. I used yarn from Textiles a Mano which I discovered at the Estes Park Wool Festival. Laura Macagno-Shang is the owner and hand dyes the yarns. I've also placed phone orders with Laura, not only because she has gorgeous products, but because she treats her customers so well.

Monkey Mind

Subtitle: Enjoy the entire sky, please!


I mentioned earlier on this blog that I had a dream come true for me the first weekend in October, when I was lucky enough to get to go to Taos, New Mexico and study writing at a weekend seminar led by Natalie Goldberg. Natalie Goldberg is the author of Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, 1986, and ten other books. She has been a practitioner of Zen for over thirty years and teaches seminars in writing as a spiritual practice.

Now before I get any further in describing what I learned, PLEASE remember one thing: There are as many successful methods of writing as there are authors. So I am not saying that this is THE one and only way to write. It may not be for you. But it is for me!

THE IDEA: Natalie teaches an extremely simple writing process. She advocates writing longhand with a fast pen. Buy a cheap spiral notebook so that you give yourself permission to write the worst crap ever. One of her first writing rules, and there are very few, is to keep the hand moving at all times. Within each of us is a creator and an editor, and that by keeping the hand moving, we keep the editor (called Monkey mind) at bay. If you keep your hand moving, something creative will come out of your hand.

Why not use the laptop? Writing on a computer is a completely different physical activity from writing longhand. You will get a different result. Be mindful that if you use a computer for work, handwriting will signal to the brain that you are involved in a different activity.

Monkey Mind: Monkey mind is the name of our internal editor, that voice that tells you how stupid you are, how you can’t write, how what you write is garbage, etc. Monkey mind robs you. Monkey mind is always commenting, and we shouldn’t care or listen. Monkey mind lives within every artist, not just writers.

Natalie gave an excellent example of how Monkey mind works: You are out enjoying a beautiful day and you get a tall ladder and a marker. You climb up the ladder, and place a mark on the sky. Then you observe and obsess over the microscopic mark (Monkey Mind) and cannot even see the rest of the sky, much less enjoy it. You are blind towards anything else, towards the entire rest of the sky. All else is called Wild Mind. By the way, when you are writing a book, the closer you get to the end, the more Monkey mind screams.

Wild mind is where we want to write from, because this is where we all really think. We engage in discursive thinking; below it is Wild mind. It is our job as writers to connect to Wild mind and then get out of the way. When you meet Wild mind and write from that place, others connect to your writing. Monkey mind, the dot on the sky, that’s where we focus, whereas the whole sky, Wild mind, is where we should focus.

Eins Swine, Wish He Were Mine

Meet Tetley the tea cup pig, featured in this article. Isn't he a doll? Various family members who shall remain unnamed (Biker Chick) want me to get one of these darling creatures. So just for grins, I did look here for more details. These animals are so popular that this breeder can only put your name on a waiting list. It's a great site, giving plenty of information about pig ownership.

One of the disadvantages of owning a pig is that they become "spoiled and manipulative." Eke! That would be dreadful. I wonder what that would be like? Dear Spark and I don't want to know.

TuTu Tuesday

Subtitle: My Mouth Gets Me in Trouble Again

First off, I know it isn't Tuesday, but I like that title so you're stuck with it. The moral of this story is control your outrage and your mouth, or else it's off to the sewing machine for you.

During the summer months, I was at the shopping mall with Biker Chick. Now, I'm not a shopper, while Biker Chick is quite the trend setter. We stopped at one of her favorite stores, where she admired the tutus. I looked at the garment and expressed my outrage at the price, the lack of a lining, and at the poor quality of the scratchy tulle. (You know what's coming next!) "I could make a tutu much cheaper and much nicer than that!"

To which Biker Chick replied, "Oh Mumsy, would you?" I saw that lovely smile and I was trapped like a fly in a web. So off to the fabric store I went to purchase tulle, lining, and gross grain ribbon. I could not find a pattern, so I winged it by cutting strips and sewing them together. I also purchased flowers to go on top of the ruffling.

This first tutu was created for elder teen daughter in her favorite colors of lime green and purple:



And this tutu was made for Biker Chick:


The girls love their skirts so it was all worthwhile, but next time I will keep my mouth shut at the mall.