And So Ye Shall Rip

Haven't posted much lately - I've been knitting, but don't have much to show for my efforts, as I seem to be ripping out more than I'm actually producing. Exhibit A:

Yesterday this was a hat for Big Trouble. Unfortunately it was a hat that was a roomy fit for ME, and as Big Trouble does not have a freakishly big head, it is now back to being just a pile of yarn.

Exhibit B: Last week the weather decided to change directly from summer to winter, and my ears were freezing after walking the kids to school. I had seen the pattern for Calorimetry and thought it looked like it would work. I had some lovely Brooks Farms Four Play yarn left over from my mom's Christmas scarf; it's really soft and not at all itchy, so I thought it would allow me to wear it on my head without making me want to rip out all my hair.

Well, after knitting this thing several times, I was sorely tempted to do just that; the picture in the pattern is just the size I was looking for. Unfortunately, the first time I knit it I ran out of yarn as I was casting off right here:


If you can't see it in the picture, I had about 20 stitches left to cast off. So, I ripped back and reduced the decreases, cast off, tried it on, and Miss Serious said "Wow, Mommy, you made a bonnet!" While this may be a good look in the world of a 7 year old, it wasn't quite what I was going for. So, I frogged the whole thing, and cast on 100 instead of 120 stitches, and only did 10 increase rows instead of 16. This helped, and the final version looks like this:

Miss Serious liked it so much that I made her a skinny one with the leftover yarn (it looks more like a straight headband) to keep her ears cozy. It is warm and comfortable, but I'm not really into the whole mother-daughter matching thing; around here just the wearing of a hand-knit scarf on your head makes one stand out quite a bit. Adding in the cutsie factor of matching one's daughter may tend to cause people to raise more than an eyebrow. I may have to go all out and get us matching dresses...