Ooops...

One of these things is exactly like the other.

Do you see the two identical halves of a snap?  Yes, yes you do.

I carefully cut off the hand-sewn half on the knitting, flipped it and re-sewed it.

Now I have this.

The snap is a clever way to attach the pom-pom to the hat, but I think I prefer the elastic loop method, where the elastic is pulled through the top of the hat and then buttoned around a, well, a button.  Less sewing.

I played yarn chicken with this project because I was using left-over yarn from the second Cowboys and Angels wrap.  I both won and lost.

I still had rows to go before I could start the decreases and I gambled that I could make it because I had made the ribbing section shorter in order to save yarn.  

As it turned out, I bet I could have knit several more rows of ribbing and still made it, so I sort of lost, even though I won and didn't run out of yarn, because now I have so little yarn left over that there's nothing to do with it.  I should have knit on.

And because it's raining and cold today, I finished my socks as well.

It's a good day for hand knit wool socks.

Now, unless I can come up with another knitting distraction, it's on to the sweater.  I've only had the yarn for a year and a half.

Ramblings

I'm just wandering around in my mind because I don't feel like getting organized, so here are my rambles:

My two daughters and I went to Ireland, had a great time, saw the usual places and some new ones.  

I learned the value of really good car rental insurance.  I have no problem driving on the left side of the road while seated on the right side of the car, and oddly enough, I am a champ at parallel parking.  I DO have a problem with tiny parking spaces in parking garages, and I scrubbed the left front of the rental car on a concrete post in a garage in Galway.  There were two narrow spaces between two large posts and that's where I had the problem; when I returned the car, no problem.  Phew.  Also, the car was a Toyota hybrid, which I think means a Prius, and I loved it.  Used not a lot of gas for a lot of driving.

We found the church in Garvagh where my paternal grandmother was baptized in 1881. She moved to the US in 1905 and died here in 1953.  I only met her once and I was not even five yet so I only vaguely remember her.  I have tried without success to get her birth certificate but I just found my grandfather's bc and it is on its way to me.  If I can get his death certificate, I can apply for Irish citizenship.  

Isn't it pretty!

I need my grandfather's social security number to apply for his death certificate, and I have no idea if he even had one, and if he did, how to find it.  More research ahead.  I have no idea why I would want an Irish passport, or what I would do with it.  But I'm stubborn enough to think that if I CAN have one, I SHOULD have one.  

We had fish and chips, of course, several times. And, of course, Irish stew, and of course, Guinness.  Or at least, I did.  

Because one of my daughters had been to Ireland before, and I had been there twice before, some destinations were a repeat for one or both of us, but everything was a first for older daughter.  A special treat for all of us was Newgrange.  

It was built in about 3200 BC and is an example of very early genius engineering.  It's quite small inside and the ceiling is amazing---slabs of rocks arranged and stacked to form a dome, and the builders knew to slightly tilt the rock towards the outside of the structure so that rain would not get inside---and it hasn't in all these centuries.  Soil is mounded up over the rock portion so it looks much larger than the inside actually is.  Archaeologists aren't sure what the structure was used for, but during winter solstice, at sunrise, light comes inside through the window above the doorway and lights up the path to the center of the round space where we gathered, only fifteen of us at a time.  

In Galway I bought another cabled sweater.  What Georgia resident doesn't need even more wool clothing?

And speaking of knitting, since I returned home, I have finished two more projects:

A second Cowboys and Angels

And another pair of socks.  (Magpie yarn)

And now, for something completely different, this explains where ghosts come from, but now that Halloween is over and the ghosts are gone, we are still left with the struggle to put duvets inside their covers.  I've gotten smart and let my husband do it.  He has come up with a technique that involves turning the cover inside out and then doing something that involves hanging the whole thing over the stairway railing.  I have not bothered to learn this technique.  

And speaking of Halloween, sort of, this is what is left of a bag of 90 assorted candies.  I had never heard of Starburst so I tried one.  The pieces look like bubble gum, but, SURPRISE, they aren't.  I'm not sure what they are; they aren't particularly sweet and I couldn't discern a flavor.  Sorry kids, but I'm sure you got some M&Ms, Twix and Three Musketeers I gave out in each handful of candy.

And, that's probably enough rambling for now. 

Thanks for reading, especially if you made it to the end.  

Slán.

Dear Diary,

Dance as if no one is watching. check

Sing as if no one is listening. check

Write as if no one is reading. check!

That I can now do because I announced to the world in general that I was not writing any more posts, and so I imagine that no one gets notices that there is a new post, and yet here I am again. Talking to myself, as it were.

But I have knitting news and it has to go somewhere:

I'm working on my second Cowboys and Angels.  The first one came out really well and it was fun to make so why not make a second in a more neutral color?  So I am.  Also it serves to put off starting work on theThrowback Sweater.  It is going to be such a difficult knit because it involves stranding ON THE BACK SIDE, which I hear is torture.

I am also working on a pair of socks because having two WIPs definitely stops me from working on the sweater.

I'm using Knitjan's basic pattern, the only one I've ever used. (Magpie Yarns Swanky Sock, color Très Bien)

Swanky indeed; it has cashmere in it!  

So the yarn for the Throwback Sweater lies dormant, waiting for me to work up the desire to knit it.

Someday it might look like this:

A girl can dream.

Yay Me!

I rode my bike this morning all bah mahself!  I know what you're thinking---big deal. But it's the first time in years that I've ridden alone because of the time I fell and broke my wrist.

I always ride with my husband so that he can call 911 when I fall. He is in SC today, so I rode with my trusty "Help I've fallen and I can't get up watch," and the phone it calls 911 from. So in that regard, I was prepared and ready to go.

However at about the 3/4 point of my ride, I had to stop and walk the bike over some curbs between neighborhoods, and I discovered that my kickstand was down.  Ooops.

It's a good thing I hadn't needed to make any sharp left turns, although, when I told my husband what I had done, he said that the kickstand would have gone up if it had hit anything.  I'm just glad I didn't have to learn that firsthand.


In other totally unrelated news, I am making this wrap out of exactly this yarn in exactly this color.  

Cowboys and Angels by Isabell Kraemer

It appears that I will do anything to avoid starting work on the Throwback fair isle sweater.