An honest to goodness finished object.

I am finally finished my hat for N it's for next fall, but since I started it months ago, I felt I really did need to just finish it already.

It's on my head in the picture, but I really think it will fit him quite well.  And it is made specifically to go with his beautiful bright blue eyes.  And even though it is just a plain old stockinette stitch hat, it is his first item made with mama made yarn, so I think he will really like it.  He just loves wool hats!  I wonder where he gets that from?




I didn't get to much knitting this (long) weekend because I spent Saturday and Monday in the garden, and on Sunday we went to an alpaca open house 45 minutes from our house.

I let N use my camera because I wanted his perspective on these little guys.  He is totally in love with alpacas and has been asking for weeks when the open house was going to be.  These are some of his pictures.

The baby is only a week and a half old...N was so excited to see it.  

PS: the skinny one kinda freaks me out!

On the reading front...I do believe I owe my readers some information.  On my last post, I was pretty darn excited that I finally was able to dye some wool green using a plant from my garden.  I must explain that the suggestion to use daffodil heads did not originate from me.  It is from the book "Spectrum: Dye Plants of Ontario" compiled by the Burr House spinners and weavers guild (I have to wonder at a book that specialized, know what I mean?).  The reason I was excited however, is because the summer I spent trying to get green, I was using this book and using plants they had tried and never did manage to get green.  It's strange and unpredictable dyeing with plant dyes (I find) because so much of it depends on the plant itself.  How old or young it is, if there are a lot of blossoms or a few, are the blossoms fresh or spent, etc etc.  I think that is what makes it so interesting.  You just don't know what you are going to get.

Oh, and at the open house...I managed to limit myself to a pound and a half of raw wool...some beautiful chocolate brown, some grey/black, and some off white.  Once I wash it, and play with it, I am sure it will make it's debut...and the hosts were generous enough to give N a full crammed bag of fleece from the legs (that they were just going to throw out if you can believe it) so that he can do some more felting.  We weighed it when we got home and they gave him 2 full pounds.  He is pretty pumped to start playing but the poor thing has to wait until I get the right soap to wash it.  I had to wonder...67 alpacas x 4 legs equals a lot a lot a lot of thrown out fleece.

I will be linking up with small things for yarn along as usual on Wednesdays.  Always some lovely things to see there if you want to come join us.