Sunshine & A Hat!

The view from our back bedroom this morning

A beautiful sunny Morning! The daughter is kept home from school with a cold so what better way to pass the time than by taking photos of the new hat in natural light?
You may recognize the yarn from my previous post. Yes, it is the lovely Peace Fleece which I received from my Secret Pal. I just love the colour in the sun! The pattern is based on Peruvian from Knitty. I had to add a few stitches to account for my huge head. Somehow, mine didn't come out as square shaped as the original - must have something to do with the way I pick up stitches. I don't really mind. In fact I quite like the way it looks.
A note on my technique: As I have mentioned before, I am hopeless with DPNs, so I knit this hat back and forth on circulars. Thus, there is a seam. C'est la vie! Love the i-cord bind off edge. It took six readings of the instructions and much fumbling, (with 2 DPNs knitting off the circular), but once I got it, I flew. Always great to learn a new technique.

PS: The back of the daughter's head appears with her express permission. It is a sad fact that this lovely hat looks better on her than it does on me. Sigh...

A Package

A great big thank you to my Secret Pal. This package came yesterday and I was blown away by the generosity. I particularly love the yarn. In fact, I couldn't wait to get going on it so I wound the rose colour skein right away and swatched it. I'd already started a warm winter hat before I remembered to photograph the goodies.
I'd never heard of Peace Fleece before. Their website is definitely worth a look. It strikes me that one of the cool things about this exchange is the opportunity to share products from one's particular region with someone far away. I am now going to make an effort to give something specifically Torontonian to my gift receiving Pal.
The photo I've chosen to post is not the best shot of the yummy package, but it does offer an excellent view of Malcolm bathing in the top left corner.

My Weekend Project

Knit my one skein of Noro Silk Garden (45% Silk, 45% Mohair, 10% Lamb's Wool) into the popular Feather and Fan Scarf/Shawl pattern. I just kept going until I ran out of yarn. Here it is drying on my mini ironing board. It is head scarf/neckerchief size.

I do love the colour of the yarn - much more vibrant than in the photo - and it works beautifully with this pattern. I am not however, as in love with the yarn as I thought I'd be. It was very twisty when being worked and feels stiff. Hopefully, after blocking and use, it will soften up.

What Would We Do Without Pre-teens?

As you can see, I now have a photo across my title bar. Thanks to Not An Artist for the advice. Special thanks to the daughter. She read the exchange about my difficulties and had the image hosting problem fixed in ten minutes flat! Who knew the kid had a web page? She learned everything about freewebs and picture posting from Neopets - the virtual pet world. So, I photoshopped my picture and she whipped it onto the internet. Kids today!

Template Advice

What I'd really like to do is get a photographic background across the title bar of my blog. Many other bloggers have this but I can't figure out the code. Anybody out there who can help?

Summer Top Photo

Apologies for the poor quality photo. It's the best I can do in bad light with no assistant.
Not my best work, but all in all, I like it. I had to cheat the sewing behind the neck to get the underarm area to lie flat.

The yarn (Needful Kikki: cotton, linen, viscose blend) is extremely comfortable to wear which is important as you can't wear anything under this top. The back is very low. (Tried to take a picture, but I'm just not that flexible.)