A new year is always a trifle intimidating for me. So much promise and so rarely have I capitalized on very much of it. This year needs to be different. It has to be. I can't continue to live in the isolation and despair that has threatened to overwhelm me for so long. While I don't expect to become widely read here or to make friends through blogging, I do need a forum in which I can release some of the toxicity that has been building up inside of me for so long.
Hopefully I'll stick with this one, put up some of my knitting patterns and have a place to share my rather skewed view of the world. Will I stick with it this time? I would like to, but sometimes the guilt and shame so overwhelm me that I can barely lift my head. I think that perhaps writing about it will ease some of that unwarranted self loathing and allow me to breathe more freely. Don't expect much.
I have been knitting a lot the last couple of months, though, and I've posted just about all of it on Ravelry. Oh, how I love Ravelry. I could wax rhapsodic about that site for hours, but instead I will just say that if you knit (or crochet, I think) and you aren't a member yet, you should really sign up. It's free and the images are linked through flickr, which is also free (up to a point).
I finished knitting a hat last night for my mom. She sent me a picture of a cabled, somewhat slouchy, cap with a brim and asked if I could make something similar but that would cover her ears. I finally settled on the Sam Hat from craftster and made some minor modifications that had some major repercussions regarding the final outcome of the hat. Here is the original









and here is my version
It is freaking huge. I used a tubular cast on with 88 sts and did the K1, P1 ribbing for about 2 1/2 " and then had the body of the hat at 121 sts instead of the called for 110. I also used 10s instead of 8s. It was my first time putting a brim on a hat and it was a bit tricky for me. I wanted to make it convertible, so that the brim could be snapped on and off, but I couldn't find my snap tool last night, so it just got sewn on. Not sure why I didn't pick up the stitches and knit it on per the pattern, but I didn't.
I really like the pattern itself and will probably make another one soon.