Phew, what a week!

Two days before my son's birthday, he mentioned to me that he really wanted a new toque as a gift.  I thought about it and realized he wanted me to knit him a toque rather than purchase one.  Luckily I had some commercial grey, marled yarn on hand, so he got his hand knit toque, just not with handspun yarn.  Because I didn't have a pattern, I sort of made it up as I went along.  There were a couple of false starts until I got the correct number of stitches on to make a hat that would fit.   Then it was 2 days with lots of knitting, although it did knit of fairly quickly all things considered.

I had to make a cake in there as well.  My kids get to choose what we eat for dinner (within reason) and what they want for a cake.   My oldest son has always specified anything but chocolate, my youngest usually wants anything as long as it's chocolate.  My daughter goes for out of season shortcakes and the middle son has asked, every year since he was 4, for Worms in Dirt.  That's a nasty but somewhat tasty concoction of graham cracker crumb base, chocolate pudding, Coolwhip topping and ground chocolate cream filled cookies, topped with more cookie crumbs and gummy worms.  Luckily it's only once a year, but I swear I've made 22 of those in a row!

The Saxon hood project is going along slowly.  I've been putting off weaving and finally, one day when I looked out the window, it struck me that the colour of the yarn is not only the same colour as our deck, but also the colour of the dreary winterscape outside.  It is the same colour as our driveway, the roadside shoulder, the trees and branches.  Mix that with a miserable grey winter sky and lots of rain, I'm just begging for something fun.   I so want to put on a new warp, one for a belt which I owe a friend and the other for a guitar strap for an amazing guitarist, who has asked me for a guitar strap, not necessarily handwoven.  A trip to the music store showed me that I disliked the commercial straps, stamped with store advertizing and made of ugly, nylon webbing.

The new walnut shuttle does the trick for keeping the Z and S twist yarns organized, but it's a bit too light and way too slippery.  It flies across the warp (I don't think that the counterbalance loom has a shuttle race) and off the other side with regularity.  If it were any heavier, I swear I would have put it through the picture window several times, but as it is, it just tumbles under the plant table, terrifying the sleeping cat and making me crawl on my belly to reach it!

I started a new pair of socks.  I used to do lots of colourwork, both stranded and intarsia, but it's been years.  These socks are stranded colourwork - like fairisle stitches, but fairisle is specific type of patterns, and this is a funky deer pattern.    If you're on Ravelry, check out Anne Rutten's deer pattern.  After redoing the cuff and first row of colourwork 3 times, I've finally got it right.  Once I get the pattern bit done, I'll share it with you and my reasons for doing this particular pattern.