Joining Kat and friends for Unraveled Wednesday.

This was a hat that I knit a couple years ago. I also knit a scarf. They used Malabrigo Rios in Pocion and Piedras, double-stranded with a navy-gold-brown mohair. Tragically, I neither blogged about the set nor entered it in Ravelry. Also, tragically, the slouch I tried to introduce into the hat became more of a hanging limply off my head. Not a good look. So the hat and scarf sat in my winter woolies basket and didn’t get worn.

A few days ago I was perusing Instagram and came upon this photo:

See how he has used short rows to make the hat shorter in front and thusly longer over the ears? Genius! I find it extremely annoying that my hats will not stay over my ears unless I pull them down to my eyebrows (also not a good look).

I had been intending to frog the top of the hat at the beginning of this post and shorten it to eliminate the troublesome sagginess. Now I decided that I would frog it back to the ribbing and use short row magic to make it the hat of my dreams.

Voila! Ear coverage!

Reading.

Orphan #8 on my iPad was quite good; a solid three stars (=enjoyable and readable in my rating system). I’d recommend it. Ironically, the book in my ears — Before We Were Yours — is also about orphans who were abused and brutalized in an orphanage back in the day.  I’m about two-thirds done and enjoying it. Another solid three stars and a reccy.

Someone somewhere recommended Stuart MacBride’s Logan McRae series, mysteries set in Aberdeen, Scotland. Cold Granite, the first in the series, turned out to be just my cup of tea. Protagonist is a police detective recently returned to the force after a long medical leave (major stab wounds suffered in the line of duty). Unlike many police procedurals, the protagonist’s superior is not a complete asshat; in fact, he seems to respect Our Hero. A nice touch, I thought. Plus, there are occasional flashes of humor to lighten the mood of the very serious plot about child killers and pedophiles.

Aside: this takes place in Aberdeen (northern Scotland) in the winter. Nearly constant cold rain, interrupted occasionally by sleet. People may wonder why people like me live in the far north of the US; that is exactly how I feel about the people in the book. Snow and sub-zero temps are far preferable to cold, pouring rain, imho.

From Wikipedia:

Exposed Aberdeen is noted for its biting winds and driving rain, which sweep in from the North Sea, the mean temperature is 47 °F and it varies between an average low of 41 °F and 52 °F.

Yeah, I’ll take snow any day…q