Joining Kat and friends for Unraveled Wednesday. Head on over to see more!

I started this hat several years ago in an effort to knit up the stash, in particular a couple of skeins of Knit Picks Palette I had won in a long-ago contest. As a learning experience, I had decided to use a couple very, very simple stranded knitting motifs from a Mary Janes Mucklestone’s book. But halfway through the stranded knitting section I got distracted — oh, a sparkly! — and set the hat aside.

Now, during this quarantine, aka, time to knit All.The.Things, I picked up the hat to finish it. But as I was slogging through the stranded knitting and HATING IT, I remembered that knitting was a hobby and it was supposed to be fun. So I frogged the stranded knitting section and substituted this bubble stitch. Much easier and equally attractive, imnoho.

Sadly, I still have a skein-and-a-half left of the baby-shit brown Palette. I shall need to find another use for it. However, I found that the wool is scratchy enough that I didn’t enjoy knitting it. (Super sensitive skin here; yes, I am that kind of a Special Snowflake.) That scratchiness that makes Palette perfect for stranded colorwork is not for me.

Therefore, the first person to comment that they could use this yarn gets it.
Sing out in the comments below!

This project arose from quarantine brain desperately needing a mindless project. Garter stitch to the rescue! Pattern is Simple Shawl on Ravelry, which I made it even simpler by omitting the lacy border and knitting the yarnovers tbl. I also shifted the increase points farther from the center twice because I wanted this to be a long shallow crescent rather than a shawl. When it got too big for one circ , I shifted to three circs with a fourth as my working needle; kinda like using 4 dpns.

Yarns are alternating garter ridges of Knitting Fever Indulgence 6-ply w Silk and Malabrigo Rios ‘Pearl Ten‘.  Initially I used only the Indulgence yarn, but the colors were too *brilliant*. I tamed that by alternating colors every two rows. First I tried some charcoal sock yarn with the Indulgence, but it was a bit too contrasty. Then I realized that a purplish yarn might work. The Malabrigo Rios was in my stash from a failed project. This project was a joy start to finish and just what quarantine brain needed.

Reading and listening.

My nearest library now has curbside pickup and dropoff, so I have access to the books there. This is rather less than having access to the 5+ million items in our 54-library consortium, but it does mean I have access to a metric crapton of mysteries. Which is just about the level of difficulty I can handle these days.

Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel. A while ago I got an email from Amazon saying that, for some reason totally unknown to me, I had a $20 credit. Having just read a recommendation for this book, I ordered it. It was a decent read, not great literature, of course, but it kept me entertained. 3✭

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Mystery by Jonathan Kellerman. Back in the day I read every Alex Delaware novel this author wrote, plus every Peter Decker/Rina Lazurus novel his wife wrote. Somehow I dropped the ball there; it appears there are numerous books by both that I can look forward to reading. Once again, not great literature, but dependable reading. 3✭

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The Wedding Guest by Jonathan Kellerman. (see above) This is #34 in the Alex Delaware series. Mystery was #24. Whee! 3✭

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The A List by J.A. Jance. Way back in the day, I read this author’s J.P. Beaumont series of mysteries. Now I have discovered that she had several series. Whee x2! 3✭

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Amp’d by Ken Pisani. I found this in the Kindle app on my iPad, no idea how it got there. Started it once, lost interest. Started it again a month or twelve later and finished it. 2-1/2✭

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The Splendid and the Vile: A Story of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During World War II by Erik Larson. I finished listening to this a couple weeks ago. As I said here, “It may be hard to believe, but Larson makes this account of the year from May 1940 to May 1941 a virtual page-turner. Even knowing that Britain survived the Blitz and didn’t surrender and that the feared invasion never came did not alleviate the tension as I listened. Then the coronavirus pandemic became news, and that and the book complemented each other; they are both about catastrophes and community strength and keepin’ on keepin’ on. 5★”

Second Skin by Christian White. I chose this because it was short (4-1/2 hours) and cheap (free!). It is okay, kept me entertained on that day last week when I was out and about (masked and gloved). Roughly half-way through. 3✭

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xThin Ice by Paige Shelton. From my local library. Never heard of this author or series (Wild Alaska series) before, but it was a decent read. I have a fondness for stories set in the northern wilderness, possibly because I have always lived in the north county, just not that far north. Anyway, I enjoyed it. 3.5✭

Right now I am reading The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland. It is heartwarming, especially in these days when Some People are so heartless, to read about how this tiny town (500 souls! Even smaller than my village!) opened itself to the 7,000+ airline passengers and crews when the United States closed its airspace in the days after 9/11. 4✭