Finished Object Friday (OK. It's Thursday. But it's been a rough week)

Some people always keep a pair of socks on needles, and carry them around with them. This must come in handy while waiting in doctor's offices, traffic jams, the DMV, and, let's be honest, at red lights. (No, mom, I never knit while driving. Only when stopped. Is being stopped still technically driving? Hm. Let's file that question with "Are pots and pans really 'dishes'? and if not, do we have to do them after dinner?" I say no. To both questions.)

After the mini-breakdown slash temper tantrum I threw after knitting the first sock (but before starting the second one), I've decided that while I enjoy making socks, they're not my go-to project. It's not that I can't knit them, or even that I don't want to, it's that they're just too much trouble right now. It's the making two of the same thing part. I hate that part.

Still, I need something to do that I can take with me. The cabled sweater? I need the book, the row counter, the cable needle, the needles, the yarn. It's just too much. My purse isn't big enough, and even though I'm one and a half sleeves into it, I still haven't memorized the pattern. Plus also, that cable needle? It's just begging to get lost. In addition, I've kind of lost steam on it...once I realized it was not going to be done in time to be worn before the weather got too hot to wear it, I just didn't feel like working on it anymore. If tradition serves, I'll pick it up again when it's 100 degrees in the house, and therefore not the best time to sit with a ball of wool in my lap. I'll never learn.

In any case, since discretionary monies are tight, and since I have many, many half-skeins of yarn, I've been putting together baby hats. I'm almost 32, and most of my friends (who are also about 32) are having babies all the time. Why not have a stash of already-made hats to give when the time comes. Sure, it's a little impersonal, since I'm not thinking about a particular baby when making his or her hat, but my rational mind says that the baby wouldn't know if I was thinking about him anyway, so what the heck? (The nonrational mind thinks that the rational mind is full of it and needs to be overthrown.) That being said, I'm working through my yarn making hats for babies that don't exist yet. They will. And there will be some well-hatted babies out there at some point.

Though, I'd like to point out to my friends that it would be REALLY nice if one of them would have a girl. So, those of you who are working on it, could you put some effort into the girl-making? Please?

I have lots of ideas about how little girls can dress. Most of these ideas probably come from my own childhood. Mom made most of our clothes, and they were always cute. Not too frilly. Smocked if possible. She was -- and probably still is -- a big fan of red patent leather shoes and tights. And dresses. Always dresses.

For our younger brother's baptism, we wore light blue dresses with navy panels on the front, on which my mom embroidered a pastoral scene. She reminded me of this today when I showed her this hat.



The scene looked a lot like that, and as soon as she mentioned the dresses, I remembered them and realized that the scene I was seeing in my head as I made the hat was the one from the dress I wore 30 years ago. I like that. There's something very sweet about the fact that some scene that was in my mom's head when I was a child, and that she put onto fabric, came out of me as an adult in a different medium.

Details: US8 needles and a mix of yarns. The yellow and white yarn, and the blue, are both Sugar and Cream 100% cotton worsted. The green is Cascade Yarns Pima Tencel, and the pink is Cascade Sierra Quattro. The white clouds are Wool Ease and are over-stitched onto the hat.

This would have been a good project on its own, but as I was making the slip stitch flowers -- just specks of pink and yellow and white among the green -- I decided that I should be able to make other flowers. Ones that sit on the side of a hat like a bouquet. Turns out, I was right.



The rosebuds, or something like them, were in a photo of a 1920's style cloche in a fashion book. Not knit (in the photo), but made of some sort of ribbon wrapped around itself. I was going to make a plain hat, and then try to make rosebuds to sew onto it, but I was watching the Oscars on Sunday night and decided to make it fancy. A hat to be worn with a red double-breasted coat with black collar, and red patent leather shoes.



Details: US8 needles, Cascade 220 in cream and brown for the hat, Wool Ease in scarlett for the roses, and mercerized cotton for the leaves (the leaves, in my head, were shiny, so I used shiny green yarn.)

This might be my favorite finished object so far. I secretly want one for myself.