FO: Licorice All-Sorts Hat

I started and finished an object this week!

Details on Ravelry!

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Jus' kidding, folks! Would I do that to you? No, I won't ditch my blog for Ravelry, and I won't ditch the knittyboard for Ravelry. I plan to mostly stay on-topic on Ravelry (i.e., my knitting), and stay within the rules on knittyboard (no religious or political posts, and "play nice"), but, on my blog, anything goes and I'll snark on people if I want to, or talk about my political views (which, by the way, lean towards the "liberal" side), or talk about my religious views (which I don't really have. I guess if pressed I could say I seem to worship nature and karma most of all). But you know what? All that shit is boring! Y'all don't come to my blog to read about me hugging some fucking trees, now do you? No, you come for the knitting and the cats!

So, here's the knitting:









I realize my decreases look a little wonky. They always do. At least you're not seeing the back of the hat, where the stripes jog. Also, my pom poms always come out kind of pathetic looking. I don't think I wrap the yarn around enough (I wrapped the yarn around my row counter. . . ).

The pattern is "Candy Cane Hat" from Susan Anderson's "Itty-Bitty Hats". It's supposed to be in red and white, but I like to sub colors and used pink and black, which reminds me of two things: Good n Plentys (but they are white and pink candies with black insides) and Licorice All Sorts (one of my favorite candies). Thus, this is the Licorice All-Sorts Hat. These are for my grand-niece-to-be, and my niece luckily appreciates the goth/punk aesthetic. You should've seen how I dressed *her* up as a toddler. She loved to wear my chuck taylors and my Siouxsie and the Banshees t-shirt. I think her favorite song was Ministry's "Cold Life". She used to sing it.

The pattern for the booties is from Kris Percival's "Knitting Pretty", which is the first knitting book I bought. I've made 3-4 pairs of these. They take a couple of hours, and it's fun to use different colors. This is the first time I used ribbon through the eyelets -- I thought it went well. I was initially going to make little knitting Chuck Taylors, but couldn't find a pattern and was too lazy to make up one. You can do lots with this pattern though -- they can resemble little combat boots or KISS platform boots. You decide.

I used Blue Sky Alpacas Dyed Cotton in pink and black. It's not the organic cotton, although I'd love to use that. The yarn is really soft next to the skin and the only reason my hands hurt is because I was doing so much knitting the past few days. Hey, I was knitting with a 17-lb. black cat next to me. It was enjoyable!

Speaking of. . . someone made himself comfortable really quickly:



That was taken last evening, after he had "discovered" the couch for a few hours. He also "discovered" under the bed, and, during the night, sleeping on the bed. He's a pretty affectionate cat, but has his moments of grumpiness. He's not thrilled with having his stomach touched, and wasn't thrilled when I moved him so ZantiMisterKnit could sit down to eat dinner. Yeah, he growled. And hissed a little. He also growls and hisses at Solvie, but she stands her ground and pretends he's not there. She's doesn't sleep with us -- never has -- so I don't think she feels too put out by him sleeping with us.

This is as close as they got to each other:





I like how big she looks in that second picture. She's not -- she's under 6 lbs, and he is about 17 lbs! (I weighed him this morning.) If he had shown any aggression to other cats, we wouldn't have adopted him. He could probably flatten her. I think both cats are generally aloof to other cats -- I know for a fact that Solvie is. She's aloof to everything except food. Ken seems to be aloof to other cats, but affectionate to people, with his moments of aloofness.

The macro button also loves him:



Here's a nice blurry shot for ya: