The Mad Hatter Lives Here

I hope you all had a wonderful and festive holiday!

I am writing from the windy and friggin' cold Bay Area, where I am visiting my folks. You can always tell who the tourists are here, because they are the ones wearing shorts, freezing off their bums in foggy San Francisco. Be forewarned; not all of California is warm all the time.

Before I left NYC, I finished one of the monster hats from Insubordiknit. This one got sent to Sweden as a gift. I have a feeling it will make my friend stand out like crazy.

Okay, I've tried knitting other things, but the fact is, I LOVE knitting and crochetting hats more than anything else, and well...I caved into my addiction these past few days...

L to R: modified crochetted Ribbed Newsboy Hat : (no brim, flower attached) with Lorna's Laces Worsted, another one (because my Mom wanted it) using Malabrigo, and finally a knitted brimmed hat from Stitch Diva patterns using cashmere yarn I got at School Products in NYC (a place you all must visit if you're in the city).
The scarf is some simple basket weave pattern I winged; the yarn is Jade cashmere. Soooooooo soft!

Finally, I got to visit the famous yarn store Imagiknit in S.F. This place was huge! Good sale section too! (not just some pathetic basket of tangled scary yarn hiding in the corner like some places...) I was really happy to see they carried absolutely everything; pretty much the whole range of needles and yarn out there. Really friendly and knowledgeable salespeople too. No snooty types here! Yeay Imagiknit!

The Damage: 2 skeins of Royal Alpaca (the multicolored on the left), Malabrigo (first time I got to see this stuff live; I love it), and some Colonial Rosewood needles.

Okay, I'm going back to some meditative Ballband Dishcloth knitting (Mom wants those too).

Pretty but Prickly; Have Band-aids Ready!

Here is the finished Tilli Tomas Evening Trinket Bag.


It's cute and glamorous with its beaded silk yarn and lining, but it was not as mindless a knit as I thought it would be. First of all, you have to pull the yarn through the grommets one at a time with a crochet hook and slip them onto your knitting needles. The lining where the grommets were was inflexible and made it hard to knit the first few rows. The worst part was the reverse side of the grommets were sharp and kept slicing my fingers (it's hard to avoid touching those while knitting the first 10 or so rows)! Considering I play the violin for a living, this really made me upset; I'm careful about using sharp objects - I just never expected them to be in my knitting! Also, I had to muscle the beads around so that they would show up on the right side...yes, maybe that was control freaky of me...but I figured the beads should be visible.

In short, this kit was way too much trouble for me to want to make another one again. Any of you out there come across a Tilli Tomas kit with grommets, watch your fingers!

You know it's Xmas when you start playing lots of Bach

...not like I'm complaining, though! I could always be stuck in the repetitive vortex of the Nutcracker or Handel's Messiah. For people who go to the concerts, it's only once a year, maybe, but for those of us who do it for a living, it can be the same thing several times a day for like a month.

But again, I have been totally spoiled so far. 2 weeks ago I played an almost all Bach concert at Carnegie Hall, last night I played an all Bach Cantatas concert at the Met Museum (let me tell you, it is so incredibly fun to be running around a museum after it is closed...spooky, but fun!) And next week I'm back at Lincoln Center for more Bach Cantatas. The spirit of Holiday Gigging has been good to me this year.

In the meantime, I finished this Baby Hat. It was a fun and moderate-speed project. I used some really soft baby alpaca yarn. Oh, and going against conformity, this powder blue hat is for a girl!


I'm almost done knitting a Tilli Tomas drawstring bag kit. Will put a pic up soon.

Shopaholic me

'Tis the season to shop a lot...

I splurged and got 3 more monster hats by Jacey of Insubordiknit.

I'm using this pic of this monster trio as my Eye Candy Friday!


...and a Namaste Vintage knitting bag...complete with needle holders...



...and some insanely pricey and gorgeous Tilli Thomas yarn...very Xmassy, no?

Back from another tour and computers are messed up

Sigh...I have a mac book now, and it doesn't seem to want to do what I want it to...Then the bf's pc refused to accept my pics, so this is a total experiment.

On tour this time I started making a baby hat:




...and the shawl is slowly growing...



I wish I could link things, but the link button isn't there anymore on the blogger tool bar.

But now I'm editing using the bf's pc, and I can! (I hope...)
Baby Hat pattern is free from Sundara Yarn and it's here