Living in a cave (a.k.a concert hall)

This is the busiest month of the year for me. I feel I should change my legal residence to the concert hall I've been working at because I spend more time there than at home. The upside is that I make some money which I then use to buy yarn...

...but sometimes, yarn magically appears...

A while back, I gifted Monika a bit of Vesper Roving, and to my surprise she spun it into some gorgeous yarn and gifted it back to me! What a beautiful gesture! I hope I can do it justice and knit it into something lovely. Definitely a modern Rumplestiltskin story! Thank you Monika!!!
She also included a wonderful lavender sachet; I love how it smells and the poochie pattern is so cute!

(Maybe I should just let the violin keep the yarn as its new scarf!)

I still have leftover yarn from that baby blanket, so I knit up some booties and a hat. The booties are a very modified pattern from the Morehouse Farms Book. The only original bit I kept from the pattern was the number of cast on stitches and some rows... The pattern calls for knitting these booties flat on 2 needles with worsted yarn, but I didn't want bulky seams so I knitted them in the round using the magic loop method, starting at the base of the sole with Judy's magic cast on. I switched to dpns when I reached the top of the foot.

The hat is Kate Gilbert's Shining Star. The pattern comes with instructions for sizes baby through adult. It's knit top down, so the beginning was a bit fidgety...I ended up starting the hat by picking up loops through the back of a provisional crochet chain. This gave me a neat top with no gaping hole. I modified the pattern by ribbing the last inch or so, and cast of with the crochet method found in my 2 favorite books on basic techniques.

Oh, and because I've been living and working in a freezing air conditioned cave, I knit up the Retro Redux shrug from Lace Style.

Really fast and easy knit. I used 3 balls of Misti Alpaca Worsted for the yarn, and I must share a warning with all of you...

When you receive yarn you buy over the internet, remember to CHECK THE DYELOTS!!!

Don't assume the store will do it for you. Anyway, long story short, ball #3 was a different dyelot, so I contacted the store with fingers crossed, because this order was from months ago. Luckily they had more yarn in the lot I needed, and the owner got on the phone to apologize to me personally. They also gave me a free ball of yarn to take the edge off of this frustrating experience. People need to make "aromatherapy" yarns so I can sniff the yarn and chill out when this kind of sh*t happens.