I'm holding on.......

to this great weather we've been getting. ;) It's November 4 and the temp today is expected to hit +15C. Our average is around +1C, but hey the shorter winter is around here the better. I've been bitten by the touque bug, and the solution I've found is in 'One Skein' by Leigh Radford. Asymmetrical Cable Hat

I'm using some Drops Alpaca from my stash. Colour 6834, guage 23st x 30 rows, addi dpn's 4.0mm. This is more of a lace weight, but I loved the colour for a man's hat so I used all three skeins stranded together. I still had to increase my cast on to 81sts. to get the right guage for the circumference of the man's hat. This is going out in the mail today to my DD's boyfriend Nathan who is in hospital starting on another round of chemo.

Also in the same book there is a pattern for a baby hat. I have a friend who works in the maternity ward at one of our local hospitals and I thought I would love to do some stash busting and make up some to donate. So again I'm having to play around with gauge and I think I've got it down now.

Last but not least....updates on the basement reno. We've now got it insulated with rigid pink, and pink fibreglass. The framing was put back up along with the electrical back in place, and the vapour barrier. So now DH has been putting up the drywall. Slowly but surely the basement is coming back to us. I'm not sure if it'll be ready for Christmas though.

I have an azalea plant that was given to my mother-in-law back this spring. She lives on Vancouver Island, and didn't want to travel back there with it so she handed it over to me in full bloom. It was beautiful and I thought, oh I'm probably going to kill it with neglect. I generally don't keep houseplants because I'm constantly forgetting to water them. Anyways this thing loves my west facing window in my dinette. It's constantly blooming and it doesn't mind getting dried out. So far it's been the perfect plant! Who knew!

Next post I'll try to blog about our trip to Phoenix coming up this Saturday. I've got several yarn shops located on the GPS so hopefully DH won't mind coming along on my fibre hunt.

**An afterthought......I used Clover's Pom Pom maker to make the pom pom on the above mentioned blue touque. After some initial studying of instructions, and rotating it around and figuring out how it works I started winding the yarn on it. I couldn't contain my amazement at how wonderful that pom pom turned out. I've shown everyone who has been to my house. Like I'm hoping everyone tries this thing out because my exasperation at using half circle cardboard cut outs just never worked for me. So just a heads up if you see one and you've had the same problems making really nice round pom poms...you'll love this thing.