So I finished the hat for Mr. Tong. Since it’s his birthday tomorrow it definitely won’t make it to San Francisco in time. I thought I’d post it here and Jocelyn could choose to show it to him tomorrow, or wait until they’re visiting in a little over a week. Anyway, I took some nice photos of it today.

So about the hat. This is from some obscure short-lived Sci Fi show called Firefly (which I’ve never seen) and apparently there’s a spin off movie or movie based on it or something that’s recently come out called Serenity. Don’t ask me I’ve never seen either. I’m not a big science fiction fan. But a lot of people in my life are, including my best friend and her boyfriend, whose birthday is tomorrow. Between being a warm-natured guy (according to his girlfriend) and my not knowing him very well I didn’t have a lot of knitted present options. So when I mentioned the big thread on craftster about this hat we agreed this was what I’d make.

According to this thread and Jocelyn, there’s this cranky guy on the tv show named Jayne Cobb who wears a big silly hat knit by his mom. According to some it should be irregular and very homespun-lookin’. Well, far be it for me to not take advantage of an opportunity to spin my own yarn. So I did.

I knit one hat on Sunday, pretty much following the directions on craftster. But in the end I didn’t feel like I’d made it tall enough so today I frogged it and tried again while watching a great biography on Lucrezia Borgia and a history’s mystery show about the man in the iron mask. I made a few alterations to suit the yarn a bit better - namely, doing a k2 p2 ribbing instead of a k1 p1. It just looked better with this yarn.

It might be a bit tall now. But the earflaps were easy and the pom pom pretty much makes the hat.

This hat is very, very funny.

It’s hard to not make silly faces while wearing it. Even for the dog

Now onto the holiday knitting panic.

First up: a Fulled Lopi Tote for the mil made with Fiesta Yarns‘ Watermark and Kokopelli in (repectively) Amazon and Peony. This was bought during my first trip to a non-chain yarn store, their factory outlet store, and it’s been sitting around waiting for me to use ever since.