At least one person has expressed interest, and since it amuses me too, I'm going to start posting about a design in progress. For those of you who aren't even going to read the rest of this, have a cute animal picture:


I think Jake and Moxie are secretly friends, I catch them like this a lot...


Ok? Onward!

The original idea for this design came ages ago. Neil was complaining about how even with a hat his ears were constantly cold. As a knitter I took that as a challenge, and whipped up a double knit hat in bulky wool:



Double knitting is a technique for creating a piece of knitted fabric that is two layers thick. Both the inner layer and outer layer are knit at the same time on a single set of needles. There are a few patterns out there for double knitting projects, but not many. So I decided to publish this pattern, I've even already listed it as a pattern on ravelry (which is part of why I've decided to talk about it so freely, the cat's already out of the bag)

The problem with the original hat was that it was TOO WARM even for Montgomery VT winters. Since warmth was the goal, it wasn't a huge problem, but it meant that maybe it wouldn't be a hat most people wanted to wear. Also in a bulky yarn the hat was about 26" around which made it way to big and with the colorwork pattern it was hard to size down. The original hat actually got given to a friend with a very large head (he was complaining to Neil about hats from stores being too small, it was a perfect match)

So keeping all that in mind I switched to a worsted weight yarn. But this brought out a new problem, the colors I had on hand didn't contrast enough for the pattern to show (plum and charcoal, very pretty, just not a good combination.) This is when the project went to the back of the line. Not just the back of my closet, being at the back of the line means I mostly forgot about it and even used the yarn for other things.

Then I got a wonderful offer of yarn support from knitpicks. Since the original hat was knit in their bulky wool of the andes yarn I thought their worsted weight yarn would be a good choice to give the hat a second try. Once I had the yarn I re-worked the chart for what I expected my new gauge to be (notice, I didn't try a gauge swatch, my folly, but then it's my design) I graphed out the chart in 3 sizes and cast on.

Unfortunately I didn't take into account that I have to fit ribbing evenly around the brim of the hat as well as fitting the chart evenly. So it came off the needles again almost instantly:



But with a little tweaking of ribbing size (I really wanted K4, P4 for a big squishy rib, but getting replicates of 8 to fit around the circumference of the hat in 3 sizes and with 3 different color charts was Not Going To Work - to translate: Designing involves Math) I got something that would work. I cast on a second time, and after knitting two inches in double knit ribbing I realized that my gauge wasn't even close to what I was expecting and this was becoming a double-knit lampshade, not a hat. So I ripped out again. Keep in mind that since this is a double layered fabric each cast on was between 160 and 180 sts - just for a hat... I did some more math (just consider that second try a really big gauge swatch, it's all good) and I think this third start is really going to work, at least until I get to the chart...

We bought a house! (see icon) it's wonderful and everything we wanted! I'm exhausted. Yesterday morning we had our walk-through. Then we went home, packed a car load of stuff and went to closing. After closing we went to our new house and unloaded the first car load. After that we headed to our friend's to borrow his truck and at the apartment we loaded our bed, couch, and some smaller furniture into it. The subaru took some necessary kitchen things and the kitties.

The kitties seem to be adjusting very well. Peanut loves to climb the floor to ceiling built in bookshelves looking for places to hide. Moxy sits on the third shelf up and wonders how Peanut manages the rest of the climbing.

After unloading we took the truck back to our friend, and stopped at the apartment to grab the few things we'd forgotten (I'd packed tea for the morning, and forgotten my tea kettle!)

Finally we collapsed in our newly made bed in our new house around midnight.

Today Neil is moving smaller furniture and boxes. He also checked on a wood stove we saw posted for sale in the village store. It's a hearthstone which is the kind we really wanted. We were planning on buying a new stove, so we were going to get the model which heats up to 1800 square feet and is made in cast iron because we want the efficiency and clean air ratings of a new stove, and while soapstone is lovely it's also expensive. The one we found for sale is a soapstone model, and it heats 1500-2000 square feet. It's also only 2 years old, and the guy selling it is asking half the price of a new one because he wants it out of his way. Yay! Now we just need to find some friends to help us move a 450lb stove...

UC Davis is doing a scientific study on why pets eat plants.  Since all my animals (Well, I haven't seen Moxy do it yet...) eat plants I filled out a survey.  You can too!