We’ve got another Winter Weather Advisory underway. With all my friends in the real snow territories getting blanketed repeatedly, and without any pressing need to leave the building, these little snow events are starting to seem kind of cute. (Hm. I think the weather heard me. The wind just kicked up and the snow is completely horizontal now. Hey! Cute is a good thing! I love cute weather!)
Ron and the boys are all flying in this evening, so I’m hoping the weather stays fairly mild, if snowy, and that they don’t run into anything nasty on the way home. Luckily, it’s super cold, so ice shouldn’t be an issue (nothing worse than a snowstorm right at the brink of freezing), but the wind is always a brutal question mark out here. It’s rough driving on a road that’s just a swirling witches’ brew of ghostly white ripples. You can’t tell where the road ends and the ditch begins.
This cold weather really seems to be putting the hurt on my hay supply. Last winter, they were eating only half a bale or less a day, and doing a lot of winter grazing. This winter, we’re going through a full bale on many days. Between the hay and the gas bill, I’m starting to think this winter is as bad as last winter. Although this one had the good manners to start almost a month later, which I deeply appreciate.
Before I forget, I have 2 free, fast hat patterns up on ravelry. These were from the quick hats class at Jen’s shop last month.
First Hat includes a detailed photo tutorial for absolute beginners. It’s knit completely on 16″ circulars, so you can avoid dpns entirely, which makes it crazy fast (takes me about an hour). It’s also dandy for handspun, because it’s nice and plain.
Quickie is a 48-stitch, 32-row cabled hat knit of doubled chunky yarn or lighter superbulky (the gauge of storebought superbulky is all over the map, so swatch!). It also works up in about an hour if you’re fast. The pattern includes a little photo tutorial on cables and both charted and written instructions.
As a result of all my pattern testing and timing, I have a nice little stack of wool hats. Maybe I’ll sell the handspun ones and bring all the others to the store in town and make a little FREE WARM HATS basket. I should probably make a really big stack of them. I could do some mad destashing tonight…
I’d better go hay the sheep. I’ve been holding out for that 8° high, but it looks like they’ve revised the forecast down and the current 6° is as high as we’ll get. Boo.
Love your hats. Those are so adorable! I’m going to have to make some with my handspun.
If you ever need a place to dump a bunch of hats, we distribute knitted donations to kids at our partner sites, homeless shelters etc. Street Yoga is based in Portland, OR but I am sure there are some social services near you that could use some warm woolen love!