Short Weekend, Long Post

My Secret Pal is so incredibly generous! Look what arrived in the mail on Friday:

So pretty! I drooled all over page with the felted rose bag. Thank You Secret Pal!

On Saturday, I vegged out. I did some knitting and dyeing. I made this for my aunt in Chicago:
When I gave her a scarf, she requested a hat to keep her from freezing when shoveling snow. The yarn is Debbie Bliss Merino Aran. I snagged some at the Webs sale. My only regret is not ordering more! Darn knitter's remorse! The pattern is the "Asymmetrical Cable Hat" from One Skein (thanks again, Secret Pal!). It's a nice pattern, easy to understand and memorize but with just enough variation to avoid monotony. I made two adjustments: it's a little longer and I left the top with a flat seam instead of folding the corners for the rounded seam in the book. The reason? We are a tribe of large heads (you can draw your own conclusion as to what's filling those heads).

This is what became of the Adam's Farm worsted from my SP8:
It's mostly pale blue (blue raspberry Koolaid) with some dark blue (Wilton food dye). It would probably come out darker if I had the patience to let it soak in the dye longer. But sadly I don't. After rinsing, I tried whizzing (or "whuzzing," the term prefered by our spindling instructor) to get the water out and it worked really well. Good thing the shrubbery is a bit overgrown, so the neighbors didn't have to wonder why I was standing in the middle of the backyard flinging yarn around.

On Sunday, Mom and I went to New Jersey to pick up the twins. They'll be staying with us for a couple of weeks. I got to meet Jersey Baby:
Even in his sleep, he's hungry. I hear he can get incredibly loud, but there wasn't much crying when I was there.

Along the road, I made an attempt to multitask:
It was a unsuccessful fusion of work and play. I ended up reading about 20 pages and knitting about a quarter of a ball of Moda Dea Sassy Stripes for the whole trip. Pretty sad. I can't even claim to have been distracted by Jersey Boy's carsickness or Jersey Girl's picky eating, since I'm really good at ignoring children in distress. I would make a shockingly bad mother, or perhaps with major surgery a moderately involved father.

I'm not entirely useless to the youth of tomorrow, 'cuz apparently I can teach knitting. Here are Jersey Boy's first stitches on the scarf in the round I had with me:
Pretty good, huh? It's interesting that he knits so loose, since most new knitters knit so tight. Maybe it's because I knit very loose (I can't remember the last time I had to go up a needle size). Or maybe it's because he's a kid and isn't obsessive about it.