A) Valentine's Day! B) A swimcap a la Esther Williams C) A strawberry D) Odessa?!  You poor thing, what did she do to you? E) All of the above Yes, but what is it, this delectable-slash-disturbing item?  Just a little Valentine's Day folly that I whipped up over the weekend, with both thanks (for a wonderful pattern) and apologies (for heinously hijacking said pattern) to Grumperina.  Thing is, I had these darling red rabillettes, and I was imagining a hat upon which they could swirl gracefully from brim to crown--and then I saw Odessa.  I have to admit that as I knitted, I was tempted to abandon the tacky aluminum hearts and work the hat as G. intended; it really is a lovely design, and the rabillettes tend to obscure rather than complement its graceful lines.  But, gosh darn it, those rabies tags sure are some silly fun!  Just ask the TS (teenaged stepdaughter), whose hat has inspired numerous comments, the best (so far) being "Does each of those come from some dead animal?"  (The answer, of course, is "No, just from my deranged ex-veterinarian stepmother.) Notes on Odessa:  I used Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece (a slightly heavier yarn than the Rowan Cashsoft DK that the pattern calls for), decreased the number of pattern repeats from 11 to 9, and got a hat with an unstretched diameter of just under 16"; it's a little tight on me, but fits my nine-year-old perfectly.  As for the rabillettes, I spaced them more widely apart than the pattern calls for, and used a technique I believe I first saw in Lily Chin's Knit & Crochet With Beads; the holes in the tags are almost 3 mm. in diameter, so I didn't have to prestring--just used a crochet hook to pull a stitch through each tag as needed.

Isn't this an interesting painting by Georgia O'Keeffe?  It's called "Jack-In-The-Pulpit, No. IV."  It reminds me of something...with many names, none of them "Jack".   Anyway, by now I've had a chance to examine my Treasuries of Knitting Patterns by Barbara Walker, and they are all filled with page markers referencing my favorite patterns.  "Frost flowers," "slipped plait cable," "vine lace" in the first Treasury; "seaweed," "dragon skin," "ribbed leaf," "Chinese lace," "dayflower lace" in the second; "the spider," "mirror cable," "looping waves cables" in the third; "flame wave" & "flame ribbing" in the fourth.  If there were just a few I'd scan them and post pictures (and maybe I still will).  BW also includes lots of slip-stitch color knitting patterns, which is one type of knitting I haven't gotten into--yet.    I did scan one pattern, from the first Treasury, and here it is.  BW calls it "birdcage cable."  Well, ladies, when I look at this I don't see a birdcage.  I see--how to put this delicately--let me consult my Stedman's Medical Dictionary--pudenda.  Can I say that here?  (I have also just learned from Stedman's that the Latin root of that word means "to feel ashamed."  Fascinating.)  I thought maybe it was just me, so I showed the picture to my husband.  He raised his eyebrows and said, "I'm not going to say anything."  I showed the picture to my teenaged stepdaughter.  She started laughing hysterically.  (Did you know that the Greek root of "hysterically" means "uterus"?) I think there must be a better name for this pattern.  Normally, I heartily dislike the "c" word, but "c--- cable"--it's very catchy.  "C--- Cable Cardi."  I like it.

  I just love being simultaneously wide-awake and exhausted at 4 a.m., simply because your body thinks it's still in Paris.  Oh well; if the husband insists that you accompany him on one of his business trips, then it's hard* to complain about being dragged to the City of Light (see why it got that name?).  Incidentally, this photo was taken from our hotel room balcony; the man does like to travel in style. So here I am in my pajamas, blogging, working away on the happy cat hat and trying not to wake the children.  No photos of the hat just now, sorry; it's supposed to be an Xmas gift for the teenaged stepdaughter, and she has been granted blog access (although I'm sure she has better things to do than snoop around in Stepmom's blog).  "Trying not to wake...?"  Yes, those rabies tags clink together quite musically, reminding me of...sleigh bells?!  I fully expect the small ones to come racing down the stairs at any moment, yelling "Santa's early!" *but clearly not impossible

Teenaged Stepdaughter has pointed out that the rabillettes might be even more appropriate for the Kitty Hat designed by Kitty Schmidt (http://www.kittyville.com/knit.html), and featured in Stitch 'N Bitch immediately after the Sparkle Hat.  I have to agree.  As for as how to best utilize the rabillettes, that will take some experimentation.  On the swatch at left, I tried using only seasonally appropriate green bells, which I thought went nicely with Berroco's "Medley" yarn. I suppose I could have used Christmas red yarn, although my eyes hurt just thinking about it. Anyway, the r-ettes are spaced fairly close together in the bottom two rows, which I'm thinking would work best for a border, and farther apart in the top three rows.  They are quite large, 1 1/4" wide and 1 1/8" high, and could probably be spaced even farther apart with good effect, or even used as individual accents.  Some of them wanted to turn and show their backsides, so I let them, to give an accurate idea of how they will look on a project.  What an odd direction I've taken since my first project after returning to knitting, a year or so ago.  Here it is again, the Aran Coat by Dame DB (accessorized with TV remote--a forbidden toy unless Mom is trying to shoot a few photos).  That same bright blue merino yarn (brand? no idea) used to be part of the project that caused me to stow my knitting needles for over a decade: a sweater in the round that I inexplicably did not realize was big enough to fit a sumo wrestler until it was almost up to my armpits. Anyway, once I decided to try knitting again, I thought to begin with something for the smallest person I knew--my year-old son.  I liked this pattern in DB's Classic Knits for Kids, but it only included directions for one size, 4-6 years, and it called for aran weight yarn--too heavy.  I pulled Sumo out (ouch!  I remembered that blue as being a little less intense) and the yarn appeared to be light worsted weight.  Well, what if I followed the pattern, using worsted instead of aran?  It would probably turn out to be, oh, size 2 or 3; if it was still too big, he could grow into it....  So I frogged the thing and got to work (no, I didn't make a swatch).  As you can see, the finished article did turn out rather oversized; I estimate it will truly fit him well sometime next year.  The only part that really gave me trouble was the collar border.  With no schematic of the collar, and no photo of how it looked from the back, these directions confused me:  "Cont in patt until border fits along shaped edge of collar to centre...."  Huh?  So I took the pattern and partially finished collar into my friendly local yarn shop, Creative Warehouse in Needham, MA, where one of the employees looked at them and said, "Hmm.  I don't know.  I guess you'll have to just trust in the pattern."  "'Trust in the pattern?'"  "Yes, just keep going, it will make itself clear.  Trust in the pattern."  Okay, Yoda. Well, Yoda was right--and the directions seemed crystal clear, in hindsight.  Next, I knit a scarf, slavishly following the pattern (see "Chevron & Feather Scarf" in "Finished!").  After that, I started making changes to the patterns; small ones, at first, but then....  More in my next post.