Hat no more

Well, not exactly what I had in mind when I pulled out the hat I was working on for Bob to try to finish, but it is being frogged. If you recall, I had the fantastic idea to make the hat two tone. There were two reasons. . . first being Bob is color blind, so having two tone camel/black he'd at least see the contrast; second being Bob lives in one of the coldest places I've ever been, so having the floats inside the hat would essentially make a dual layer hat, so extra warm! Unfortunately, the floats are seriously impacting the stretchiness of the hat and as it is, would not fit anyone much bigger than a 9 or 10 year old. So, I will rip it out. I'm not sure if I'm going to give it another go with two-tone and try to leave more slack in the floats, or if I should just go with a single color. It may go on the back burner for a bit, shooting down my attempt to finish it before they arrive next week. This leaves me down to 3 active projects.. Maude, which the body is three rows from being cast off.. . . Jake's socks, that I couldn't find reinforcing thread for the heel so it will have to do without, and my socks, that I got a new set of (overpriced) needles to continue working, since I broke one of the Size 1s.

The overpriced needles came from a trip to Richmond. Jess, Jen & I took a trip Saturday up to do some wedding dress and yarn shopping. It was a really fun day! We started out at a vintage shop where I found a gorgeous dress from the 30s. Unfortunately, it was big on me and due to the construction (or lack thereof. . it was mostly draped!) I'm convinced the alterations would cost at least as much as the dress and the owners of the shop didn't necessarily disagree (but did give me the name of a seamstress to get an estimate). We wandered around Carytown and stopped at the Yarn Lounge before a yummy sushi lunch. Then we visited the best bridal shop ever (they don't have a website, or I'd link!). The worker was so helpful in telling me how many ways you can modify a dress by ordering it without a train, without tacky sparkles, etc, etc. I found a dress I love there, but it's a smidge fancy. The back is gorgeous, though. The second bridal shop we stopped at was insanely expensive, but I found a bridesmaid dress there that I really really love. It's nearly everything I wanted, the only downside is it was SOOOO big (the sample sizes are big ones!) that I'm having a bit of a hard time picturing how the waist will fall on me in the right size. I'm also not sure it says 'wedding' enough. I truly wish I was more decisive! After dress shopping we stopped at two more shops - The Knitting Basket and Lettuce Knit. Knitting Basket had so much awesome yarn I hadn't seen before and Jess left with some gorgeous laceweight. I left with overpriced needles (that's what I get for picking up something without a price tag and not putting it right back down!) and some elastic thread for the cuffs of Jake's socks. Despite some very reasonably priced sock yarns, I resisted the urge to buy any actual yarn, and I was rewarded with a PRIZE skein in the mail yesterday! I won the April Mama Llama Yarn Club contest and got a skein of Perfect sock in with my club shipment! I'll show pictures of the prize and the shipment when I'm motivated enough to take a picture :)

Have an awesome day!