Wooly Wonderland

For Christmas this year, (among other things) I knit for E'Yoak. I knit him the Koolhaas hat by Jared Flood. The pattern was inspired by the Seattle Public Library, but brought to my mind the British Museum which we thoroughly enjoyed during our trip to London.

An architect can hardly pass up a quick-to-knit hat pattern inspired by architecture. So, I went off to find some appropriate yarn. Malabrigo seemed a good choice. I found a beautiful blue that I thought would be nice with E'yoak's brown jacket. It's intense, but I hoped he'd still be willing to wear it.

I think he's grimacing at my demands during the photo shoot, not the hat itself.

It's all about warm ears at the bus stop, honey. And, no, they won't shove you in a locker for wearing your hat.

The pattern, knit on larger needles than called for, resulted in a much too tall hat. I marked where I should really start decreasing after E'yoak opened the gift and during our drive to his Mom's, I ripped out the decreasing and two repeats of the pattern, reknit the decrease and wove in the final end.

I did bring more knitting with me to occupy the hours of sitting still, visiting with family. On Christmas Eve, I was joined in this activity my MIL's newest foster daughter. Our nephew, I., watched us for a bit and then started asking, "how do you do that?" I demonstrated a couple of stitches and he sat back to watch some more. After a few minutes, he said, "can you teach me how?" I pulled two of the US10 DPN's and the remainder of the Malabrigo out of my bag, cast on, knit a row slowly with him watching and then handed it over. He struggled with the first couple of stitches and then found a groove. He needed help starting each row, but generally figured it out pretty fast. We had to break for dinner, but as soon as he finished eating, he was back to the knitting. When I rejoined him on the couch, he'd knitted about 10 rows. Then, he started to notice when he made a mistake and I helped him straighten them out. Our niece, T, scoffed as only a 15 year old can, "you're knitting?" He turned to her and responded simply, "I. Like. It."

Just before they left for the night, I. ran up and asked if he could take his work off the needles. I said sure, thinking he was going to rewind the ball so I didn't even think of offering to bind off for him. He took the piece with him. mmmm Malabrigo. It's a rather nice bit of yarn to learn on, don't you think?

Late on Christmas day, my BIL's family returned and reported that I. had spent much of Christmas morning teaching his cousins to knit (his other Grandma had cast on for them). Yeah, I pretty much melted into a little puddle. Christmas 2o07 - it's all about spreading the love of knitting.

eta: I almost forgot one more bit of woolen Christmas goodness. E'yoak gave me a Wollmeise gift certificate. squee