Needle and the Damage Done

Damn, I wish I thought of the name The Needle and the Damage Done.
So far, by far, my favorite name for a knitting blog.
And the weird thing is that this is the knitting blog by Faith, who podcasts as The Knitting Cook. I've been listening to her podcast ever since Amy mentioned her lemon cake recipe (which I've yet to try).

Faith, who just moved to Germany with her husband and two boys, And is pregnant with a third, talks about her knitting projects, great recipes that she cooks for the family and stories about living in Germany, in a small town, while learning her German really fast.

In he podcast this week, she talked about the Meathead Hat pattern, so I finally took the time to check her show notes about the hat. Any pattern with a name like that intrigues me. It's a neat hat pattern - kind of like an Elfin hat that would be a great snowboarder hat AND a nice hat for the Mountaineering girls. It would be way cool to knit up with all this leftover scraps of wool I have and make some christmas hats this year. I found the flickr group of Meat Heads and really loved one version where a girl knit up the hat and then added 2 long braids "ear-flap" style. I'm sorting out stash right now to see what colors are going into this idea! The hat pattern was being sold to raise some funds and the fund raise just ended! Hopefully I can still buy - awaiting a response when I emailed.

This week's episode of The Knitting Cook is equal to about of weeks worth (or more) of checking links and writing about things I like. Foe one thing, The Wallaby Sweater is so similar to the sweater pattern I'm planning for Ty in the Mary Rich Goodwin book of top down raglans I still have here. Goodwin's pattern is called Little Fair Isle Hood with a pretty neat construction for the hood and top down raglan design. A good yarn would be the Bernat "sweatshirt Denim" warn or Lion's cotton ease. Ty does best with a cotton/acrylic blend like these so I'll be checking out my yarn stash of the Bernat sweatshirt stuff and filling in the gaps needed to make this Little Fair isle Hood.

I Love the Merry Go-Round pattern in this book, which I'm still knitting up from the frogged oatmeal shade of wool.

This Merry Go-Round is definitely working. The shaping of the rolled collar before the ribbing neckline and the top-down raglan shaping looks pretty fun. The sleeves are 3/4. Because I love 3/4 sleeves.

So the Merry Go-Round sweater is getting close to done, just have the bottom of the torso to finish up in stockinette and ribbing. I tried it on Sunday night, just a few rows down from the finished sleeves and showed Robin. Wow. she wants one. In baby blue.

so I've decided to find a nice baby blue variegated yarn in a softer fiber than wool (Robin can deal with Any wool) and voila - I realized the perfect thing to search out: Light blue denim!