If the hat fits...

Seaman's Cap

Yarn: Cascade 220 Tweed (90% Peruvian Highland wool, 10% Donegal; worsted weight)
Colorway: 7627 (let's call it taupe with colored flecks)
Needles: US 6 and 7 circulars
Stitches: 102

One more FO before I left my parents' home... I knitted this in record time for me. Rough estimate: 26 or 27 hours on the clock from start to finish. And yes, that includes time for sleeping. Obviously it didn't require that many knitting hours.

Although it was made in a short period of time, I'm really pleased with the quality of my knitting. There's a small area I could get self-critical about, but this is the season for being generous, so I should extend that to myself, right? I'm proud to wear it.

A note on the colorway... It appears that I have misplaced the wrapper, so I've guessed at the number. It's closer to a brownish gray/grayish brown--I'm told that's called taupe--as seen in the picture below than the reddish brown seen at the top of this post.

The tweedy bits give it just enough color to spice it up rather than being a bland monochrome hat. In this photo you get a glimpse of the scarf I got from my ISE5 pal. Don't you think the color goes well with my overcoat?

I arrived home in Ohio after a four and a half hour drive early tonight. Like the days with my family, my time on the road flew by. The drive itself was unremarkable, although it had the relative intrigue of being the first time I made it.

While on route 33 in western Ohio I passed what looked like a barn in the middle of nowhere. There was a string of blinking lights and an illuminated sign whose red letters on a white background promised "Famous Old Time Music". Pray tell, what kind of music is that, and what is going on in that building? This place snagged my curiosity, although anything slightly out of the ordinary would do that three or so hours deep into a drive in the pitch black early evening that felt like the dead of night.

I enjoyed the time away, I'm glad to be back, and I can't believe that I don't feel like I'm limping into the end of the year for once. Ah, but the next two days bring a mind (and butt) numbing eight basketball games for which I will be keeping statistics. For the moment I feel up to the challenge.