Beautiful snowflake hat

I found a beautiful snowflake hat over at Knitting with Grey's . The pattern is author created and she links to her sources - the snowflake is from Berroco and the thermal stitch that forms the side of the hat is from Knitty. The author and knitter is Knotingale.

With this odd spring that the midwest and much of the U.S. is having - a winter hat with snowflakes still seems appropriate!

I got my spinning wheel fixed last weekend! Actually, Dennis Kaiser of Hillcreek Fiber Studio fixed the wheel A YEAR AGO. (Through my bad treatment, my Ashford Traditional's wheel and spokes had separated. Dennis put it back together for me and glued it tight. Thanks, Dennis!) He asked me if I had the bolts to get the wheel reassembled. "Oh, absolutely! I put them in a safe place!"

We know how this ends, right? Last Saturday, a year later, I called and admitted that I could not find the bolts. I went out to the studio, got a sample of what I needed and headed in to Westlake's, where a nice young man pointed me to what I needed. One tiny glitch - the parts were a micronanotiny bit off, which I attributed to the different measurements of New Zealand and the U.S. I bought them anyway and they fit.

So - I got to spin for the first time in a year! I chose New Zealand Romney (an accidental tribute to my Ashford). A couple of skeins in a natural light grey, and a skein in a dark grey. The dark grey was especially overspun; the light grey was not all that balanced, either. I was too happy to be spinning to actually pay too much attention to 'the product.'

I tried to knit a fast warm scarf with two strands of the light grey held together and had to laugh - the stockinette stitches literally appeared diagonal on the scarf. So, I frogged it and plied the singles. MUCH NICER! I actually got one skein knit last night and then added in the plied dark grey to make a stripe. I couldn't put it down! (Along with the fact that I was listening to the Vancouver/Dallas hockey game that ran into FOUR OVERTIMES and ended at 2:30 central time. I didn't listen to the end - caught the results this morning. Vancouver. By 1 I think.)

Anyway - the spinning, the wool, the hats, the scarves - all appropriate as at least one forecaster is predicting snow for tomorrow/this weekend. sigh. But it's snowing up north, too, so we're in good company here at The Warming House!