groundhog day?

 

Monday AM, I'll be heading up to Vermont for 3 days of photo shoots. I'll be in some pretty great locations but none of them call for wild hair. A new week, a new headband.

pattern: Blue Leaf Headband

yarn: Berocco Pure Pima in Beech, theoretically matching everything in its colorless neutrality yet looking awful next to my skin

needles: size 7us

comments: This is an ideal headband, just right for summer, love the width & lace-that-is-not-prissy, quick but not boring to knit. Didn't even bother to block.

 

(aerial hipstamatic views of my head by Dave, who did an excellent job considering he just wanted to enjoy his coffee & breakfast at the time, and we were in public at a cafe when I felt the need to have him get the shots)

I'll definitely wear it a lot despite the deadly color on me. I broke it in at a neighborhood happy hour on the beach tonight, and tomorrow it'll be on my head in a soybean field somewhere way north of here. I like a headband that gets around, don't you?

 

The start of  V3.  Not that I'm obsessed or anything. This'll be like the blue one, but wider, same yarn but in Oyster. I reached half done with it and then remembered Ellen, #1 crochet enabling friend,  suggesting a striped granny stitch one. I'll have 3 different half skeins left after this, I have a feeling I know what V4 will look like.....

necessitude

 

How many things are wrong with this image?

For starters, I do not have my camera strap around my neck. How stupid is this? Very.  I am known for insisting everyone put a strap around their neck the instant they touch a camera. Hmph.

Then there's the fact that I'm in a restroom mirror, clutching  paper towels from drying my hands. Nice propping there.

Back up one more step. I am photographing myself in a mirror, while not looking through the viewfinder. Seen it much?  I really dislike this online cliche image. I always think the subject is trying to show  they have a big camera instead of a more compact point & shoot.  Which always makes me think, OK if you can afford that camera go get yourself a stinkin' tripod and use the self -exposure setting, and stop with the photo we've already seen a thousand times. But maybe, like me, they were just in an aggressively pink restroom during a job and decided it was the perfect moment to show a FO.

photo by Kelly Jensen,  photo asst for the job, and headband knitting/crocheting enabler.
My hair is not actually usually this bad; we were driving back with the windows down . 
Great for the gorgeous weather. Tragic for the coiffure.

Which brings us to why I am peering out over the camera : I am trying to show you my headband, and I am not usually a headband fan. However, I have hair that can charitably be called "very textural".  I've been trying to grow it out.  Enroute to a very businesslike photo shoot in Vermont,  I realized I needed something to hold it back, not out.

With Berroco Pure Pima on hand, I decided to knit a headband.I tried a mini Lacy Baktus, but didn't like it in the worsted weight gauge.  Same with try # 2, a Helleborus . (Yes,  I am  a fan of Terhi's.)  Next up I switched to crochet for a half granny triangle.  It was predictably too retro crafty for the look I wanted (I may go there again though). So I fudged a double crochet gridlike like headband, tapering the ends and fastening with a button,

When I was done with the strip of it, it seemed a little bit....more homemade than handmade, so I edged it in single crochet for a more finished look.

Bottle cap whistles by Loran Scruggs, who works with recycled tin and just happens to be profile in our new book, Craft Activism. TBP Sept 27. (shameless plug)

I

The headband was just right for the work in Vermont, as was our stop on the way home the next day at the Northfield Creamie in Massachusetts. Joy! is the word.

I've already cast on in a khaki-ish color skein of the cotton for the Blue Leaf headband . Obsessed, just a little.

 

And then, there's always this strategy for hair cover.

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Thanks to everyone who entered to win the class at Fiber College, I'll notify the winner tomorrow. if she says she can't make it, I'll draw again. And you should still plan to come , it's going to be a fine time.

meanwhile

Extending the giveaway to the Fiber College class til August 10th. Enter!

The Founder's Wife, overseeing a corporate photo shoot I was working on in some executive offices in VT last week. I like having her keep an eye on us.

Work and family life and summer and 4 wips at once = not much to show. It's not like I haven't been knitting. That'd  be so wrong, and could result in something ugly. Possibly murder, and definitely me being a mega annoying super fidgety car passenger.

This right here is the lavendar (with a nice greyish undertone) Colrain lace, that's finally found it's voice as a Miley tee. Coming along nicely except in my travels I have accidentally yanked it off the needles, more than once, coming out of a bag..

 

In my own private color forecast for fall, I'll say greyish lavendar charcoal purple is going to be Big. At Webs yarn mecca, with every shade possible, my one choice was a sweater's load of Malabrigo Rios in Pearl Ten.  (Do you wonder what Pearl Eleven and Pearl Nine look like? I do.) I have had a jones for this colorway ever since I made my sister a Destroyed Cowl . However, this bag of Pearl Ten seems more variegated and contrastier, so I'm not sure what pattern, but I want  to avoid horizontal stripes & splotches. I want a go-to cardi, I'd been thinking a new Ribby Cardi but now I'm thinking maybe a Transverse or a Grenadine? or a Kaino? Suggestions welcome.