For those of you who have read my 100 Things About Me list, you might recall I HATE the cold.

Cold Weather Wear

In Albany, I woke up to a ground temperature of -11 degrees Fahrenheit and it went down to -12 degrees by the time I left for work. That was without wind chill factor which reduced the temperature to as low as -40 degrees.

One other fact I’ll share about myself is that I look very stupid in hats (that’s stupid, not stoopid). You will rarely see me wearing a hat, and virtually NEVER catch a picture of me in one.

With today’s record temperatures, I thought I’d include a rare photo of me wearing a hat, so y’all can see exactly why I don’t model any of the hats I make.

And it’s not that this hat doesn’t look very cool on some people…just not me. (you’ll also note, I’m wearing my striped pullover done in five different colors of Cascade 220.

Janis’ Baby Gift

Even though I do most of my baby knitted gifts on very small needles, they still seem to fly off my needles because of how small the garments are.

The second part of Janis’ baby gift is on US1 needles. God, I love small needles. While I still can’t show a picture of either part of the gift, I am moving along very quickly on the second part, and I hope to have it finished by this week.

Once I send it out, and have confirmed that she has received it, I will post pictures.

Next Project

I’m trying to decide on what I want to work on as my primary, take-to-Albany project once I finish the Janis project.

I’m thinking it will be the hemp pullover so that I can at least determine if I’m going to have enough yarn to finish it. I guess I’d like to know now if I need to revise my plans and how much I’ll need to revise them.

Readers’ Comments/Questions

James asks for more information on the Oriental Jacket (and Kake seconds that request).

Oriental Jacket is a very cool, very expensive, and very poorly written pattern by the folks at Koigu yarns. It’s a basic Oriental shaped jacket done in mitered squares with different colors of Koigu KPPPM, and the result is never less than stunning, no matter what colors are used.

The pattern itself is $20, and the kits run about $220.

I’d include a web resource for ordering it, but there are a few, and I don’t know any that are better than others. Type in:

“Oriental Jacket” Koigu

in your search engine, and it will show a number of on-line sources for both the pattern and the kits. There are some pictures, but truthfully, none of the pictures do it justice.

One last warning. The garment is done on US3 needles and is somewhat addictive. The instructions aren’t overly clear about how to plan your stacked squares, so your initial attempts at this might be a little trial and error.