Flower Power

Oh my goodness, where have I been?  I really, truly expected to post much more over break but somehow life got in the way.  I haven't done much.  I haven't even finished Christmas Knitting (more on that in a later post).  On more than one day, I didn't leave the house except to walk the dogs.  I've read a lot, watched an awful lot of Parenthood on Netflix (while Mike is at work), watched a lot of Burn Notice on Netflix (with Mike, when he is home), read a lot (but not everything on my nightstand; I did make it to the library), and did some cross stitch.  (More on that in a later post, too.  Almost finished!)  And did some knitting.

I'm calling it the Upsa Daisy.  Isn't she cute?

I'm showing the finished product before all the working shots because if this was a blog I had just stumbled upon, I would probably scroll to the finished object before I read the entire post.  I like to know what I'm moving towards.  As much as I would like to be spontaneous and fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, I generally do best with predictability.  Or at least when I know the outcome of the situation.  If I know the outcome, I can go along for the ride, no problem.

Does anyone remember a set of books from the early 80s about plucky heroines, each book titled after the main character?  Titles like Caroline, Elizabeth, and others?  I was probably around ten years old when I was reading them, and they were so dreamy to me.  They were historical fiction, and the title character always had two problems.  One, she had an historically important problem of the time.  I distinctly remember one book where the girl was a Suffragette.  And her second, not quite so historically important problem, but the Biggest Problem In the World?  TWO suitors!  Who did she pick?  The (good) reader never knew until the last chapter.  Always the last chapter.  Not a "good" reader (then, as now), I usually always looked ahead to figure out which guy she ended up with.  Only then could I sit back and enjoy the show.  (For the same reason, I often watch movies more than once, and generally enjoy them more the second time around.)

Anyway, that is why I'm showing you the finished hat first.  But now I'm telling you that I had the pink part finished for a week before I could get up the mojo to knit the six white petals.  Once I did it, it took about twenty minutes, tops.

Petals at the ready

Then I had to pin all the petals to the hat.

No real science to it, just pin and go.

Then I had to use all those obnoxious tails to sew the petals to the hat.

It is amazing how many of my knitting pictures look like this, with a glass of wine in the background.

I left two long tails on the petals, one on the cast on and one on the cast off.  As I was stitching these one, I used one tail to stitch down one side, wove it in, and used the other tail to go up the other side.  I thought maybe I should just use one per petal, and weave the other tail in before pinning to the hat, but I think using the two tails gave me a bit of maneuverability with the petals.  I didn't pin them on in the exact position they ended up in; I fussed with them a bit, squinching them around to fill in the space properly.

Not exact, but perfect nonetheless.

It ended up being so sweet.  I love it, and I hope the recipient loves it.  Raveled here, if you are looking for yarn information.

And of course, the gratuitous picture of a fluffy dog.

Brett, examining the finished product.