Effing Moose Hut Hat

Herewith on its blocking ball, a hat created for The Hats for Huts auction, a silent auction to take place in May, a fundraiser for Alaska Mountain and Wilderness Huts Association. Check them out--their ultimate goal is a string of huts around Alaska that are a wee bit posher than your average public use cabin. They've started with Manitoba Cabin, and if you want to make a personal acquaintance with an Alaska Mountain Hut while knitting a Hat for Huts, there will be a knitting and spinning weekend at Manitoba Cabin April 26-28, 2013. If you're interested, leave a comment, and we'll connect you with the organizer.

Meanwhile, back at the hat:

It's one of the many, many interpretations of the Fornicating Deer Chart altered to look a bit moose-ier than the original caribou (thicker antlers on the male, none on the female) and, what the heck, some beaded snowflakes/stars in the sky. Dale Hielo yarn with Cashmerino lining band. Instructions said provisional cast on, make the hat, rip out the cast on and make the inner band. Nuts to that. I reverse engineered it to start with the band, then keep going, turn the purl edge and do the hat. Why knit and rip if you don't have to? Works out fine.

A Further Digression

What's this? A snake?

 No, just a harmless Saroyan scarf, off the needles and ready for blocking, all 7 feet of it.  The yarn is nowhere near the worsted weight the pattern was made for; it's Blue Moon Socks That Rock Pining 4 Ewe. It started with a sock club skein, to which I added a second skein so the scarf could be long. The designer said it was adaptable to lots of different kinds of yarn and she was right!  I also added some beads as is my wont. They're not very visible in the pictures, but they're there!

Here's the blocked result:

Neither the indoor nor the outdoor sun shows the actual color. You can get the best idea of it from the yarn link.  It seemed to me that this yarn wanted to be leaves, not socks, and it looks very happy in this incarnation.

Still winter here; still up to our eyeballs in snow, thanks for asking.

The neighbors' mailboxes protrude just enough from the snow to be reachable.

Charlie the dog (18 inches high at the withers) climbs the berm across the road from the end of our driveway in search of horse muffins thrown up by the snowplow. He thinks it's a wonderful treasure hunt in the mountains.

Meanwhile, a young moose rests in the driveway next door. The good news for them is that the high berms give them access to willow branches they've never been able to reach before.  The bad news is that slogging through snow up to their (very high) armpits is extremely exhausting and they've given up finding quiet places to ruminate. They just flop down wherever they happen to be, and sometimes that's a driveway; tough luck if you need to pull in and park. Come back when I'm done with the cud, bud.