Koolhaas & Starbucks

A friend of mine turned 40 a few weeks ago, and I wanted to knit her something for her birthday celebration slated for New Year's Eve. I needed to do something fast and it needed to be out of yarn I had.

I dug around in my basket of leftovers and found a nearly complete hank of purple Cascade 220 (is there nothing it can't do?) that I'd used to finish up a pillow a few years back. I can't imagine I would use this for anything else, and I wanted to try another Koolhaas hat from the 2007 Interweave Knits holiday knitting issue. I made it in something like two days. Knitting into the back of those twisted knit stitches and trying to cross them without a cable needle takes a bit of deftness that I had trouble calling forth, but it's worth it. It looks nice if I say so myself, and I think Shannon will like it.

I tried it on myself and found that I liked the way this women's size fit on my head better than the men's version I knitted back in the spring. I might try this just one more time so that I can get one that fits a bit better. I have some leftover Cascade 220 (what else?!?) from yet another pillow in a nice rusty brown color...

Whilst running errands this afternoon, Jeff and I stopped by Starbucks to grab some joe and a treat. I saw these yarny decorations and I've been meaning to take a picture and post about them. What an interesting decorating idea -- wrapping Styrofoam balls with sparkly yarn and forming them into wreaths and such. They look kind of neat, and lord knows I'd never knit anything with yarn like that. Every Starbucks I've been in for the last few weeks has had these things -- even with the store closing they've been announcing, it must have taken tons of yarn to make these things for all the Starbucks in the country -- if not the world. Think of all the sparkly holiday sweaters that could have been made from this stuff!