Earlier today I was chatting with my sister-in-law about the peculiar rhythms of academic life . . . during the school year, you go full tilt, and when a break arrives, the wheels just come off for a while, whether you want them to or not, it seems. (Or maybe I'm just lazy.)

At any rate, today I've hidden out in my room. This morning I knit what I told Louise was supposed to be a 2-hour hat (for Emma), but actually turned into a 4-hour hat because I had to rip it out twice:






That's all the bigger you'll see it (at least now) because that picture is so darned blurry it hurts my eyes to look at it when it's any bigger than that.

Louise wanted to know how I did it. First, I should say that I knit it using 47" size 10 needles, and knit it in the round. Here's what I did:

Pick up some needles and yarn. Check gauge. Figure out how many stitches you need to make 17". Cast that many on.

Knit for a few rows, then move all stitches to the needle cables so you can try the hat on. In my case, the hat was a bit too big, so I made six decreases evenly spread over the stitches. That's how I got the little "scallops" you see on the brim. (Entirely unintentional.)

If the hat fits snugly but not too snugly, keep knitting with no decreases. Deciding when to decrease can be a bit tricky. I tried to do it when the stiches didn't seem stretched on the needle cable when I tried the hat on. (I erred on the side of too long rather than too short.)

At about 4", I decreased once every nine stitches, worked even for about five rows, decreased every 8, worked even until the stitches no longer seemed snug (then decreased every seven), and so on and so forth.

At some point I worried that the hat was going to be too pointy, so I sewed all the remaining stitches together.

The hat seems to fit Emma quite well. (She won't pose for a picture.)

I also played with my Moebius a while today:






It's a pleasure to handle! I play with it a lot - almost like worry beads.

Yesterday I figured out that I could fold it in half and wrap it around my neck twice:






It's extraordinarily cozy and comfortable.

In other news, we have Milo here with us this week:


















He's hard to photograph! He doesn't sit still very long . . .

And I got some of that other Milo, too, on Monday, when I went to Ann Arbor:






Yum! I finally found it in a Middle Eastern grocery on Packard. I ended up there at the suggestion of the guy in Bombay Grocers, which is where I went first. On that three-block section of Packard, in addition to the two stores I mentioned, there's also an Eastern European grocery, two Asian groceries, and another Middle Eastern grocery. I love it . . .