A new hat!

I'm kind of sick of all the blankets I've been working on. Hell, I even started a third I have to have finished in a week. Yes, I'm absolutely nuts, but I think a big-needles fluffy-ass afghan would be a great thing for a gift exchange this time of year. If I don't make it to the gift exchange, I keep it. Win-win, right?

Anyway, Steve and I made some roadtripping today to visit friends, and take an impromptu visit to a music shop. I wasn't about to take a giant afghan with me for car knitting, so in a mere couple of hours, I churned this out:




A hipster hat! I'm not sure if I can wear this in public without feeling like a dork. But it was a fun knit, and the brim was something I've never done before.

Some specs:
Pattern: Headline News hat from Stitch 'n' Bitch: Nation
Yarn: Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed (EXACTLY one skein... what do I do with that second I thought I needed?)
Needles: Size 8 for brim and ribbing, 9 for the body of the hat.
Mods: Just one - the needle size for the body of the hat is smaller than what's called for, but I kind of wanted to avoid having this sucker be huge, which seems to be an issue lots of people have had.

So about that road trip... Steve has been dragging me to all of the area music stores, as he figures since he has beaten expert guitar on Guitar Hero and Rock Band, it's about time he got himself an actual guitar that doesn't suck. We were in Ann Arbor, and a friend recommended a music store there for reasonably-priced instruments. Sure enough, he came home with a new guitar that's miles ahead of his old one:




The one in the background is his five-string bass. He's had that a while, and it's a nice instrument. Personally, I think the new black beast looks kind of like a bat or something, but he swears he got it because it was comfortable to play...