Free at Last! Free at Last!

Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last!

This evening is the first night if the sacred Winter Break. It was all I could do to make it to 4:30 this afternoon. I'll cut out the part of the story where I actually didn't leave until 5:00, got locked out of my room by my co-teacher and then slogged across the parking lot with 3 bags of presents, an overloaded laptop bag, my regular teaching "purse," and a clarinet in leaking shoes. I'm home now and that's all that matters.

Since my regular at-home laptop is on the outs (after the new year there is talk of a Mac book) I brought my work computer home. Thus, the blogging station is born.
I have to get pics from the digital camera onto the old laptop and then transfer them to the work laptop. It's a process but it works. Please note the large bin of yarn on the right. Not pictured is the lovely cup of hot tea that I made as soon as I got home.

I've finally picked back up an old project. I've dubbed it the Hat From Hell. The hat itself is not the issue here. It's actually a quite nice, extra long, scarf/hat thing with these cool, very severe, S-cables.

Sorry the picture is sideways. You still get the idea.

The reason this is the Hat From Hell is this:

This is supposed to be the yarn for the hat. Notice the 2 blobs of boucle. The one on the left is an utterly tangled mess. Notice also that the yellow yarn is also coming unraveled from the middle out. What you can't see is that the string from the middle is so tangled on itself (who knows how that happened) you can't get it pulled out any further.

This is a good time to mention that I absolutely hate tangled yarn. It infuriates me and frustrates me to no end. I had actually abandoned the Hat From Hell because of this stupid yarn. Maybe it should be called the Yarn From Hell.

The other night I fixed the problem. I found the string that went around the outside of the yellow yarn (I don't like to use the outside string. The skein flops all over the place as I unwind it.) and then I cut the horrid mess of orange/red/yellow boucle off the part that was still intact. Thus, the work on the scarf/hat began again. Things are going well. Only about 50 more (decreasing rows) to go!

And I leave you tonight with a picture of my friend Jenn's Christmas gift:

She is, unfortunately, a huge florida gator fan. However, I think this kerchief is about the cutest thing I've made so far. The yarn is Red Heart sport weight is Skipper Blue and then I added some orange 1/4 inch (or there abouts) orange ribbon through the increase holes around the edge. Get the pattern here.