before christmas, i tried to make the brioche hat in Weekend Knitting for my sweetie at least 15 times before i gave up. my biggest problem was that after doing the two color cast-on, the stitches didn't really have a defined bottom, so almost every time i joined to make the hat in the round, i twisted it. and then i couldn't tell for a few rows, so it was really annoying. and the couple times i managed to join it without twisting, i didn't end up with the right number of stiches. so i gave up and made things for everyone else except my wonderful husband. what a mean bitch of a wife i am.

i should have known from the description at the beginning of the pattern, "a lot of serious knitters believed it couldn't be done - that is, brioche stitch in the round," that i was way too bad of a knitter to be able to make this. but i am stubborn. and bryan made me feel guilty for not making it for him. so, for his birthday this past monday, i tried to make it again. i figured out a trick to help me join - i cast on with the two colors in the hat and also held a different color yarn underneath those two so that i could tell where the bottom was. but then when i switched to bigger needles after 3 inches i screwed something up and i couldn't figure out how to fix it because brioche stitch is complicated and i am dumb. so i had to rip it all out.



i almost decided that bryan would get this hat when he was as old as the salty old man in the picture in the pattern, who for some reason makes me think of a sailor and the ocean.



but i perservered, and i managed to finish the hat two days after his birthday with only one side of the decreases looking asstastic. but i'm pretty sure i could make another hat witout making any mistakes now that i know how it works.



let's look at a closeup of this gorgeous hat!



another present i gave bryan was a very strange little cat on a crocheted doily that i bought from a crazy person on telegraph. it looks dead. i put it in the hamster cage and lady avalache attacked it.



and last saturday we made dinner with erin because we wanted to go to pasta pomodoro at 10:45 when they closed at 11, but then they closed early so we missed our yummy dinner. and we had to make dinner instead so we ate at 1 am. but it was yummy. we had four cheese pasta with tomato and basil made from a recipe from America's Test kitchen. we also made mashed sweet potatoes and steamed broccoli with a basil vinagrette from the america's test kitchen book that heather gave bryan for christmas. bryan looooooooves america's test kitchen. mwah mwah, richard kimble!