Hat 1

Getting the curved bench out of the corner meant I discovered all the stuff I'd stashed behind it, including yarn and crochet hooks large enough to crochet yarn. That, plus seeing the oddness that is the seven teacups hat, got me started on a hat of my own.

I used a 50-g skein of the Sirdar denim tween yarn Hrafn gave me before she moved (60% acrylic, 25% cotton, 15% wool, washable, with blue, green, and white twisted together) with a 6.50 mm hook, which looks enormous to me now that I'm used to 1.50 to 1.75 mm hooks. The plan was to make a Moebius strip hat, based on a description I'd read a while back: make a chain of whatever length, then give it a half-twist when connecting the two ends, and Moebiusness results. That isn't quite what happened, because it's hard to figure out when a chain is flat. I do have a piece with one edge and one surface, but there are three half-twists in the hat, which means that it's topologically not equivalent to a Moebius strip, I believe, even though it shares some key characteristics. It also makes the twist bunch up more than I'd like, pulling the rest of the hat around with it.
(Side note: it's amazing how fast it goes with actual yarn rather than kippah thread.)

I wore it to work this morning, and while I like the asymmetricality (I put the twisty part by one ear, so it looked like a cross between a regular crocheted cap and a beret) and it was reasonably warm, the extra twisting meant that it's not quite large enough for my head. Or rather, it's just large enough, but feels like it's slipping a bit rather than staying put.

So I started on another skein of the same yarn this morning on the T, this time crocheting one row before joining it into a loop, with a single half-twist.

Tangential: I'm again debating getting a digital camera, partly (mostly?) to be able to show off things I've made (descriptions go only so far). And a little bit of me looks at my reason and wonders what lengths I'll go to for more appealing posts. *Sigh*

ETA, 1615 Synchronicity again: I found a Klein bottle hat linked to on friendsfriends (and you can get it with a Moebius scarf :-).

New Jersey: needs help

The five state slogans still in the running are

1. "New Jersey: Love at First Sight"
   
2. "New Jersey: The Real Deal"
   
3. "New Jersey: Come See for Yourself"
   
4. "New Jersey: Expect the Unexpected"
   
5. "New Jersey: The Best Kept Secret"

They all lead to questions (What secrets? Is it possible to expect the right unexpected (whatever that is)? etc.). And they're all bland, though that may be a function of trying to come up with a state slogan these days.