Rivendell among the rocks

Mountain Man I drove out to "Looner Land" this past Sunday for a stunningly beautiful day of rock climbing. It's an an amazing place, with clusters of rock pinnacles rising out of the desert floor. Here's me, rappelling off of our last climb in the late afternoon sun.


I thought such an unworldly landscape would be the perfect place to photograph my newest project: a Rivendell hat in a heavenly-soft alpaca. I also thought that it would be much chillier (like it was last weekend), but as you can see it was sunburn weather, not alpaca hat weather. Not that I'm complaining, though!


Knitting this hat was like visiting an old friend. Rivendell was the first pattern that I ever published. It came out in Magknits in May 2007, and when Magknits was abruptly taken down, the pattern went with it. I still have the pattern text, but no charts or diagrams or pretty formatting, and anyways the pattern needed some tweaking with gauge and sizing, since the original version was far too small and tight.

It's taken me a couple of years, but I've finally gotten myself around to re-knitting the hat and rewriting the pattern. This was a play on it to see how it would look with a different brim and a softer texture. I'm also working on a version that has the original flared seed-stitch brim, but I'm having some gauge issues. Hopefully it won't take me another two years :)