In what may be a knitting speed record for me, I already have an FO from the new winter VK. I give you the Trapper Hat:

The new Vogue came to my mailbox on Thursday evening. I bought the yarn on Friday, popped in a couple of episodes of the Forsyte Saga, wound up a few center-pull balls, and I was off to the races. I took Jaywalker #2 out to Brooklyn for my day with Lisa on Saturday, so I didn’t work on the hat, but I finished it up Sunday morning, just in time for the perfect test-run weather. It was a chilly winter day, made violently cold by wind gusts up to 50 mph. So I bundled up and went to the park to try out both the hat and the spiffy new camera, an Olympus E500 SLR that’s our belated wedding and Christmas present to each other. It’s hardly at its best when you’re taking pictures of yourself wearing woolen mittens, but I’m still impressed with the improvement over our trusty little point-and-shoot.

The hat performed pretty well, too. For really arctic conditions, especially with high winds, you’d want a fine-gauge underlayer. The bulky Blue Sky Alpaca does leave holes for the wind to come through. But it’s very cozy inside this enormous hat. With the back flap down, it reminds me of some of the helmets in the Asian section of the Hall of Armor at the Met (Adam’s favorite wing). I think it will be just the thing for our big trip to Torino next month! Yes, we’re on our way to France and Italy to visit friends and relations and to catch the winter Olympics. Next up: a nice fluffy scarf. Oh, and some more socks:

I was no longer able to resist the siren song of Sweet Georgia’s beautiful hand dyes. Once I saw Steph’s pretty blue lace leaf socks and squeeeeeezed that luscious ball of sock yarn, I had to have some of my own. The colorways you see here are Firefly (Jaaaaaaaaaayne…the man they call Jaaaaaaaayne…) and Willow. Of course I intend to finish the Topless Jaywalkers first. There’s been another glitch, and half of sock #2 had to go to the frog pond. I could have sworn I decreased down to 64 stitches…but apparently not. It solves the mystery of the stripes not coming out the same, anyway.