I feel like little Miss Muppet meets Jack Sparrow.

I know I haven't done an honest to goodness knitting blog in a while, but...

I'm back in black baby.

This is my tough "back in black" face. I should probably work on it.

This right here is the Neon Ski Bonnet by Lacey Volk and it can be found here:

 http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/neon-ski-bonnet

This is the fun, funky little project I mentioned in my last blog but wanted to keep secret.

I don't ski and mine isn't neon, but it was a hoot and a half to make. You just take some fun cabling, a simple rib stitch with some twists, a giant pompom, and voila!

 The picture doesn't do it justice, there's a bunch of cabling going on around the base. I even knit this one to pattern without taking any liberties (which, if you know me and my knitting tendencies, is rare). Well, I did take one tiny liberty in that I didn't do the hat band in the round, but that's only because I didn't have enough yarn to do so. On this tiny island, where sheep don't really exist, you have to save yarn where ever you can. So instead of doing a double band, I just did a one layer thing on straight needles.

All in all, I'd say it turned out pretty well. Perfect for a crisp Fall day in Oregon. You know the only problem with that? We're not in Oregon anymore Toto. This type of adorable bonnet doesn't have a place here. A place where it's 85 degrees out and you think: "Ooh, it's getting a little chilly". A place where if the cerulean waves get more than half a metre high, then it's a "crazy storm". This place was not meant for wool bonnets. Into my suitcase it goes. Believe you me, this sucker will be out of my luggage and atop my head the second we land in Portland come November. I'm counting the days.

Are you there Blog? It's me, Alexis!

Hello everyone! I know, I know, It's been too long. In my defense, I was in Bali. In your defense, I got back a week ago and am just a terrible blogger. But, I'm here now and that's what counts. Bali was awesome, thanks for asking. We had a bunch of super fun time adventures like surfing, and walking through the sacred monkey forest, and biking down a volcano, and zip-lining through trees, and seeing The Dark Knight Rises in theaters. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so we have very limited documentation of all this excitement. We have some pictures that the surf school took of Connor (none of me, because the guys at Big Kahuna Surf School are less than honest about what their "photo package" covers) and then a few photos of us with our friends Adam and Jan that we met on the bike ride, but I don't think Adam has sent those to us yet. We also have a few of us zip-lining but those are in print form and there is not a scanner to be found in Dili.
So what have I been knitting lately? A whole lot of everything. I can't keep my mind focused on a single project. I keep starting new things and then frogging them when I get bored. It's a bad existence for a knitter, not finishing any projects, but we all have our rough patches. Right now I'm working on something that I just might stick with because it's so funky and fun, but we'll see. I don't want to tell you and get your hopes up, just to dash them with another scrapped project.
Something that's seriously cramping my knitting? The lack of yarn. It simply doesn't exist here. I've found a substitute for lace-weight or cobweb, but if I want to make something chunky or worsted, I'm SOL. My mom sent me a few care packages filled with yarn and treats and the newest Nancy Drew PC game (I'm a huge ND nerd, don't judge, they're awesome games), but they haven't arrived yet. Carrick thinks they've either been lost, or more likely stolen. It's not a pretty thing to suspect, but when a package comes into a third-world country with a big sticker that says: "FROM AMERICA" it's more likely than not that it won't reach its final destination. Won't they be disappointed when they come to find that it's mostly just string? I hold out some hope that it's just sitting at the post office, waiting on some kind soul to make it out to this end of town.
Anyway, that's all I've got for now, sorry it's not more intriguing, or with fancy pictures, but that's just the way it goes sometimes. Hope you all are doing well!