Xenocryst

What's that? According to my quick Google search, it's "a crystal foreign to the igneous rock in which it occurs".

It's also the name of the latest hat pattern that I finished last night. I came across the pattern while I was thumbing through the Fall 2010 issue of Knitscene at Adirondack Yarns in Lake Placid this past summer. The pattern uses an Estonian cast on which I had never heard of, but fortunately the author provided a link to this video. The Estonian cast on is definitely more attractive than other methods I've used so it's a keeper. This simple pattern was easy to memorize so it was the perfect companion for a few glasses of wine and the latest movie from NetFlix.

I wanted to test drive Debbie Stoller's Bamboo Ewe yarn that I bought from JoAnn's a few months ago. The color is Twilight, a purple/blue color that reminds me of grape-flavored Nerds. The yarn is 55% bamboo, 45% wool. For less than $5 a skein, it was nicer to work with than I expected. It was fairly soft and didn't split like some of the cheaper yarns I've worked with (ahem, Naturally Caron Spa AND Country). It had a couple of knots  (including a section of yarn that seemed to be tied together by a 12" strand) but nothing so bad that I couldn't work it out.

Thanks to Ula for modeling. Yes I know she/it is creepy, but get over it.