Yarns - A Sockhead Hat and "The Great Alone"

     I started this hat the first day my son went to Alaska in June, a few days after graduating from an Ecology College in Maine.  He's salmon fishing for a job, living in a cabin off the grid till autumn.  So I started his Sockhead Slouch Hat for Christmas knowing he wouldn't see the posts and also to feel closer to him.

     The hat is being knitted up in Patons Kroy Sock FX yarn in Canyon.  It is a bit scratchy so I plan to soak it in conditioner when I'm done, a recommended trick by Ravelry users of the yarn.  I'm surprised at how simple the knit is and how I want to grab it all the time and knit and read at the same time.  That's how easy it is.  It seems fast, but I have been at it for more than a month, but not bad for me, a slow knitter (and I always knit several projects at once).  I'm already planning the next one and I have picked out the colors.  The yarn has great colorways and even though it's scratchy a bit, it's got a few things going for it besides the color.  It's supposed to be very durable as sock yarn so I plan to do socks up also for my son in it, he always works hard outdoors as a carpenter.  Also, it's a hefty wool, it ought to be warm.  Another thing it's a little heavier than normal fingering wt. so it does knit faster.  I'm hoping to find a simple sock pattern for a size #2 needle.  That's the size recommended by a Ravelry user.  Before using the yarn I read as many comments as I could on the yarn in Ravelry and I found that very helpful - Patons Kroy Socks FX.

     My read this week "The Great Alone' by Kristin Hannah is set in Alaska in the 1970's.  A family moves off the grid, living in a tiny rustic cabin and totally unprepared for the rigors and harshness of Alaska.  The father is a Vietnam Vet and life with him is violent for his wife and 14-year-old daughter.  At first, this story gripped me because of the main character Leni, the 14 yr. old is 14 in 1974, the same as I was.  The books she read from "Watership Down" to Tolkien were books I read.   The author has the feel for the 70's as I remember it.  But, Leni enters into a world where she needs to survive, learn to shoot a gun and survive her family and Alaska in deep dark winter.  The book is at turns amazingly beautiful, filled with descriptions of Alaska and Leni's growing love for Alaska.  Then harsh and oh-so-real in the abusive situation Leni is in and the realities of living off the grid in an Alaskan winter.  The author's descriptions of Alaska are noticeably detailed and in an interview, she said she had lived in Alaska some summers - KRISTIN HANNAH Coming of age in the wilds of Alaska.  I'm more than halfway through and despite the harshness of the abuse, it is a wonderful and gripping novel.  I highly recommend it. "The Great Alone" Book Trailer (But I must say I'm relieved my son is coming home to Maine at the end of September.  This book has a side of Alaska in Winter that is so harsh that it shocked me, yet it's so beautiful.  And right now my son is on Kodiak Island just a little bit south of Homer, Alaska near where Leni lives in the fictional town of Kaneq.).

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