This Northern Life

Lately I have been a bit distracted by hats and dresses. It's a little out of character for me, a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl, but it's true. I have been wearing more skirts over the past couple of years because it solved the age old problem of "what do I have to wear that is dressy enough for work but cool enough for the summer?" Then even more recently, I rediscovered the dress. It solves the almost-as-ancient-a-problem of "what do I have to wear with that?" The awesome thing is that skirts and dresses are fairly easy to sew. In theory, that is. In practice, it's hard to find the time to get out the sewing machine and have at it. Which explains why my son has three pairs of pants that are waiting to be patched, and why I have two skirts in my sewing closet that I cut out this winter but haven't made up. Not to mention the dress I made myself six years ago that is still not hemmed.

This issue underscores, of course, why Pinterest is so popular. Because you can just pin the ideas for dresses that you want to sew, and it makes you feel as though you are making progress, when in fact you are doing nothing of the sort. I have some seriously cute skirts and dresses pinned, and I like to look at them and pretend I am going to get to them someday. Which I might do, eventually, after I hem that dress and patch my son's pants and sew up the two skirts. Right.

That brings me to hats. Making hats is pretty quick, and this winter I'm already knitting my second hat. The first one was a lovely cloche (shown below) which I made entirely on the drive to Bend, OR and back, and the second one is a beret. I've never had a beret before but I love the yarn. It's Palouse Yarn Company Yum and believe me, Yum is the perfect name for it! It's wonderful to knit in, and by the end of the week I expect I'll have a new hat, which will promptly be put up until next fall since it's already warming up quite a bit.

So that's why I splurged recently and bought hats for spring. They are from the milliner's shop in Portland, Bonnet. I am in love with their hats. My friends and I discovered them by accident while we were searching for a yarn shop near our hotel in Portlandia. And Moscow is weird enough to get away with hats, right???