knitting

I’m having a hat attack

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‘Getting ahead of the Christmas gift situation’

This is gonna be a quickie, ‘cause I’ve got to get back to my hats. See, I had this brainstorm this past weekend. (Yes, I mean the weekend before the weekend that has Christmas at the end of it.)

I was working away on my umpteenth sweater while watching Friends when I needed something from my knitting closet. While fishing out whatever the heck it was, I was almost smothered by bags of leftover yarn from all the sweaters I’ve knitted already.

One of the sweaters I’ve knitted already. Yes, there is yarn left over. Yes, there is some going into a hat

I looked at all those partial hanks and semi-depleted balls and thought, “Hats!” (Actually, I think I said this aloud: “Hats!)

It was a real Eureka Moment for a person who has friends with chilly heads. Friends who, like my follically-challenged husband, are hard to buy gifts for because they already get themselves anything and everything they want or need. But hey, they can always use a hat.

Someone who can definitely use a nice warm hat. Maybe two

So I turned our guest room into a hat factory. Gathered all the odds and ends of worsted and sport and heather, grouped them into interesting little piles of colors and textures, downloaded a bunch of hat patterns from Ravelry — and got to it!

What I used to knit with leftovers: vests! But, gee, his head looks cold

I had never knit a hat before. Which, in a wacky way, made it all the more fun. The first one got off to a rocky start, because it’s not so easy determining whether the circumference is going to work. But once I frogged it a couple of times, it went swimmingly. In case you’re interested, the term “frogging,” which means to undo your knitting and roll it back up into a ball and start over comes from “rip it rip it”, which some knitting wag thought sounded like a frog: “ribbit ribbit”. I guess.

The first hat, all done and getting blocked. After I ripped it out a couple of times. Grrrrrr

Incidentally, I’ve been test/playing with The Child’s whiz bang new product, Dot, which another tester said is “like an operating system for your life.” Dot, which you can read about here, is not available to the public yet, but I’ve been putting her through her paces with all kinds of tasks. This morning she entertained me with an article about playing “Yarn Chicken,” which is when you’re in a race with your yarn. Will you win, and have enough to finish? Or will you run out somewhere toward the end? To which quandary I have the perfect answer: Stripes.

Running out of yarn? Throw in a couple of stripes!

Well, I warned you. I have one more hat to knit before Thursday. So I’ve gotta get at it. Good thing Friends ran for so many years!

I’ll leave you with this holiday photo from my favorite yarn source, Catskill Merino. Most of my hats (and their parental sweaters) started out on the backs of these lovely merino sheep.

There’s gotta be a manger in there somewhere

May your Christmas be merry and bright. And your head be toasty and warm — topped with a nice new hat.

New York City. December 2023

“If you’re cold, put on a sweater.”

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‘And keep your paws off that thermostat.’

The other day I rushed home from an event and found myself stripping off layers as I strode through the door, said event having taken place at a particularly overheated venue. Every stitch I was wearing had to go in the laundry or the (ka-ching) dry cleaning pile. (The Child, on her last visit home: “Mom! Do you know what they charge at that dry cleaner’s on Lex?”)

Honestly. I swear I don’t know what’s happened this winter. Every place I go — restaurants, museums, busses, the subway, the opera even — has the heat cranked up to the absolute max. Could it be that people are cold from all those outdoor activities during Covid? (I must admit I did not take part in these, at least not voluntarily. Oh, there was the occasional outdoor restaurant date with Concerned Covid-Avoiders, but few in my cohort really got into Outdoor Covid Stuff — unless it was something that usually happens outdoors anyway. Like, say, a picnic. In summer.)

Here’s someone who looks really cold. An not because I turned down the heat, but because it was, like -29 up there in Canada

While I can’t control the heat in public places, I like to think I can do so at home. But there’s the indisputable fact that I do not have exclusive control of the thermostat.

Nope. Dude Man lives here too. And, as I like to say, our marriage runs hot and cold. As in I’m always hot, and he’s always cold.

(And before you get all kinds of snarky ideas about the state of my hormones, my overheatedness has nothing to do with that.)

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“Is that for me?”

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‘A post about knitting, of all things’

What with Holiday Nonsense and all, my stats’ll probably be in the basement this week anyway, so what the heck — I’ll write about knitting.

Yes, knitting.

Knitting is actually a rather comfy cozy thing to do, especially when it’s cold out and you’re sitting in front of a roaring fire.

Somebody enjoying a roaring fire while not knitting

But I’ve also done my share of knitting elsewhere. I used to do a lot of it on TV commercial shoots. See, on shoots they have this thing called “craft services”, which is basically a big ole table loaded with every kind of tempting snack and/or treat you can think of: chips, cheeses, little pastries and sandwiches, candies of all types, including bowls and bowls of M&Ms. Our producer on a Hershey shoot once got in hot water by stocking M&Ms instead of Reese’s Pieces, which was the client’s product. She had to explain that the client on that particular Hershey shoot had requested the M&Ms. Continue reading