One trip, two hats

After a whirlwind tour of western Canada, we’re back.  From Edmonton to Vancouver to Winnipeg to home, we’ve had just the best trip.  We got home on Sunday night, but yesterday I was um… really tired from my vacation (how can that be?) and didn’t do much but catch up on work, work on a sweater (I’m permanently cold) eat the last of the gingerbread, and consider changing out of my moose jammies. (I did not.)

lastofthegingerbread2 2015-01-06

Today I’m back up and running, although I just experienced one of those “short days”. Have you ever had one? You get up, make a big to-do list, the whole day of possibility stretches out in front of you, and then you do one thing (I went to the dentist) and whammo. It’s 4:30, getting dark, and the whole day is shot. I swear I had big plans for today, but you’ll have to make do with two more little knitted things that fell off my needles over the past little bit.  (One bigger one too, but it’s blocking.) The trip we just made was to visit our friend Johnny and it didn’t seem at all right to show up empty handed so I did the only logical thing. Johnny lives in Edmonton, it’s winter, and there’s no way that a hat wouldn’t be the right thing. I started knitting him as soon as the Christmas knitting was over, and by the time we arrived in Edmonton, I was ready to affix it to him as he sat in the pub.

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Cascade 220 sport, 1.5 skeins of Navy.  Pattern: Lorne’s Hat.

The funny thing is that even though Johhny knows I knit (I’m scarcely seen without needles) when he opened it, it was about 20 minutes before he figured out I’d made it for him.  Dude actually thought I’d bought him a hat. Think about that. Bought a hat. Enough to boggle the mind.  Meanwhile, I had a husband just about ready to buy a hat, if I didn’t figure one out, so onto the needles went the leftovers from his mittens, and decent, plain hat was made – just in time for Winnipeg. (This was great timing. If you’re not familiar with Canadian Geography, I urge you to take a look at the weather page for that fine city, and know that they aren’t experiencing anything out of the ordinary.)  Joe rammed it on his head instantly, so great was the need.

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Once safely home though, where a gentleman could (though he would be very cold) go without a hat for a few minutes, Joe confided that he would think it a better hat, a hat that was more “properly a hat” if it had a pompom on top.

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I stifled the urge to say anything at all, and made one.  Hat improved, it had a washup- and Joe plunked it on his head this morning before he left.  He was right pleased with that pompom, I tell you, and I could tell by the selfie he texted me this morning, that the sir in question feels the pompom adds a certain Je ne sais quoi, and who am I to argue.

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I think he looks great.