Emergency Knitting

I maintain that there is no such thing as too much fun, but I concede that I might have partied too hard last night. Thus, today is a good day for enjoying cloudy skies, sitting on ones ass (bruised from sleeping on a floor), reading some John Adams by David McCullough, and working on a little emergency knitting.

Is there such a thing as emergency knitting? Yes, non-knitters, there is.

This week was particularly cranky and dramatic, and one of the more serious events was my dear boss having an accident on her bike on the way to work. A car hit her front tire, she tried to catch herself… and you can figure out the rest. Casts, surgery, pain. J is one of the sweetest people I have ever met and after the initial shock of the news and relief that she will be okay, my first reaction was, “I need to knit her something! J must be knit for! Someone get her some knitting immediately!” I thought of a scarf, but those take too long (“Hey, J! Remember that time you broke your arm? Here’s a scarf.”), and she’ll obviously not be able to wear mittens, at least not both of them at the same time, for a while, so I reasoned that a hat would be the best solution.

I’m using the Moss Stitch Beret pattern by Kent Turman, found via Ravelry, which I had originally queued for myself and bought some green Cascade 220 to knit in the future. The green just didn’t say J to me, and now I can’t make myself the same hat for obvious reasons, so this one is all hers. I picked up some Lorna’s Laces Shepard Worsted in Manazite from the ever wonderful Dublin Bay, which is the softest smooshy-est yarn I could find in a color I thought would suit J, and got started on Thursday night. I started out on a US size 3 16″ circular for the brim and then measured my gauge, because how else are you supposed to do gauge for a hat, I so seriously ask you, and found that I was a full stitch per inch off. I was getting 6 stitches/ inch instead of 5 per inch, and ripped back dutifully. I wanted a slouchy beret, not a beanie, and with a 17 inch circumference brim it was preparing to be a head tourniquet. I switched to US size 3 DPN’s (note: same size, different type of needle), started over and measured my gauge. Spot on. I had loosened up an entire stitch per inch by switching from circular needles to DPN’s. Keeping all of the stitches on the DPN’s after increasing and switching to size 7′s has been a chore, I have to knit with the hat propped up on my knee so the needles don’t slide out. But I have been able to make a dent in John Adams, thanks to my little book holder opener and the fact that I can do moss stitch with my eyes closed. I need to knit more simple projects like this and the Houdini socks so I can read while I knit. Most of my last projects have involved charts or lots of counting and I wasn’t able to take my eyes off my project.