My dad is retired, and has been for a many years. Now, he works on the house, drives my mom to and from work daily, and goes on hikes with his friends.
He's been, in my opinion, largely overlooked when it comes to handknit objects.
It's hard to get stuff for my dad for a few reasons. 1. He has everything already. 2.He saves everything. Forever. (see also #1) I asked him once for a shower cap, because I'd had my hair blown straight, and even though none of us has worn one in over a decade, he pulled one out of his closet. The price tag was still on it: 39 cents. 3. If he doesn't have something, he buys it for himself. 4. If you ask what he wants, he says that he doesn't want anything.
It's a strange combination of immigrant hoarding and the kind of consumption that comes when you have disposable income. It's something I've decided I'll never understand.
Nonetheless, what dad didn't have, and wouldn't buy, was a hat that covered his ears. He has a little fleece thing that covers just the pate of his head, and yes, there are LOTS of other hats in the house, but he won't wear those. So I made him this.
The details: it's leftover yarn from my socks, plus some black worsted (probably Cascade 220, but there was no ball band.) The pattern is "eccentric check" from Barbara Walker, but I put the horizontal stripes in there. A strange thing happened though: if you look closely at the checks, the ones facing right are not mirror images of the ones facing left. This makes no sense at all to me, since they're made in a symmetric fashion, but they really do look different. The left facing ones have crisp right angles, and the right facing ones look like rhombi. I noticed this as I was knitting, had a few moments of angst, then decided that dad wouldn't care (probably wouldn't notice) and left it. (OK. That's only mostly true. I also asked everyone I showed it to whether or not I should rip it out and do another pattern. Needless to say I got a lot of blank stares.)
My hope is that he'll love this hat enough to actually wear it. It's really nice -- if he doesn't wear it...hmmm...it fits me just fine.
On an unrelated side note: No, my computer is not fixed. To post this, I have to do the following: load photos to my work desktop, transfer them from iphoto to the desktop of the desktop, email them to myself, get my laptop running (not always easy. Thanks Steve Jobs!), hook my laptop up to the internet, get my email on the laptop, transfer the photo to the desktop of my laptop, then upload it to blogger. I'm so glad that technology has made my life easier.
1 comment:
(blank stare)
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