Hat #2: down a needle size. Smaller keyboard (and thus faster to knit), more piano–I like this one.
Michelle pointed out that it needs to be a thicker yarn to be really warm, and I chuckled at my child who was only eleven months old when we moved to California: college has taught her to appreciate warm clothes.
I regret that my children never got to make a snowman in the front yard. I have memories from when I was a kid of my Dad helping our giant balls of snow walk the plank: there was no way we could lift that midsection, so Dad set up a board and with his help we rolled it on up. The head would be smaller and lighter, so Dad simply lifted those up for us, although I remember one big snowman in the yard in front of my parents’ bedroom where it was a challenge even for him and he went looking for a longer board. Good times
My kids growing up in California never got to ice skate on the driveway. Or on the Canal. Or on the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument like we did, with the Park Service running a warming bonfire on the side. The Reflecting Pool is something like a foot deep, so if you weren’t sure the water was frozen enough, you weren’t going to get anything but really cold if you fell through.
So. No snowmen. Yesterday I got a surprise package in the mail, one that hadn’t made it in time for Christmas, but all the better for that. Totally unexpected. What… From KC? And it’s a snowman! Who knits! And sings! And waves his knitterly arms, with his ball of yarn glued to his backside (I kid you not). Who flies through the air in his red sleigh on New Year’s Eve, delivering yarn to all the procrastinating knitters who didn’t get their Christmas presents knitted in time this year!
And yeah, he waves that nail-needle perilously close to his carrot nose, and I love him all the more for it. I played it over and over till Michelle put her hands over her ears and wailed, “Make it STOP!”
Ya gotta love a great snowman.