Pick a skein, any skein. Rios? Great. Start the ribbing.

Get bored. Doodle.

Try to figure out where the doodle wants to go from there because it’s kinda floating around untethered up there.

Look at the thing awhile, consider that today is the rare matchup of both Christmas Eve and the eve of the first night of Hanukkah, and realize you could do this many rows straight up from this point and then put a couple of knit stitches upwards at the tops. It would turn them into what some people would instantly recognize as dreidels and others would have no idea. Thank you to my childhood friend Wendy, now fighting pancreatic cancer, for teaching me as a kid how to play dreidel.

(Examine front side and back, reversing vs not reversing it.)

Almost do it.

Consider that you don’t want the hat to only be worn eight days a year. Skip the tops. It’ll be our secret–but I could, now, next time.

Continue on.

Wishing a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, blessed season of the solstice and every joy and celebration to all. May there be peacemaking on earth.