My friend E. spoke in church today. About braces.

She needed braces as a kid, she wanted braces and was all excited about it till the day came that she actually got those braces. Hey! They hurt! Nobody said it was going to hurt! And not just for that first day, either!  She said she cried, she told her mom she wanted them off, and you can just picture the rest of the story: being reassured she would have a beautiful smile when it was over, retorting that she didn’t want a beautiful smile, not if she had to go through this no make it stop I don’t want them.

And now? She’s one of the smilingest people I know. Her mom was right.

You know the point she was trying to make about our Father’s wisdom.  And of course, life puts real teeth into the analogy.

It isn’t always easy. I listened to her while remembering two years ago–remembering my decision to try to find meaning in the experience by praying silently for each person who came through my hospital door and what a vast difference it made in our interactions, even though those doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists and wheelchair pushers and the list goes on and on never knew. But I did. And then I had to live up to the request I’d made on their behalf.

We are meant to learn, to grow, to find ways to serve others better and with more compassion through each experience we have whatever our background, and, best of all, to come out in the end smiling.

Sample letter, feel free to use or not when you send yours in:

Dear (Congressperson),

This hat was hand knit for you by me, ____; I live in ___. I wanted to show you that I appreciate the work you do for those of us whom you serve in the House/Senate.

I knitted it as part of a campaign among knitters for Warm Hats, Not Hot Heads. We are from many political backgrounds. We want those who engage in angry and even vicious public rhetoric to stop speaking for us in those ways. We want civility in Congress.  We are choosing to give hours of our time silently to be able to give you a visible, tangible, heartfelt symbol of our desire for respecting and honoring one another within our government–and to thank you for doing your best.

Each stitch is individual. Each stitch depends on every other stitch within that hat being present for it to be able to do its job where it is of creating comfort and warmth.

I wish you the best in your work and thank you for your service to us all.

———–

(And then the imp in me is tempted to add, It’s not all about running…)

Ed. to add: Ellen at twinset.us is keeping tally on who’s getting one/who needs one.

I am nearly done with hat #2 for my representatives in Congress. And my order for a few more hats’ worth of the DBNY King George came today.

But oh, the other thing that came.  We’ve been waiting for Customs to let it through, and finally–I called “Thank you!” after the mailwoman this afternoon, took it inside and opened carefully.

Qiviut. A long wide lace 90/10 qiviut/merino scarf knitted by Lorraine at Cottage Craft Angora and a large skein of the Taiga for me to go knit with, too, her thanks for my naming her colorways.

I put that scarf on and instantly never ever wanted to take it off. I–

–Okay, here’s what it reminds me of: we were remodeling our house years ago, had been for months, and there were a couple of guys working away who had seen me day in day out in my jeans being a mom to my kids. Ordinary life.

Then came the day I had to go out in a black dress with a white Battenberg lace collar, very stylish then, very formal–and as I walked past them they dropped their tools to their sides, speechless. They had no idea I could look like that. I had no idea I looked that different like that.

That scarf completely one-ups that dress.  It is soft, it is warm, it is gorgeous, it matches what I happen to have on today, and I feel incredible with it on.  I was just gobsmacked all over again. Lorraine knitted this for me!, even if she didn’t know it was going to be for me at the time she knitted it. Still–she milled the fibers, she dyed the yarn, she knitted it on fine needles, all with the intent of making someone out there happy in the world.

And how. Wow.

I hope… May our congresspeople appreciate the thought and work going into the hats being knitted for them and may they, too, totally love what they get.

Love the birds along the marshlands, the name not quite as much; if the population were ever to crash, would you call it no re-egrets?

On my way to the post office today, going down a frontage road that runs alongside the Baylands, a sudden movement caught my eye and I glanced over, glad to be alone on the road.

Was it a courtship display?  There was a tall white egret, swooping over in an arc down to the water: wings stretched wide, a burst of sunlight in its feathers, it looked for all the world as if it were doing a cartwheel.

Glorious.

Here you go, and I’ll try to get a better photo of it in the sunlight. This is what I finished for my local House representative, a woman, in our knitters’ campaign to ask Congress to speak to and of each other with civility and a sense of decorum: for we knit softly and carry a big bag of sticks.

At the brim: a line of cables leaning to the right, a line of cables leaning to the left, a purl stitch dividing them, but when they’re relaxed, the purl disappears into the fabric and they come together in an interlacing effect as one.

I figure that’s pretty representative of what I’m trying to convey to them.

Congressperson hat pattern, version 1.

(Note: version two would be to use a heavier yarn in, say, a dark color for a male recipient and only pick up 2/3 of the stitches as noted below for a beanie effect above the brim. It would be fewer rows upwards, too, thus faster to make; I wanted this one to have extra height and width above the brim to go with that knit/purl pattern for a slouch effect, and to protect my congresswoman’s hair from being matted down by allover tightness.)

Yarn: worsted weight. I used Misti Baby Alpaca Royal (apparently now discontinued), 86 g out of two 50g skeins, a very soft, very drapey yarn, but very fine and thin to my hands for worsted weight.

No gauge swatch necessary, although a measuring tape pretty much is.

Needles: I used US size 6, 4mm.

Cast on 17 stitches. You can use a temporary cast-on, or later just pick up the stitches of the side of the strip; I found it easier to do the temporary cast on.

Row 1 and all wrong side rows: Purl 2, k2, p4, k1, p4, k2, p2.

Row 2: K2, p2, k4, p1, k4, p2, k2.

Row 4: k2, p2, slip two stitches onto a dpn and hold in back of work, k2, knit the two stitches on the dpn, p1, slip two stitches onto a dpn and hold in front of work, k2, k2 from dpn, p2, k2.

Repeat these four rows till the strip is the length you want to go around the head. Hat size chart, again, is here.  Remember to take into account that the strip will have a bit of give to it; on the other hand, it will, if you make the hat long enough, be folded up over another layer, taking up just a little of the give. On this particular hat, the cable part can be folded up as high as a person wants to go as there is no right or wrong side above the cabled strip.

I did 25 repeats of my cable pattern to get what looked like 18.5″ sitting there but easily stretched to 21″. If it’s a little loose on the person, they can always just fold the cabled part up higher.  End with a cabling row.

From here, I undid the temporary cast-on, putting those stitches on one needle and the live stitches at the other end of the strip on the other needle and did a three-needle bindoff to work the short edges of the strip together; then, I picked up the stitches around the top of the now-circle.

For a standard hat, you pick up 2/3 of the stitches. For this one, wanting a slouchy hat that wouldn’t compress a coiffe, and given that I had a good drapey yarn that matched that concept, I picked up all of the stitches: 100 stitches. (Remember, 25 repeats times four rows.)

I knit five rows.

Then I purled five rows.

I repeated those ten rows till I had, facing me, four sets of purl rows alternating with five sets of knit rows.

Ending:

Row 1: P2, p2tog, p1, repeat across row.

Row 2: Purl.

Row 3: P1, p2tog, p1, repeat across row.

Row 4: Purl.

Row 5: P2tog, p1, repeat across row.

Row 6: Knit.

Rows 7 and 9: K2tog across row.

Rows 8 and 10: Knit.

Row 11: P2tog.

Row 12: Purl.

Row 13: P2tog.

And then I think I did one more p2tog row–I ended up with five stitches and cast those off. I wove the end in a little and added a “Created with Pride by” and then my name on the tag on the inside of the hat and wove the strand in just a little more.

Note: When I knitted the light pink hat with the braided cable out of the King George yarn from DBNY, I picked up all the stitches as well: cables tend to shrink the size of the fabric by a third, roughly, so picking up all rather than 2/3 of the stitches worked–but the cables are slightly stretched  when the hat is worn, at least in that pattern on my needles.

And when I knitted this bright pink one, the hat that started this whole thing, I picked up 2/3 of the stitches and made it shorter than the red one is because it had no extra width for a slouch effect; on the head, it simply comes out as knit/purl stripes.

Here’s another shot.

The yarn was a gift from Sandi at Purlescence: awhile ago, to my great surprise, she handed me a bag of this cashmere-with-sparkles in a heavy worsted and told me that I would know the right thing to do with it.

I don’t know if any of my three Congresswomen want bright pink sparklies. What I do know, is, playing with that yarn got me familiar enough with this pattern that I could go play with it comfortably and offer up my own version in the pattern above in hopes that others run with it, or with whatever pattern they like, and help to create a little peaceableness in the halls of our Congress.

And one other thought: I want our representatives to know that people care about them personally as they go about their work serving us all.

No, I couldn’t wait, I went stash-diving and came up with some Misti Baby Alpaca Royal from a Webs sale and my first hat is into the second skein now.

I’ve been reminded that Talking Heads as the name of a group has been claimed already.

How about… Per caps we could say…

Making Headlines. (Except I really don’t want to.  So not my style. Not to typecaps myself as a new grandmother, but I just want to quietly knit away over here.)

Creating a vast left- and right-win caps-here-I-see.

A mesh lace and twists pattern could become The New Cables Net-work.

Hat-y days are hair again!

Cap, Hat-R-Us for the Outer Banks knitters. Over here, if Dianne Feinstein, my senator who lives in San Francisco, has a spinnable dog (or wouldn’t mind my using a skein already at hand from my wheel), one could theoretically make her a cabled Fisherman’s Woof.

I know, there are grad(u)ations of cap and groan in that list, but what else can we come up with for the newscapsters.

By the way, for those who don’t yet do dpns or two-circ knitting, you can still make a hat. The easiest way would be to knit a strip about as wide as you’d want the brim to be; remember that it will stretch a little lengthwise once on. It can be plain stockinette, ribbed, cabled, mosaic, anything you want to try out.  Again, head sizes are listed here.

Then you’ve got your measurement as to how wide to make it and that’s all the swatching you have to do. Cast off the strip, don’t break the yarn, and pick up 2/3 of the stitches down the long side. Knit it back and forth to the length desired (checking Bev’s chart again) including decreasing stitches spaced out across the top, maybe alternating plain rows with decreasing rows. Or not. You can pick up the stitches along both sides and do a three-needle bindoff if you don’t like sewing.

Let’s get these delivered by the end of February, sooner being better; warm up their heads inside and out while it’s cold!

Tomorrow I’ll post the pattern I’m knitting.

This started with a stray comment between us but the idea has only grown more insistent.

In response to the shootings in Tucson, Arizona,  Ellen and I have been talking about what we could do to make manifest the idea that we want our Congresspeople to deal civilly with one another. To hear one another. To talk things out. To not do what will play on the news the loudest but to do what’s best for all of the American people the best they know how.

How could we personally help make that actually happen?

My uncle Bob Bennett of Utah, in his remarks to his colleagues on leaving the Senate last month, discussed the general philosophy of the Republican party vs the Democratic party re the role of government,  and then pronounced, “Both sides are right.”

This is a man who had been rated one of the most conservative members of the Senate (and with whom I often disagreed politically).  But he’d also had real-life experience: as a homeowner trying not to lose his house at one point. As a former business owner who knew that for businesses to succeed, their workers had to have the peace of mind of knowing that they could have adequate medical care should something happen to them or their families.

He said, and I’m paraphrasing to the best of my memory, It’s the meeting in the middle to negotiate our differences that is where we do our best work. None of us is supposed to get everything all our way in any other part of life, and certainly not in politics where we are working with people with completely different life experiences.

So here’s what Ellen and I are hoping for.

Never mind, I’ll let her tell it, she says it better than I do.

From Ellen:

——————————-

“Here is what I think I’d like to do.

Invite any and all knitters who would like to join in to knit a hat (sizing information here) for their own congressional representative, whether Senate or House.  Ask them to email me, perhaps send a photo or link to a Ravelry project, and let me know to whom a hat has been sent.  I can track who is being covered (literally!) and if anyone wants to knit more than one hat, they can send them to me and I’ll handle mailing them to a rep who hasn’t received one yet.

I’d like to write a standard note to go with it, to which any knitter could add her own personal message.  I’m also thinking how cool it would be to design a hat for it, but I am also telling myself to keep it manageable.  (Her husband) suggested that the hats be purple, a blending of red and blue, but I told him I want them to be worn!

This doesn’t rule out hats for the victims, which is also a good idea and could be a use for some of the extra hats, though I still don’t know how to go about getting the names or how to deliver them.  After thinking on it all week, though, what is really compelling me is to highlight the need for civil discourse even over things we disagree on.”

———————————-

From me: I would plead that the hats be of a material you’d want to wear yourself. I want each recipient to feel they are being treated with the great respect we all mutually deserve.  For whatever it’s worth, I can vouch for the fact that the Plymouth King George (how’s that for an ironic name!) baby alpaca/merino/cashmere blend on sale for four bucks a ball (for the moment, at least) will make an absolutely soft, warm cabled hat using two balls; I just knitted one. Three balls should I think get you two plain beanies.  All in a day’s work.

I’m not trying to shill for DBNY, I’m just trying to convey the idea that it doesn’t have to be a lot of money for it to be something nice if you don’t have something ready in your stash. Support your local yarn store, too. However it works for you.

We want each individual to be glad they got one–and wouldn’t it be cool to have Congresspeople swapping around with each other to get just what they want? Let the cheerful negotiating begin!

I just ordered two more balls in, yes, Ellen’s husband, purple.

Can you just picture the photo-op we could all make happen? Knitters can change the world. We can set the tone. In wild color combinations or subdued: as the song says, We’ll give them something to talk about.

You in too?

(ed. to add: What should we call this campaign? So far I’ve come up with Talking Heads.)

While we wait for the blueberry cake to cool…  (The springform pan was lined with parchment. )

Meantime, here’s Parker at three weeks, ie around his due date of 1/11/11. Clearly he needs more handknit socks and hats in every colorway you could imagine.

And I’m suddenly remembering Dr. M, our family’s ENT, looking at my then-baby younger son, who, as soon as he could manage it, always took his socks off and put them on his hands instead; the good doctor noted with bemusement, “He’s going to have a hard time walking on those when he gets older.”

It’s okay, John (not shown) got to meet and hold his new nephew last Sunday and I don’t think his feet have touched the ground since.

Remembering fondly a sweater my mom knit me when I was a kid that was close to the color of this hat, that I refused to outgrow, that I kept wearing till Mom finally hid it so she wouldn’t be embarrassed to have me be seen in public in it…

This idea from Knitty’s Coronet hat where you knit a cabled strip, join, and then go up from there? Version number three.  I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with the idea.

Pictures later, but, you know, if you make the body of the hat in a stretchy pattern, you can pick up those stitches and continue *without* joining the ends of the strip, simply leave them flapping around down there, and then, go back later and crochet them together (as I did). What you have, then, is a hat that can be made small for a child and then, if it’s their most most favorite hat ever and they never ever want to outgrow it–but they d0–you can go back and undo that bit of crocheting that you made sure not to overdo the job of running the ends in on. You might want to crochet a row down the ends of the strip to neaten them up a little. (I didn’t.)

There. You’ve got a hat with a brim that doesn’t have to be folded up anymore, thus adding length, you’ve got sideways stretch from the pattern you used above, and you’ve got collar-ish points at the back of the hat where the strip ends separate in a V .  If you decide to make that the front of the hat, make sure to do a jogless join at the start of each round as you’re going up.

(Don’t you love instructions that tell you what to do in the middle at the end?)

My needles are suddenly brimming with hats. Their crowning achievement.

Okay, so I ended this one by taking a small crochet hook, starting at the second-from-end stitch, and chain-stitching a length and then running the end in to make a loop. Makes a nice little colors-of-the-forest halo for the baby, don’t you think?

While it’s all carefully rounded out like that for the camera, anyway. In real life, I stepped back to admire the achievement and, as that loop danced the twist, was suddenly struck speechless by its extreme likeness of an unintended Teletubbie.

(It’s all good.)

First, the marshmallows: every holiday season, several grocery stores around here sell homemade marshmallows, great big squares in a clear box, vanilla or peppermint or chocolate, really good and with none of the feeling of inhaling stale cornstarch of the usual mass-made plastic-bagged type.

My two younger kids love the good ones and the perfection in how they melt into their morning mugs of hot cocoa. I don’t know what the skunk would have thought of them, but hey. So I sent them back to school after the break with some for however long they might last–they don’t stay fresh forever like the commercial ones do, you might as well enjoy a good thing till it’s gone on that one, hoarding and saving and cutting them into pieces to stretch them out will only disappoint.

And so Michelle’s housemate, who knows she can’t do dairy, asked her, “Tell me: *why* do you put TOFU in your hot chocolate?!”

Well now.

Okay, the knitting: I had two size 3.75mm circs tied up in a UFO, just the ribbing done on them. It was a baby hat-to-be but with no particular person in mind on that color, it sat stalled out.

And now oh, I definitely knew who, and hey, as long as I’m on a hat kick, I wanted those needles back for another one for Parker–and there you go.  Motivation.  Parker’s is halfway done now too.

Every good knitter needs a good UFO stash. They finish up so much faster.

(Okay, this is so crying out for a joke about the new yarns made from sugarcane, but it’s 11:30. Anyone? Maybe a sugar-rayon hat with a red-and-white-spiraling candy-cane motif?)

Thank you, everybody, for your thoughtful words.

To misquote Robert Frost wildly out of context, meantime, Ice (yesterday) was great and did suffice. I tested my hands today with a row, then another, then another, and after a day of it, hey, I had a hat!

It wasn’t till I was snapping its picture that it hit me. I’d been making the thing up as I went along, and the pattern is similar to the one I doodled with to create the first baby sweater I ever knitted for my first baby, 28 years ago. Great mind thinks alike.

Time to grab the needles to knit something for Parker next. I *so* can’t wait to see him and his proud parents.

I was going to do another hour of knitting on this and then show you how it was going to look with the braided cable turned brim-up; I’m delighted that my expectation on the cable/stitch ratio proved right.

But my lack of balance did one of its occasional zings and I’m icing my hand and that’s it for this evening.  I do really like how this hat is coming out.

Meantime, (you can ignore the pajama silliness right at the beginning) Jon Stewart did the best job I have seen anywhere of saying what I think should be said and heard and discussed widely in the aftermath of Saturday.  It is well thought out, kind, and straight from the heart.  I highly recommend it.

I had a certain feeling of being watched and looked up.

And there, ten feet away, perched on the back of the nearest outside chair on the patio, as close as he could possibly come, was a hawk. An adult Cooper’s, smaller than the one I’ve seen before, the markings slightly bluer on the head and redder in the brown, beautiful earthy tones–my guess is, the male of the local pair. I think I’ve only ever seen him from a distance before.

Eye to eye we stayed and very still.  I so wanted him not to fly away; let me take in every feather. I remember M. Leeb, my father’s artist friend, telling me when I was 16, Observe for ten minutes. Draw for one.

Would that I could.

After a few moments, he glanced to the side, keeping an eye on the business at hand but no, everyone was playing hide to his seek–and he was off between the trees and gone.

I sat there unable yet to move, not wanting it to be over.

On the knitting front: I have come to realize that I do not own a really warm hat (other than the by-now very ratty very bright red one my grandmother gave me on my 12th birthday) because I haven’t needed to.  I’m not off meeting Parker because I caught a cold–very slight, but a cold–and one does not bring germs to a preemie. I can’t go to the climate of cold yet–but I can knit about it.

So.

When I made the Coronet hat for Michelle, I found myself wanting to revamp the pattern. Plain stockinette above the brim? But that’s not as warm as cabled. Pick up 2/3 of the rows to make the new stitches? But, wait, cabling takes about 1/3 more stitches on average than plain, so, if I pick up every row and cable all over that should work, right?

Yes, I already see the problem: a cable of nine stitches across and the rows come in groups of eight. I’m working on it.

But what I wanted to show here was my answer to the Knitty instructions to kitchener the knit, purl, kniiiiiit, purl, knit stitches as you go across. It kept coming out reversed in the grafting for me. Bag that. I’m a lazy cuss.

So what I did was a three-needle bindoff: one row ready on one needle, the other on another, hold them together with the right sides together on the inside, and then I bound off. You take a third needle and go as if to knit into the first stitch in front and then keep pointing the tip on into the first stitch in the back; finish knitting the stitch. Repeat on the next, then slip the first stitch made over the second just like you would a normal bindoff. It will seem strange to have two stitches popping off each of the left needles as you go rather than one, and it may seem awkward as to which of the two needles to the left is doing the slipping over, but it’s all good and all quick. Not to mention easily undone if you change your mind about doing it that way.

What you see in my picture is how it looks before I’ve woven the ends in; I will use them to tighten up that line a bit. I used a spare length of yarn to bind off with, rather than my working yarn, for that reason (and the fact that my beginning strand was too short. Oops.)

It feels good to be creating.  Something warm, soft, pretty, useful, and brand new coming into the world in my hands.

Now all it’ll need is a wild feather in my cap. I have a black and white one on the mantle that the woodpecker once let go.

Sometimes, setting out a little suet and having a small bird recognize me and fly in in unafraid response to the offering and my tap-tap summoning is such a comfort.