Cat in the Hat

I knit two hats last weekend, as I had gift exchanges on Monday and Tuesday. It's so hard to figure out if a handmade gift is going to be appreciated! In both cases, the hats were stolen twice (the "legal limit") and so that's the ultimate confirmation of acceptance, under the circumstances!

I don't have pictures of the hats, because I wrapped them before I photographed them. Now it's like it never happened. Anyway, I knitted them. (for the crafty inclined: cast on 38 to size 11 needles, knit in garter stitch for 21 inches. One was made from jiffy yarn in light brown and I finished it by seaming the short ends and running a piece of yarn through the loops in the top-round and pulling tight to close off the top. The second was made from wool-ease thick and quick in a very sweet spice/brick orange-y color. This one I finished the same way, but instead of pulling the yarn tight through the top-round loops, I moved down just over an inch and when I pulled tight it was so cute, it had a little "top knot". )

The whole point of this is to tell you that knitting? It takes a long time. The jiffy hat worked up in about 5 hours, and the top-knot took about 4 hours.

For a frame of reference, I also crocheted these two hats this week.*** The pink one took about 40 minutes. The fuzzy sherbert one took less than one and a half hours. Seriously.

(Look at my sick baby! And I'm making him wear hats for a photo shoot. What a trooper!)

One could legitimately ask the question: why knit at all? I have no answer for that. Just to say, knitting is kind of fun anyway. And there's something to be said, in my humble opinion, for taking your time with something you're making by hand. I mean, if I wanted to stop at Target on the way to the party, and buy a hat for 10 bucks, I could. The point about handmade is to embrace the slower pace, to be purposeful and mindful. Some could say that knitting, by it's nature, forces you to do that.

Still, I'm a working mom with two young kids. There's got to be a compromise! So far, my compromise is to do both...hmmm, could be I'm missing the point entirely.

*** These hats are going to the daughters of my friend. Pattern for the pink calls for wool-ease thick and quick and can be found here. (registration required, but it's free) Pattern for the cloche calls for bulky weight homespun, but I used sensations angel-hair that was gifted to me. Pattern can be found here. (registration required, but it's free)