The pattern is the Wood Hollow Hat from Kirsten Kapur. I love it so much; it’s fun to knit and very intuitive. Gerald chose his favorite color – blue – in a beautiful shade of Cascade 220 that I had in my stash. If there was ever a wool yarn that could be described as “denim” this would be it. I love the 220 Heathers.

Jerry’s hat was knit on a US 5 needle, and with no adjustments to the pattern, it is a perfect fit. Because Gerald’s head is bigger, I meant to cast on with a 6, but couldn’t find a 6. So I grabbed a size 7 needle and as far as I can tell (without having knit a swatch) it’s going to fit him perfectly.

I’m doing the cables, even the small ones, without a cable needle. I feel very, very smart when I cable without a cable needle.

The behind-the-scenes work on the blog is progressing, if slowly. I worked on one particular page on Saturday – ALL DAY – and there’s some glitch that I don’t understand and it is driving me absolutely nutso. So instead of working on the blog, I’ve decided instead to work on my “sewing area”.  I wasn’t going to post a “before” picture here because it is truly awful. But then I decided there would be a strong impetus to show you the “after” photo if I posted the embarrassing “before” photo. So here it is, the corner of my bedroom where sewing (and knitting) supplies are…stored.

Although you can barely tell, there is a long table where all that stuff is piled. I’ve already removed enough stuff from the table to take the first picture that appears in this post, so I’m making progress. Today I’m going to make the table shorter by slicing it in half with my circular saw. Tomorrow I’m taking a road trip to IKEA to buy a shelf and other organizy things. And by Wednesday it’ll be done! (pray for me)

Poor Jerry; he often tries to drop in an “I did not know that.” But his timing is always off. It’s really not funny when he says it, ever. I feel bad for him, especially because he feels like if he could just nail this one joke, he’d be the man of the hour.

The thing is, most of what Jerry says is funny. Not usually laugh out loud funny, but seriously, quietly funny. He’s been reading The Guinness Book of World Records. About once a day out of the blue, he’ll tell you the world record for something.  So funny. I wish he wasn’t so concerned about this one particular joke. He’s a funny, funny kid. I love him so much that it sounds silly just saying I love him.

For Christmas, I knew Jerry wanted to buy me yarn (he’s funny and smart). So I filled out the “wish list” cards they had at my LYS and sent Gerald off with the kids one Saturday. On Christmas morning, I got two gorgeous skeins of Cascade 220. One bright blue. One bright orange.  Beautiful. This weekend, I finally got around to making him a hat.

The pattern is Kirsten Kapur’s Wood Hollow Hat. I used a size 5 needle (instead of a 6) and made the ribbing a bit shorter than in the pattern. Jerry is 7, but he’s got quite a noggin. This fits him perfectly.

The yarn, of course, is Cascade 220. The color is…9457, one of The Heathers. It took less than a skein, even with the ginormous pompom.

Jerry doesn’t really want the pompom, so he requested it be made removeable. “Like with a tie-clip or something.”

I couldn’t help myself and had to make the pompom anyway, even though I knew he didn’t want it.

That last picture immediately reminded me of another back porch photo shoot we had nearly 3 years ago. My how time flies:

march 2007

He’s all big now.

And funny as hell.