Hats

It is with some reluctance that I am tearing myself away from my new very thrilling in-car project to write my diary.

I have started knitting myself a hat.

Mark very generously bought me two balls of wool. He said that he would not mind in the least if I did not knit a hat for him as well, especially since he has bought a flat cap in Scotland this week, and just to get on with whatever it is I am doing and not to trouble about him.

This was kind of him, because he likes hats, the top of his head gets cold now that there is no hair on it, and he has got several different kinds of hat. He persists in wearing one on cold days in his workshop that he found in the back of his taxi, it is black and covers his entire head and has a pink bobble on the top, he won’t throw it away because it keeps his ears warm and he says that hardly anybody ever sees it anyway.

I also happen to know that he is watching a silk top hat on eBay. Secretly he likes the idea of these very much, although I have no idea when he might wear it, we do not go to many places where you might need a top hat. Actually we have never been anywhere at all where you might need a top hat, but nevertheless I know that he would like one, and I might bid on it for him before the end of the auction.

Despite this fondness for eccentric headgear, the thought of a hat manufactured by me did not seem to appeal to him in the least, and so I have been left to my own devices on the subject.

It is real hand plucked jade sapphire Mongolian cashmere wool, exactly what I wanted, and is especially splendid because it has come from an American retailer who was selling it in a sale at a discount and so it turns out that it has not cost me anything like five hundred pounds, or whatever it was that I calculated in the first place, which is a splendid result because even Mark would not let me have a make-your-own-hat kit that was going to cost £500.

I cannot tell you how pleased I am.

The wool is a warm grey colour, hand dyed, so the colour is darker in places than in others, giving it a gentle cloudy effect, and it is so soft it is a joy to touch.

Unfortunately at the time of writing I have not got very far yet.

I have got a pattern for a hat that I thought looked all right, and have started. You need circular knitting needles, which are fiddly things joined together by a bit of plastic wire, and the instructions say to cst on 72sts, k 2x 2 rib, which sounds excitingly foreign, I will have to look on Google for a translation before I do much more.

So far I have cst on 72sts, but I have got an awfully big head and am not at all sure that 72sts will be big enough. I have kept twisting the whole thing round to see if it looks as though it might fit, and have got into a bit of a curly muddle with it.

The thing is that I have cast on all of these sts, which might or might not be enough, and now I have got to start knitting in a circle, which is an awful lot harder to get started with than you might think. I think the wire between the two needles might be too long, because there is far more wire than there is knitting, which is causing a problem, and in any case I have got to work out which way up the needles go in order to knit in a circle.

It is not easy to resolve this sort of problem in the dark on the taxi rank when people keep tiresomely jumping into the taxi just as I am on the very edge of solving the thing. I keep thinking that I have worked it out, and then somebody jumps in, announces cheerily that they aren’t going very far, as they all do, and then I have got to stuff it all back in the bag hastily, and by the time I get back to the taxi rank I have forgotten where I have got to all over again.

I am quite determined not to make a pig’s ear of this project. By next Christmas I intend to be the proud owner of a self-constructed cashmere hat.

I can always ask my mum to help a bit in an emergency.