A City Girl with Country Leanings: 12/25/11

Remember the baby hat from my previous post?

I received a call Tuesday evening, December 13th, from Stacy, the recipient of the baby hat. At the time of her call, the baby was not quite a week old yet. Even over the phone I could tell she was all smiles and obviously elated to be a mom. And I know from our previous conversations that her husband is every bit as excited to finally be a dad. They are madly in love with each other and now the baby makes everything even that much more wonderful. It’s heart-warming to be an outsider looking in on such a happy family.

Stacy thanked me over and over again for the baby hat. She couldn’t say enough nice things about it adding that her son wears it all the time. She loves it so much that she got the idea to ask me to make a matching Daddy Hat as a Christmas present! Not only did she order the Daddy Hat but she also requested three additional baby hats, one for her best friend’s newborn baby girl and two more for her son. I feel so honored. How could I disappoint someone like that?! I told her I needed to check on yarn availability and would try my best to get it done in time for Christmas. I was prepping dinner as we talked so it had to be close to 5:30 p.m. By the time I got off the phone, got dinner in the oven and looked up the phone number for the knit shop, it was 5:59 p.m. and the shop closes at 6 p.m.!

Charlene, the Stitch In Time shop owner, picked up and I thanked her profusely. I requested the yarn and she reassured me it was still available and even in the same dye lot. Whew! Since I had guests coming to visit in a couple of days, I had groceries to buy and food to make, a house to clean, and a tree to put up for the holidays, I knew I had to get the yarn ASAP. I also had to come up with a pattern that was close to the baby’s hat since Stacy is hoping they would match. It took a bit of searching but I found a similar style adult-sized hat online at a fellow Raveler’s Ravelry page that took me to her blog/website: http://www.purlbee.com/whitneys-70s-ski-hat/ for the FREE pattern. Perfect! It’s as close as I could get without writing out my own. The next morning, I made the trip to Howell to purchase the yarn.

Provisional Cast On (white stitches) to be removed later.

My guests visited that Friday and we had a really nice visit. Friday after dinner, I dug right in and started knitting like a maniac. I had never done a provisional cast on before… pretty neat trick! We will be using that again! I checked gauge, did a little "frogging" (rip it, rip it) and then finally got the hat started. I finished by 10:00 a.m. Monday, December 19th -- guests, cooking, chores, errands, and all. I got my Christmas shopping done the next day too! Isn't it wonderful when something is "meant to be" how it all fall into place.

Daddy Hat

That Monday morning, I called Stacy to arrange for drop-off or pick-up. She planned to be in town for the baby’s first check-up on Thursday… perfect! Unfortunately, I had to explain that I only had the Daddy Hat for her at that time. Regardless, she was tickled that it was done before Christmas and she planned to have a belated Christmas celebration with her girlfriend New Year’s weekend anyway, so all was well.

But after I got my errands done and shopping out of the way, I realized I would have Wednesday afternoon to try and knock out the baby hats. Lucky for me, Stacy changed the order to one hat for her son and one hat for her girlfriend’s baby. The hats were completed, labeled and the box was delivered to the pick-up point. I didn’t hear from her for almost two days which made me a bit nervous since the self-striping yarn will stripe differently on a larger item (larger stripes on smaller garments, smaller stripes on larger garments). It was Saturday, Christmas Eve, when she returned my call to let me know she loved all the hats and how pleased she was that I got them all done! They sure are colorful! And I can just imagine how sweet the babies are that will be wearing them!