Minty Fresh

I was going to start this off with a nice, little anecdote about feeling comfortable and on schedule with all the Christmas knitting before coming to realize that this was impossible. Instead, I’ll give you the knitty gritty. I think about this space a lot and about writing for this space a lot. I think up cool stuff, knit awesome things, and go on interesting adventures. I write out outlines in my head about this cool stuff/awesome knitting/interesting adventures with the intent of fleshing it out on the computer screen. Then, for whatever reason, I say I’ll do it tomorrow. Then the day after that. And so on. Eventually, a whole month goes by between posts. It’s embarrassing. 

When even my dear Bearded One says I should write a post, I know it’s been a long time.  Just for the record he said that last week. It wasn’t until last night when I felt suddenly and completely motivated to do something right NOW that I finally got off my butt and got moving. The house is clean, the dishes are done, the podcasts are all caught up, and the gift knitting is a little closer to completion(but not really). With all these things ticked off my to-do list, writing a post tonight and not tomorrow sounded like a great idea.

Way, way back in January at the year’s first fiber guild meeting, I volunteered to knit a few hats  for the guild’s Chemo Cap Project. I bought some yarn, looked at potential patterns, and put it all aside to knit later when the yarn wasn’t sticking to my hands. Later, turned out to be November when I remembered I only had one month to finish 6 chemo hats, 11 preemie hats, and all that gift knitting I had planned. Why do I do this to myself every year?

Enter Minty, a free pattern by Erica Jackofsky in the First Fall 2010 issue of Knitty. This hat caught my eye way back then and I added it to my queue to let it simmer for later. One year later on a night before I headed off for a weekend in Atlanta, it was ready. The pattern was simple enough to knit during the last episodes of Star Trek: TNG but interesting enough to keep me occupied through Atlanta traffic. With a striped and solid version, two different crown options, and the ability to squish everything up, there was room for variation and play. Plus, stripes are just fun and so was the little bit of color work at the top.

I ended up knitting all the hats as written...mostly. For the peppermint version, I just cast on with color B and kept going. Also, six combined feet of i-cord just wasn’t going to happen but a round kumihimo braid would. Hat #3 was an exercise in trying to use up as much yarn as possible so I followed the Minty Blue version and just switched colors when I ran out of yarn. I wasn’t entirely sure how it would work out but I’m rather fond of it now.

I’d probably still be knitting these hats if I hadn’t run out of yarn. Might even have six of them but I’m done stressing over it. I’ve done all I can do. Just need to start earlier next time. Oh, and buy more yarn.