Dad’s Hats

Have you ever bought a whole knitting or crocheting book for a single pattern? Did you feel like you got your money’s worth when you did that? Would you believe me if I told you I have and I did?

I have no memory of my father with hair. I’ve seen pictures, sure, but in my living memory my father has always been bald. However, that’s not the image of my father that lives in my mind either. He always wears hats. In the summer, it’s ball-caps, and in the winter, cheese-cutter hats.

People raise their eyebrows at me when I call them this. I don’t know where the name came from. It’s what he and my grandfather always called them, so I assume it’s the German term. They’re also called “flat caps,” “newsboy hats,” or “driving caps.” Whatever you call them, my dad wears them all the time for half of the year.

Now, one of my favorite pastimes is browsing the craft sections of bookstores; the perfect merger of two of my favorite things. High-school Emma was doing this one day and came across the new Debbie Stoller book: Son of Stitch and Bitch. I hadn’t yet noticed a distinct absence of patterns for the male gender, but Debbie Stoller was the knitting celebrity at the time. So I flipped through the pages.

And that’s where I found the Lidsville pattern: a crocheted cheese-cutter hat. At the time, I didn’t regularly knit, which most of the designs in the book were, but I needed that Lidsville pattern. I shelled out my tips from my hostess job and took it home.

Fast-forward to now. I do regularly knit. Have I used any other design out of this book? I sure have not. What I have done since then is made at least fourteen of these hats. Dad has them in a range of colors and materials, and he loves and wears all of them. In this instance, purchasing the book for one pattern was well worth it.

As I said in my post earlier this week, he got another one for his birthday this year. The yarn is a silk and yak blend, and the color is called “Grumpy, Old Troll.” That describes him to a T, I say with all of the love in my heart.

Happy Birthday to Dad, and I hope you all are doing well.