Ruth's Hat, Mozart and Yarn

My dear friend Ruth Hoekwater, the owner of the Common Cup Cafe in Rogers Park, asked me if I could replicate a crocheted hat that she's had for a while that she LOVES and she wants more of in different colors. I had never successfully replicated a pattern from the actual garment, but if I can design and build a hat that looks like Party Pat from Cartoon Network (see below), I can do just about anything, now can't I??
So I took a look at the hat and decided that this was a dragon I could slay. It's a variation on my basic skullcap pattern, but the last five rows are shell-stitched. Cute!! I got some black yarn and started stitchin'. However, knowing that Ruth wanted the hat to be tight-fitting, and knowing that my hats tend to stretch, I used a G-sized hook. It came out child-sized. Oops! So I did it again with an H-sized hook. Closer, but not quite big enough to cover the head that holds Ruth's brilliant brain. So I began a third one with an I-sized hook.

Fast-forward to yesterday, the final Student Matinee of Mozart's "Magic Flute" at the Lyric. I had brought my black yarn and my I-sized hook to work on Ruth's hat in the Super Children's dressing room. One of the young ladies asked me if I'd make her a hat as a memento of the show. I said I didn't have any yarn that wasn't spoken for. She said she had yarn, so I agreed to make her a hat. I made the Ruth Hat pattern and it turned out quite nicely. The young lady really loved it, and she was overjoyed when she heard that it was the first of its kind from my hook. And then disaster struck. While I was away from the dressing room setting up a quick change, another young lady accidentally knocked my coffee over into my yarn bag. The yarn that got baptized with coffee? The black yarn for Ruth's hat!! After I threw a bit of a tantrum (far away from the sensitive ears of the girls I dress, of course) and the young lady apologized profusely -- it truly had been an accident and she felt awful -- I realized that the coffee wouldn't show on the black yarn, and that since Ruth was going to wear it at the Cafe, it would end up smelling like coffee anyway!! Crisis averted!! Or at least ameliorated!

A quick plug for my band, Glory Chain. We are playing next Saturday, 4 February, at 5:00 pm at the Evil Squirrel Comic Book Shop, 6928 N. Glenwood Ave., Chicago.

Next, a quick plug for our Rogers Park Craft Show the following Saturday, 11 February, from 10:00-2:00 at the Many Peoples Church space, 1505 W. Morse Ave., Chicago.

And that's all the news for now, dolls! Until next time, as always, Peace, Love and Yarn!