Bar-thol-o-mew

There hasn't been a lot of need for winter outerwear thus far in Duluth but we had a little too much fun last night going through the hat box. Since I'm always knitting on the bus and I like to switch up the hats I wear, I had a guy comment to me "Just how many hats to you have?"

I couldn't answer him. It made me think of one of my favorite kids books, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. This was the book my mother wouldn't buy for me because I couldn't pronounce the protagonist's first name. I can distictly remember standing in the kitchen with my nasty library copy and my mom telling me "Why would I buy you a book when you can't even pronounce the title?" I must have been in school but I know I was really young. I think it must have been my first real glimpse into my pig headed personality as I went into my bedroom and chanted "Bartholomew Cubbins" like a Seuss-Sutra until I knew I would never slip up on it again. When I presented my mom with my ability to pronounce Bartholomew Cubbins, she raised the level of debate by saying "So?" and turning her back. I then reverted to only reading books with titles that I could easily pronounce, like "The Joy of Sex".

Now, where was I?

Oh, the 500 Hats in my house...

After seeing how I looked in my hats, I decided I needed my daughter's help in modeling them.

Here is the hand dyed, hand spun hat that I made for the knitting olympics. This is the pattern that I knit recently for my friend's baby. I think this is one of my favorite knitted objects.

This is the hat that I wear most often because it is warm and pretty. The pattern is in the same book as the above hat.

Here is the hat my daughter wears, when she wears a hat. I love the sheep!

No, I am neither stoned or suffering from cataracts but this is a hat made of hand spun yarn. The coolest thing about this hat?

The crown...

Here is the hat that I wrote the pattern for, using my hand spun beaded yarn. I call it my "40 below hat" because it is knit with a double brim and the inside of the brim is knit with a very hairy but soft yarn I spun from mohair locks. Yes, it has been worn when it was 40 below and I was actually warm and cozy. (Too bad my nose had to be amputated due to frost bite)

And if you are looking for laughs, strange looks, or a modified halloween costume, might I offer the Medusa Hat? Yes, the snakes are wired, posable, and have beaded eyes. I thought of this project when riding the bus and observing a woman's wild and crazy hair.

Or perhaps you need to show your brain off?

That's not my hot date...he is, in fact, pretty cold...

I can't remember the inspiration for crocheting this brain but a part of it was created while on a airline flight. One stewardess asked what I was doing and then reported back to all the other stewardesses and they trooped to the back of the plane one by one to see the wierdo that was crocheting a brain... no one ever found out that my yarn was made of C4.