A Blue Hill hat

Published on Sunday February 7th, 2010

Every year Mr. G’s family does a Christmas exchange. I find these things pretty hit or miss, depending on how much care the participants put into considering each other’s character, tastes, and needs. Not that I have anything against gift certificates  or money, but I like it best when the gifts are really personal. This year we drew Uncle Bill’s name (we floated some more creative ideas, but it turned out all he wanted was a gift certificate to Cabela’s) and when our package arrived, it was from Cousin Brian. And let me tell you, he hit it out of the park. His thoughtfulness revived my faith in the value of this kind of exchange. In our box were items Brian had gathered in traveling the country: apple butter from his friends’ farm in North Carolina, coffee roasted in Olympia where he lives now, soap made by a friend of his, and three skeins of yarn from a pueblo where he stayed in New Mexico. It was beautiful sheepy wool spun at a little place called Tattersall Mills (and it must be really small, as they have no web presence whatsoever): a chunky dark single-spun Debouillet still rich with lanolin, a soft Aran-weight gray Jacob 2-ply, and a bulky marled light and gray Jacob.

This struck me as the kind of gift that needs to be shared, so I’m sending some of it traveling farther on — to Deer Isle, Maine, where my friend Betsy is spending the winter and where it’s cold enough to merit chunky woolen hats.  Betsy is a rare friend who writes beautiful letters (yes, with pen and paper) and sends tiny accordion books bearing poems she’s chosen just for you, or sketches of things she’s seen in her adventures. She also leaves you little jars of cherry liqueur she’s put up from the trees at school, bakes delicious muffins and breads with surprising ingredients like green tomatoes, and can help a goat give birth and intubate the runt to feed it when it’s too weak to survive on its own. I admire her greatly and she’s just the kind of person it’s worthwhile to knit for, and I thought she was most deserving of this special wool. I grabbed a pattern from The Knitter’s Book of Wool, which seemed the thing to do with an unusual farm yarn, and the Blue Hill Country hat was quickly born.

HillCountry

I doubled the length of the ribbing for extra warmth over the ears. But I couldn’t send it out immediately. By the time I’d finished photographing the hat, this was my view of the box I intended to pack it in:

HillCountry_Mingus

This hat took only a few hours to knit, but I love the thick, warm, stretchy, rustic result. The Jacob wool is soft enough that I hope the ribbing won’t be itchy against Betsy’s forehead. But the Debouillet has clearly had minimal processing and should be good for repelling the snow and damp.

Here’s what else is a warming thought: my husband comes home tomorrow after ten days in New York and Boston. I quite like a bit of solitude now and then, but I miss my partner and best friend when he’s away. As my neighbor Sarah, who’s finally moving to DC so her young family can be together all the time instead of just for a few weeks a year, told me last night, it’s easy to find a routine on your own and to forget how to be together. I’m fortunate that we aren’t apart all that often, but two busy people living parallel in the same space can suffer the same thing, and it’s a good reminder to make the most of it every day. Hurry home, honey.