Where did you get that hat?
Jan. 19th, 2026 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseWhen I've finished the baby hat I'm currently knitting, I'm going to teach myself brioche. You'd think I'd know how to do that already; but somehow it hasn't been on my radar sufficiently for me to decide to learn it. Recently that has changed, especially since I found out what kind of fun two-colour effects you could get using it. (On the whole I hate doing colourwork; the effects are glorious, but even by my standards it is extremely fiddly. This appears to be a lot less so.)
Needless to say, my mother refused to teach me to knit, no matter how much I pleaded with her to do so. I think there were two separate things going on here. The first was a general reluctance to teach anything to children, because she had important grown-up things to do and teaching children was the school's job; but, more specifically in my case, it was already clear that I was very academically bright. And my parents had made up this rule that if you were academically bright you couldn't be good at anything else; therefore I was obviously going to be rubbish at knitting, and if I was going to be rubbish, what was the point in wasting important grown-up time on teaching me?
Fortunately, there was a lovely lady at school by the name of Mrs Langhorne, of blessed memory. She wasn't a teacher; she was the school secretary, but in those days school admin was not an onerous job, so she was able to come into the infant school classes and teach sewing, knitting, and crochet to anyone who was interested. I tried all three, though I soon decided that, while crochet was all right, knitting was more versatile because you could get better coverage. Crocheted items tended to have large holes. (Of course, had I gone on to learn more, I'd have discovered that it is perfectly possible to crochet a garment that doesn't require anything underneath it to spare one's blushes; but by that time I knew how to cable, and there was no stopping me after that.)
My mother, seeing that I had managed to learn to knit anyway and enjoyed doing it, now decided that I should be encouraged. She had a very odd way of doing it. She bought me a set of needles (and a useful but rather ugly bag to keep them in), some yarn (which was quite nice), and a pattern for a tank top giving two options. And I was initially delighted, and foolishly told her which of the two I wanted to knit.
Ah. Bad move. That one was not allowed. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I had to knit the other one, and if I was found trying to knit the one I preferred, I would be punished. I didn't like the one I was supposed to knit, so, not surprisingly, I never finished it.
I was not given a reason (you didn't give children reasons - that was Bad; they had to obey unconditionally), but I think in hindsight I knew what it was. The one I preferred had a little bit of neck shaping. My mother was afraid that if I knitted that, I would get stuck, and then - horror! - she would have to help me.
Now, she was not a bad knitter herself. She knitted us quite a number of jumpers, because at that point it was cheaper than buying them; I don't know if she ever knitted a dress for either of my sisters, but she did make me one when I was about six. It was pink, but not unpleasantly sugary - it was a sort of dusty rose colour, which I could handle. And it stretched. Great Scott, did it stretch. I must have been nearly thirteen by the time we finally decided it was now too small (and, unusually, I was allowed to unravel it carefully and crochet with the resulting yarn; my mother must have been in a particularly good mood). But she mainly did stocking stitch and rib stitch, with just occasionally a very simple lace pattern. She never learnt to knit in the round, or to cable, or anything at all beyond confident beginner level.
Somehow I managed not to be put off knitting altogether by the tank top experience. I moved on. I learnt new techniques. In my late teens I knitted a huge (and very warm) jumper in blackberry stitch, to the complete astonishment of my mother, who'd never tried anything so fancy herself. Not long after that I taught myself to cable, and that was it. I'd always wanted to do that, and once you knew how, it was so simple after all!
I taught myself a bit of design, too. After all, that was just maths when you got right down to it. I designed myself a V-necked slipover with fancy cables; it had to be a slipover because I couldn't afford enough yarn for a jumper, and I used acrylic because it was cheap... and that was horrible stuff at the time. You didn't use acrylic if you could afford anything better. It would pill as soon as you looked at it. Thankfully, they've improved it enormously in the last thirty years or so; it's still cheap, but now it's a much better quality yarn.
And, eventually, I designed a hat. I am extremely proud of this hat. It is, of course, cabled; it is knitted in the round; and no matter how hard you look, you cannot see the jog (which, for non-knitters, is the step-up between one round of stitches and the next, and it's very hard to disguise if you're knitting, say, stripes). That's because I very carefully put in a few little irregularities at the start or end of some of the rounds. I have never put this pattern on the market, and I have given it to only one person (Online Best Friend, but for one thing she's in .nl and for another thing she hates knitting cables, so I don't imagine she will knit very many of them). Therefore, there are very few people in the world who have a hat to this design, and - unless they're in .nl, of course - you can be absolutely certain that I knitted it.
I made one for my mother.
Because of course I did. big grin
Needless to say, my mother refused to teach me to knit, no matter how much I pleaded with her to do so. I think there were two separate things going on here. The first was a general reluctance to teach anything to children, because she had important grown-up things to do and teaching children was the school's job; but, more specifically in my case, it was already clear that I was very academically bright. And my parents had made up this rule that if you were academically bright you couldn't be good at anything else; therefore I was obviously going to be rubbish at knitting, and if I was going to be rubbish, what was the point in wasting important grown-up time on teaching me?
Fortunately, there was a lovely lady at school by the name of Mrs Langhorne, of blessed memory. She wasn't a teacher; she was the school secretary, but in those days school admin was not an onerous job, so she was able to come into the infant school classes and teach sewing, knitting, and crochet to anyone who was interested. I tried all three, though I soon decided that, while crochet was all right, knitting was more versatile because you could get better coverage. Crocheted items tended to have large holes. (Of course, had I gone on to learn more, I'd have discovered that it is perfectly possible to crochet a garment that doesn't require anything underneath it to spare one's blushes; but by that time I knew how to cable, and there was no stopping me after that.)
My mother, seeing that I had managed to learn to knit anyway and enjoyed doing it, now decided that I should be encouraged. She had a very odd way of doing it. She bought me a set of needles (and a useful but rather ugly bag to keep them in), some yarn (which was quite nice), and a pattern for a tank top giving two options. And I was initially delighted, and foolishly told her which of the two I wanted to knit.
Ah. Bad move. That one was not allowed. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I had to knit the other one, and if I was found trying to knit the one I preferred, I would be punished. I didn't like the one I was supposed to knit, so, not surprisingly, I never finished it.
I was not given a reason (you didn't give children reasons - that was Bad; they had to obey unconditionally), but I think in hindsight I knew what it was. The one I preferred had a little bit of neck shaping. My mother was afraid that if I knitted that, I would get stuck, and then - horror! - she would have to help me.
Now, she was not a bad knitter herself. She knitted us quite a number of jumpers, because at that point it was cheaper than buying them; I don't know if she ever knitted a dress for either of my sisters, but she did make me one when I was about six. It was pink, but not unpleasantly sugary - it was a sort of dusty rose colour, which I could handle. And it stretched. Great Scott, did it stretch. I must have been nearly thirteen by the time we finally decided it was now too small (and, unusually, I was allowed to unravel it carefully and crochet with the resulting yarn; my mother must have been in a particularly good mood). But she mainly did stocking stitch and rib stitch, with just occasionally a very simple lace pattern. She never learnt to knit in the round, or to cable, or anything at all beyond confident beginner level.
Somehow I managed not to be put off knitting altogether by the tank top experience. I moved on. I learnt new techniques. In my late teens I knitted a huge (and very warm) jumper in blackberry stitch, to the complete astonishment of my mother, who'd never tried anything so fancy herself. Not long after that I taught myself to cable, and that was it. I'd always wanted to do that, and once you knew how, it was so simple after all!
I taught myself a bit of design, too. After all, that was just maths when you got right down to it. I designed myself a V-necked slipover with fancy cables; it had to be a slipover because I couldn't afford enough yarn for a jumper, and I used acrylic because it was cheap... and that was horrible stuff at the time. You didn't use acrylic if you could afford anything better. It would pill as soon as you looked at it. Thankfully, they've improved it enormously in the last thirty years or so; it's still cheap, but now it's a much better quality yarn.
And, eventually, I designed a hat. I am extremely proud of this hat. It is, of course, cabled; it is knitted in the round; and no matter how hard you look, you cannot see the jog (which, for non-knitters, is the step-up between one round of stitches and the next, and it's very hard to disguise if you're knitting, say, stripes). That's because I very carefully put in a few little irregularities at the start or end of some of the rounds. I have never put this pattern on the market, and I have given it to only one person (Online Best Friend, but for one thing she's in .nl and for another thing she hates knitting cables, so I don't imagine she will knit very many of them). Therefore, there are very few people in the world who have a hat to this design, and - unless they're in .nl, of course - you can be absolutely certain that I knitted it.
I made one for my mother.
Because of course I did. big grin
