The List #1 "Knit a Hat"

Before I start talking about things that are on the list, I think I should explain a bit about what the list is.

The first list came into existence on Christmas Eve during my freshman year of college. My good friend, Ryan, stayed with my family over winter break because he is from Australia and couldn't go back for every Christmas while he was in school. That year, my brother, Ryan, our friend Jacob, and I went to Starbucks all the time. We'd "study" there probably three or four times a week. During winter break, Nash, Ryan, and I still went a lot. We'd draw, write, talk, and play writing games.

I don't know why Nash didn't come with us on Christmas Eve. Knowing Nash it was probably because he still had to finish making presents for everyone. But anyway, Ryan and I went and sat at a table, drinking hot chocolates, and laughing. We were basically the only two people there. And somehow, we wound up writing lists for ourselves of things we wanted to do during the following year. The next Christmas, Ryan actually got to go home for the holidays, but even though he wasn't around, I still made a list. The year after that, too. But that was the year he graduated and I haven't made one since.

UNTIL this year. See the thing about the list is: it's about 10000 times better than a New Year's Resolution. See, I don't really need any resolutions because I like being the person that I am and resolutions seem kind of like they're based around a desire to be a slightly different person than the person that you are. A thinner person or a more active person or a more organized person or a more polite person or whatever. But the list is not about who you want to be, it's about what you want to do.

Also, I never actually finish the list. But I never beat myself up about it, either, because there are a lot of things I've done, places I've been, and things I've tried that I might not have if I hadn't written them down on a little slip of paper. The first year, for instance, I went on a sugar fast and to a night club. I participated in NaNoWriMo and I ate way too many Chipotle burritos. Now, I know that I can go thirty days without sugar and still REALLY WANT SO MUCH SUGAR at the end of it, and I have no desire to go back to a night club. I know that I could write a novel in a month but I don't know that I'd want to. And honestly the Chipotle thing was just an excuse to eat a lot of burritos and hasn't had much of an impact on my life.

SO ANYWAY this year I made another list. And I've decided that as I finish things from the list, I'm going to write blog posts about them. "Why?" You ask. Because I want to so hahaha THERE. I might not ALWAYS write a blog post, if it's something that I decide is best left private or just isn't that interesting of a story. And I might never tell you what all was on my list to begin with. We'll just have to see how the year progresses.

But this evening, I finished my first task from the 2017 list. I knitted a hat.

I first learned how to knit during my senior year of high school. My grandmother had been saying something about teaching her granddaughters to knit and I was a total brat about it. "I don't want to learn how to knit," I declared. And then I felt pretty bad about all of that and taught myself how to knit as her Christmas gift

My first attempt was a total mess. It was supposed to be a scarf. But it started out narrow and got progressively fatter. I dropped a ton of stitches so it was full of holes and knots. Eventually, I just cast off and started over. The second one came out better  but I didn't get it done in time and had to wrap up the monstrosity as her present. I think she turned it into a stocking cap. Eventually, I finished her new scarf and gave it to her. After that, I knit myself  a scarf, my brother a scarf, and my mom a scarf. I knit a very tiny scarf and then stitched the ends together to make my mom a headband that matched the scarf I made her. I knit a very fat scarf and stitched the ends together to make a combination infinity scarf/blanket for one of my friends' daughters. i also started about a half dozen other scarves that I never finished.

Are you seeing a pattern here? For the longest time I could only knit rectangles. My friend Laurie was teaching me how to knit mittens once but we stopped 1/3 of the way through the first one and I promptly forgot everything she taught me.

But I decided that since I taught myself how to knit scarves surely I could teach myself how to knit other things as well. I checked out this book from the library:

It is full of really cool hats. But I felt out of my depths. So, after flipping through it once I returned it and looked up instructions online. I kind of looked over them but I'm not actually super good at following instructions. So I just read enough to get the gist.

I started it on the day my friends Amy, Laurie, and I decided to marathon Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. I used gray thread and messed up straight away. I got my yarn twisted and didn't realize until I was a ways in. Laurie (a true knittin' pro) helped me out of that mess. I kind of have a "muddle through" mindset so I just kept at it. The next day, I watched Ghostbusters and knitted some more.

I thought that I had it long enough, so I finished it up. As it turned out, I was very wrong. (By "as it turned out" I mean "as it figures" and by "I was very wrong" I mean "I was being impatient and impetuous so even though I knew it wasn't long enough I figured it would be good enough but it was not.")

So, I started knitting at the start of the hat again. This time, I used black yarn. I decided I would knit a few inches in a circle and then attach it to the bottom of the gray bit. I'd have to make a pompom anyway because I kind of had a gaping hole in the center of my hat. I could make that black and it would look... purposeful? I hoped.

I knitted most of the black today while watching A Series of Unfortunate Events and, later, Dear Eleanor. (This is the sort of thing you do when the world is too cold to exist in.) I could tell, even while I was knitting it, that it wasn't going "well." The stitches were looser, the circumference of the circle was somehow smaller, and one side was turning out longer than the other. But, like I said before, I muddle through.

I'd hoped that I could come up with a way to connect the two segments while casting off. But if there's a way to do that, I couldn't figure it out in the two minutes I gave it before getting annoyed. So, I cast off, and borrowed a crochet hook from my mom (okay, total honesty here, I think I have a crochet hook somewhere. One year "learn to crochet" was on my list... so I learned but also I promptly forgot and then I promptly lost my hook. Possibly. I think.) and used it to stitch the two sections together. The gray section is bigger than the black, so it looks a little... silly. But I muddled through that, too.

As a final touch, I googled how to make a pompom. I read through the direction and then went to pester my mom. "Explain how to make a pompom to me," I asked.

"Well, there's one way, but it's harder..." She started.

"Not that way, then," I said.

"Okay. Then you just wrap it around a piece of cardboard a lot, then take the cardboard out, tie it off in the center, and cut the sides."

"Won't that just look like a bunch of little strings tied together?" I asked.

"If you wrap it a lot it will look fuller."

"...But... wouldn't it just be a bunch of tiny strings tied together?" I asked again.

"Yeah, that's what pompoms are," my mom said.

Seriously! Who knew? It was actually crazy easy to make a pompom! Anyway, then, I stitched it onto the top of the hat and that was that.

And see, here's the thing about the list: from here on out, anything could happen. I could complete the list, or I could do half of it, or I could not actually finish anything else that I wrote down. It won't matter! What matters is this: now, there is a hat in the world that wasn't there before. And now I know that I can knit something other than a scarf. I can knit a really atrocious cap if I choose to.

Look at that. The year has hardly begun and I've already been empowered by some yarn.