Sentimental Journey Hat

My friends Aubrey and Charles are up from Florida this week, an opportunity for Aubrey to return to his hometown, drop in on relatives, and reconnect with distant friends. Thursday we went on what I kept calling his "Sentimental Journey" around Marion. We visited the house where he grew up (knocked on the door, but no one was home), the comic book store where he worked after high school, his church, the old downtown theater where he performed in some high school productions. It was a marvelous day, full of synchronicity and surprise encounters. And memories: I've always been struck by how revisiting old haunts causes memories to awaken, almost as if those memories are not in your own mind but are waiting there in the places themselves.

We stopped in a big-box store at the edge of town to buy mints and a hoodie (poor Floridians were finding the above average warmth a little chilly), and Aubrey was about to buy a hat. I couldn't have that. I went to the craft section, bought some thick chenille and size 11 double points, and set off trying to finish a hat for him the car. I failed. First attempt was too tightly cast-on. The second attempt, a top-down creation, was going along fine until stitches got dropped (it was a struggle to fit the entire circumference of the hat securely on four needles).

Still, I'm determined, and at home last night, with superior tools (my 60" Addi size 10 circular), I whipped up this creation.

Mike and I are meeting Aubrey and Charles at the zoo later this morning, where I'll give him the hat. He'll have no use for it in Florida, but it was fun to try making something momentarily useful.

My favorite new memory of his visit: getting styrofoam cups from the comic book store so Aubrey and his sister could take some holy water from the church of their youth. They'll bring this water to the ingathering and water ceremonies at their Unitarian churches later this year.