 |  |
Above a before and after. Love how it coordinates with her wool jacket. Accident? I think not!
I’ve always wished I could wear hats. I love the chapeau; the sexy cranial bonnet. I lust upon the hat wearers with greenish eyes, wishing it could be my noggin under a stylish cap.
But alas, my head is flatter than a pubescent girl in the back which isn’t conducive to the round or oval shape of the hat. Maybe I’m over critical but in my mirror, a side view of my head looks like it took a nasty swing from a plank. Possibly, while in the womb, the bone meant to develop on the back of my head got confused and grew on my chin cause that feature has more than its share.
In my youth I heard people say that my mother must have laid me on my back as an infant, causing my skull to melt into the shape of the mattress. Up until then I didn’t know I looked any different, not having eyes in the back of my head to see like our mother did, something we were told when caught being naughty. Like the woman who told a young Michael Jackson that his nose was HUGE, leading him down a trail of discontent, hearing negative comments about my head made me pretty self-conscious.
I stressed over this physical imperfection for years and won’t go into the details but I spent a lot of time trying to camouflage it with my hands, or always sitting front-on so no one could see my flaw. When Shane was born, while most parents are concerned with how many toes and fingers the kid has, I was checking out his head. Unfortunately, due to his big size of almost twelve pounds his head came out shaped like a cone to maneuver the birth canal so I had to wait a week before I could properly assess it. Fortunately for him, he had a beautiful shaped head but if there was any truth to beds misshaping infant’s heads, I didn’t want to chance another cranium disaster, so I turned him like a chicken on a spit every time he rolled over on his back.
In my case, maybe I was literally soft in the head, but more than likely, the flatness was due to a genetic flaw, an anomaly on my father’s side as he was a bit of a flatty too. When Shane was born with a perfectly shaped head, I wasn’t going to risk his noggin to chance and although there is no proof that my diligence paid off, he still has a perfect hat head today. I’m taking half credit for it anyway, allowing 50% to go to his father’s genes dominating mine; he had a great head….his flat attribute was his butt, if not for a tightly cinched belt his pants would have dropped to his ankles.
There was a lot of misunderstandings or wives tales going on back then. I remember when I put Shane in a walker at 3 1/2 months, my mother-in-law wailed. I mean literally screamed and cried that I was abusing my child, warning me of the deformities I was causing. I asked our family doctor if there was any truth to her accusations, if the pressure of standing on malleable bones would cause them to bend and bow? He didn’t think we had anything to worry about and the complete opposite occurred, the walker served to strengthen his legs to the point of being able to stand early, while other babies his age could barely sit without falling over. And, I would like to brag (once again) that he walked unassisted at 7 ½ months. Shane is far from bowlegged and grew long and lean at 6’ 4” tall and it’s too bad mommy-dearest-in-law isn’t around so I could blow her a raspberry….that woman sure gave me a lot of grief.
Barely civil to my face she ripped me to shreds behind my back. As deaf as a trout and a lifelong smoker, her booming, scratchy voice was like dragging logs, wrapped in chains down a gravel road. Her whispered, early morning phone calls to crony friends were filled with disparaging remarks about me which I heard while upstairs in bed. She was annoyed that I let my baby sleep until he woke on his own in the mornings. She popped a sleeping pill and went to bed with the birds around 7:30 pm every evening so was up with the same birds in the early morn before I was even conscious. She felt I should set an alarm and wake the baby when she rose and would bang around and stomp her feet up and down the stairs to ensure he would awaken with no regard that I might not have gotten home until close to midnight from the restaurant where I worked. Most mothers would kill for a baby that slept all night and didn’t awaken until 8:00 in the morning but I couldn’t do anything right from hand washing baby clothes, boiling bottles, dishes or potty training. There was no way in hell my marriage was ever going to work, but living with her that first year definitely fast forwarded the divorce.
My mother-in-law never thought I was good enough for her son and told him many times in my earshot. Strangely, once I came along her precious boy stopped physically abusing her and took his angst out on the new woman in his life. You’d think she’d be grateful for the reprieve, no more bruises or broken bones for her, you just can't do enough for some people.....
And potty training, apparently I was up there with a sadist dictator in the torture department. I swear I’m not exaggerating…..my mother-in-law would run screaming from the house, hands waving in the air and sit in the car chain smoking because she couldn’t stand watching him sit on his little white throne. I’m not sure what the problem was, I read the book on potty training, I wasn’t making him sit for long periods, it’s sort of a hit and miss thing until he caught on, but to this day I don’t know what her problem was other than being a titch insane. On the flip side, when the little guy figured it all out and started having regular success with a #2, then the tables turned and grandma did a bizarre dance around the kitchen. While her cigarette dangled from her lips and clapping her hands, she would cough and sing something to the tune of, “Nanna wants to eat her little wootsy pig’s turd, cause it’s so darn cute…la la la lala. Sigh….
Back to hats. So, my head is flat which doesn’t suit wearing them. Most I tried would fall forward and come to rest on top of my glasses frames. Then there’s my big, square face, not exactly the perfect shaped head for a hat, they had to be larger than life to make my face look average sized. Sadly, I have shied away from wearing them all my life, making the top of my head a victim of the cold while I churned with jealousy over those that did.
The flatness is the reason for clipping my hair up; the volume it creates provides a nicely shaped crown and back dome. Side on, my head looks balanced, taking the heat off my show stealing chin. I’ve often thought hats should come with implants, padded bits that you place where they are needed so it rests evenly and fits snug.
So I was very pleased and only a little apprehensive when Charlene offered to knit a hat for me. She had made two different styles for herself and I tried them on thinking they looked rather sweet, surprised that they stayed in place. To date, in my humble opinion, these are the only hats that ever looked good on me or fit properly. Thank-you Charlene!!!!!
Charlene is very talented, teaching herself to knit while on holiday last year. She’s impressed me with her beautiful shawls and socks and now these great felted hats. She offered to make hats for Sue and me if we bought the wool so off we go to Have A Yarn where Charlene works part-time and selected our colours of Galway wool. I chose three; a rust, gold and blue for a striped look and Sue chose two coordinating aqua skeins for a soft mottle. The store inspired me to think, I can do this! I’ve knit dishcloths, why not infinity scarves and hats? So I’ve put a note in the universe’s suggestion box to add a few more hours to the day giving me time for another hobby, I’m still waiting to hear back…..
So here are our hats. The picture of Sue and me in our mummer hoods show how they look before felting in the washing machine. You throw them in the machine with hot water and bit of soap and agitate until it shrinks. Rinse, spin dry, try it on and start shaping while damp. I used Charlene’s head for shaping the back so it wouldn’t be flat as a pancake.
In her beige/brown hat, Charlene felted some bits of the coordinating yarn to add a bit of pizazz. For mine the stripes create enough interest so I’ll leave it plain, I think Sue wants to felt something. When I do a mottled one I’ll get creative. I’m going to buy some chartreuse wool and get a little instruction from the master. I’m alright with the straight knitting as long as I don’t drop any stitches but Charlene only lives down the road for a bail out.
But alas, my head is flatter than a pubescent girl in the back which isn’t conducive to the round or oval shape of the hat. Maybe I’m over critical but in my mirror, a side view of my head looks like it took a nasty swing from a plank. Possibly, while in the womb, the bone meant to develop on the back of my head got confused and grew on my chin cause that feature has more than its share.
In my youth I heard people say that my mother must have laid me on my back as an infant, causing my skull to melt into the shape of the mattress. Up until then I didn’t know I looked any different, not having eyes in the back of my head to see like our mother did, something we were told when caught being naughty. Like the woman who told a young Michael Jackson that his nose was HUGE, leading him down a trail of discontent, hearing negative comments about my head made me pretty self-conscious.
I stressed over this physical imperfection for years and won’t go into the details but I spent a lot of time trying to camouflage it with my hands, or always sitting front-on so no one could see my flaw. When Shane was born, while most parents are concerned with how many toes and fingers the kid has, I was checking out his head. Unfortunately, due to his big size of almost twelve pounds his head came out shaped like a cone to maneuver the birth canal so I had to wait a week before I could properly assess it. Fortunately for him, he had a beautiful shaped head but if there was any truth to beds misshaping infant’s heads, I didn’t want to chance another cranium disaster, so I turned him like a chicken on a spit every time he rolled over on his back.
In my case, maybe I was literally soft in the head, but more than likely, the flatness was due to a genetic flaw, an anomaly on my father’s side as he was a bit of a flatty too. When Shane was born with a perfectly shaped head, I wasn’t going to risk his noggin to chance and although there is no proof that my diligence paid off, he still has a perfect hat head today. I’m taking half credit for it anyway, allowing 50% to go to his father’s genes dominating mine; he had a great head….his flat attribute was his butt, if not for a tightly cinched belt his pants would have dropped to his ankles.
There was a lot of misunderstandings or wives tales going on back then. I remember when I put Shane in a walker at 3 1/2 months, my mother-in-law wailed. I mean literally screamed and cried that I was abusing my child, warning me of the deformities I was causing. I asked our family doctor if there was any truth to her accusations, if the pressure of standing on malleable bones would cause them to bend and bow? He didn’t think we had anything to worry about and the complete opposite occurred, the walker served to strengthen his legs to the point of being able to stand early, while other babies his age could barely sit without falling over. And, I would like to brag (once again) that he walked unassisted at 7 ½ months. Shane is far from bowlegged and grew long and lean at 6’ 4” tall and it’s too bad mommy-dearest-in-law isn’t around so I could blow her a raspberry….that woman sure gave me a lot of grief.
Barely civil to my face she ripped me to shreds behind my back. As deaf as a trout and a lifelong smoker, her booming, scratchy voice was like dragging logs, wrapped in chains down a gravel road. Her whispered, early morning phone calls to crony friends were filled with disparaging remarks about me which I heard while upstairs in bed. She was annoyed that I let my baby sleep until he woke on his own in the mornings. She popped a sleeping pill and went to bed with the birds around 7:30 pm every evening so was up with the same birds in the early morn before I was even conscious. She felt I should set an alarm and wake the baby when she rose and would bang around and stomp her feet up and down the stairs to ensure he would awaken with no regard that I might not have gotten home until close to midnight from the restaurant where I worked. Most mothers would kill for a baby that slept all night and didn’t awaken until 8:00 in the morning but I couldn’t do anything right from hand washing baby clothes, boiling bottles, dishes or potty training. There was no way in hell my marriage was ever going to work, but living with her that first year definitely fast forwarded the divorce.
My mother-in-law never thought I was good enough for her son and told him many times in my earshot. Strangely, once I came along her precious boy stopped physically abusing her and took his angst out on the new woman in his life. You’d think she’d be grateful for the reprieve, no more bruises or broken bones for her, you just can't do enough for some people.....
And potty training, apparently I was up there with a sadist dictator in the torture department. I swear I’m not exaggerating…..my mother-in-law would run screaming from the house, hands waving in the air and sit in the car chain smoking because she couldn’t stand watching him sit on his little white throne. I’m not sure what the problem was, I read the book on potty training, I wasn’t making him sit for long periods, it’s sort of a hit and miss thing until he caught on, but to this day I don’t know what her problem was other than being a titch insane. On the flip side, when the little guy figured it all out and started having regular success with a #2, then the tables turned and grandma did a bizarre dance around the kitchen. While her cigarette dangled from her lips and clapping her hands, she would cough and sing something to the tune of, “Nanna wants to eat her little wootsy pig’s turd, cause it’s so darn cute…la la la lala. Sigh….
Back to hats. So, my head is flat which doesn’t suit wearing them. Most I tried would fall forward and come to rest on top of my glasses frames. Then there’s my big, square face, not exactly the perfect shaped head for a hat, they had to be larger than life to make my face look average sized. Sadly, I have shied away from wearing them all my life, making the top of my head a victim of the cold while I churned with jealousy over those that did.
The flatness is the reason for clipping my hair up; the volume it creates provides a nicely shaped crown and back dome. Side on, my head looks balanced, taking the heat off my show stealing chin. I’ve often thought hats should come with implants, padded bits that you place where they are needed so it rests evenly and fits snug.
So I was very pleased and only a little apprehensive when Charlene offered to knit a hat for me. She had made two different styles for herself and I tried them on thinking they looked rather sweet, surprised that they stayed in place. To date, in my humble opinion, these are the only hats that ever looked good on me or fit properly. Thank-you Charlene!!!!!
Charlene is very talented, teaching herself to knit while on holiday last year. She’s impressed me with her beautiful shawls and socks and now these great felted hats. She offered to make hats for Sue and me if we bought the wool so off we go to Have A Yarn where Charlene works part-time and selected our colours of Galway wool. I chose three; a rust, gold and blue for a striped look and Sue chose two coordinating aqua skeins for a soft mottle. The store inspired me to think, I can do this! I’ve knit dishcloths, why not infinity scarves and hats? So I’ve put a note in the universe’s suggestion box to add a few more hours to the day giving me time for another hobby, I’m still waiting to hear back…..
So here are our hats. The picture of Sue and me in our mummer hoods show how they look before felting in the washing machine. You throw them in the machine with hot water and bit of soap and agitate until it shrinks. Rinse, spin dry, try it on and start shaping while damp. I used Charlene’s head for shaping the back so it wouldn’t be flat as a pancake.
In her beige/brown hat, Charlene felted some bits of the coordinating yarn to add a bit of pizazz. For mine the stripes create enough interest so I’ll leave it plain, I think Sue wants to felt something. When I do a mottled one I’ll get creative. I’m going to buy some chartreuse wool and get a little instruction from the master. I’m alright with the straight knitting as long as I don’t drop any stitches but Charlene only lives down the road for a bail out.
 |  |
 |   |
 |  How did I miss a picture of Sue in her hat? |
Have A Yarn Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/HaveaYarn
RSS Feed
