The hat thing seems to have stuck.  Shortly after finishing my friend’s hat, The Boy cut off all his hair.  A day or two later he mentioned that his head was cold and that he could maybe just possibly see the wisdom of a hat.  Within minutes yarn was located (we’d picked it out a long time ago when he was thinking of knitting his own hat), balls were wound, and the hat was begun.

That winding part actually proved unexpectedly tricky.  This is Nichole by Schaefer Yarn and Hand Paint Sock by Misti Alpaca.  I don’t have a lot in the way of thicker yarn, so I decided holding two thinner yarns together was the way to go.  I wound each of them into balls, then rewound them into one big ball while holding the two yarns together.  I’m not sure it was the best choice.  One of the yarns seems to come out of the mega ball just slightly faster than the other one leaving me with an extra loop of yarn that grows ever larger as I get farther and farther along.  I’ve tried working with two balls before though, and I don’t care for that either.  Perhaps the proper answer is just to find thicker yarn…

Despite the fiddly yarn, the hat was well underway within a few hours.  With luck, I’ll finish it tomorrow.  With even more luck I might get him to model it for us next week (though my three quart mixing bowl works surprisingly well as a stand in head when needed).