Thursday afternoon, as I was planning for our trip, I realized it looked like it might be a tiny bit chilly in Rochester.  I decided I would break down and bring my warm coat (I am coat resistant…I put off wearing the heavy ones as long as possible).  I got the notion that it would be a good idea to have a hat.  Somehow it seemed that a new hat would soften the blow of having to wear a coat.  Now you may recall I had already made myself one hat, but it goes with my light coat, not my heavy coat.  My heavy coat is red, so I dug around in the stash and found a nice thick red yarn and cast on a very basic hat.

Please note the timing.  I cast on Thursday afternoon for a trip starting Friday afternoon.  Amazingly enough, this actually worked.  I finished the hat in the car Friday afternoon just as it was getting dark.  I had to weave in my ends in the restaurant when we stopped for dinner because it was too dark to do them in the car.

So this left me with a finished hat, but it wasn’t quite ready to wear.  It was just a bit too small.  That was to be expected.  I’ve found that this yarn grows a bit when blocked, so if the hat fit when it came off the needles it would be too big once it was washed.  But I wanted to wear it on Saturday.  The whole reason this hat existed was to be worn on Saturday as consolation for having to wear a coat.

This explains why I spent Friday night wrapping the hotel ice bucket in towels (to bulk it up to head size) and carefully stretching a freshly washed hat over it to dry.  It worked fairly well.  It wasn’t quite perfect (there were a few lumpy bits) but it totally resulted in a wearable hat.

The trip was lovely.  We found a game store, a yarn store or two, a brewery, a pair of lovely restaurants, and a concert.  The hat preformed admirably.  My head and ears were toasty warm.

Now that we’re back home, the hat is getting a slightly more vigorous blocking (my head is apparently alarmingly mixing-bowl shaped).  Steps have been taken to limit the acts of kitten misappropriation. If the snow keeps up, both the hat and the warm coat will be seeing a lot of use.