Today's pointless photo was taken on a whim this morning, and wasn't posed at all. That's my stocking cap on top of my coat in a corner of my old bedroom here at my father's place (which also used to be my studio when I was still teaching singing, in case you wondered why I have a piano in my bedroom). And, erm, yes... I do have a habit of just throwing my coat onto the floor of the room when I'm here. Not sure why, since I do have a place to hang it. Just laziness, I guess.
Anyway, there's my stocking cap. One of my stocking caps. I have a Christmas one, too, in the same pattern but with sparkly Christmas yarn. I guess we're past the season for that one, though. The fact that the stocking cap was thrown on top of my coat should probably tell you that I arrived here wearing said stocking cap. In public. Probably looking like a complete doofus.
I don't care. I like my stocking cap.
I posted about the Christmas one a couple of years ago here, and since then the blog gets regular hits from stocking cap searches. I suppose that means that I'm not the only one who likes stocking caps. Unfortunately (at least for the googlers that arrived at that other post), most of the searches were looking for a stocking cap pattern, not just a stocking cap mention.. I thought a little bit about copying out the pattern and posting it here to make up for the lack of pattern in the previous post, but even in this internet age of massive plagiarism I just don't feel right about reposting a copyrighted pattern. For the experienced knitters out there, then, I'll just say that this particular pattern features about 3 cm of rib knit (say about an inch and a quarter). Knit in some elastic if you don't want the weight of the finished product to pull it right off of your head. When you start the body of the toque (toque = Canadian for knit winter hat, for any of my two fans who don't recognise the term), increase for a few rows before you start decreasing. It makes the cap fit a head better than if you decrease right away. Length to aim for? Well, this one comes out to about a metre (around a yard) all told. Finally, you'll be able to knit most of the thing on circular needles, but you need double-ended needles to finish.
I suck at knitting with double-ended needles, which is why the ends of my caps are a bit wonky. I doubt you'd have noticed if I hadn't mentioned it, but now that I have everyone can see, right?
And why bother knitting a stocking cap at all, other than the pleasure of looking like a complete doofus? Well, it's a handy way to use up leftover skeins of yarn if you do it all stripey like I did. Also, it saves the bulk of a scarf on a cold day. The reason for the length (and the reason that I wouldn't bother going less than a metre) is that you can wrap it around your neck in place of a scarf. Yesterday it was -25C when I left for work (seems to me that I might have said a little something about that), and this thing kept my head and face warm even while scraping the windshield.
It didn't do much for my poor fingers, but then even a stocking cap can't do everything.
I've complained that I've had a little trouble so far thinking of subjects to take photos of with the new camera; maybe I should be gathering my doofy hat collection together and doing portraits with them? Not of me, of course, but of the hats. Maybe occasionally the top of my head, but that's as far as I'm willing to go. I do have enough doofy hats to keep that kind of a series going for a bit, come to think of it. That's what tends to happen when a person with a short attention span decides to knit. The thought of an afghan or a sweater is kind of terrifying, so you end up with dishcloths, scarves, or doofy hats.
Good thing I like doofy hats.
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