Hello world! Sorry I’ve been away. I would like to tell you I’ve been up to lots of interesting things but the reality is that I’ve been laying in a dark room in agony for the last 48 hours. I caught a cold over the weekend which by Tuesday had me feeling like I was breathing through a tiny straw, my head was so stuffed up. To make matters worse, the congestion in my sinuses sparked one of the worst sinus headaches I’ve had yet, and they have become a common nuisance in the last 6 months or so. This one was so bad in fact, I think my doctor may be on to something in suspecting these are not really sinus headaches at all, but a variant type of migraine. When I finally broke down to leave the house yesterday in search of some heavy duty drugs, it was an utterly surreal and painful experience, with blinding sunlight, the shakes and general visual “wonkiness”.

However, by this morning I felt things had subsided enough that I could go back to work and now that its the end of the day, I’m quite surprised at how much better I feel.

Simple square hat, for Larissa

The benefits of taking a sick day are that its a good time to catch up on some knitting, when I’m not sleeping. Nothing complicated mind you, which is why this lovely little hat was a perfect project to keep the fingers busy while the head is crashing in on itself.

This hat is a kind of reproduction of sorts. My buddy Larissa has the most adorable square hat the she wears in the winter, with cute little tuffty pom poms at the corner. But she has loved it so much that its falling apart, and so I offered to make her a new one.

Side view

Her original hat didn’t have the ribbed band across the bottom but I had to do it so that it wouldn’t curl. And the tassels on this one are a bit bigger than her hat, but she is totally thrilled and loves it.

This was the easiest hat in the world. I cast on 108 st on 4mm needles with Cascade 220 wool, and worked a double strand for the ribbing – about 9 rows. Then I dropped one of the strands and worked the rest of the hat in stockinette until it measured about 7.5 inches from the bottom. For the closure at the top, I moved half (54) of the stitches onto a second needle and then grafted the two sides together with kitchener stitch. Easy peasy and super cute!