Okay. Maybe Just One More Hood.

Crafting Outside the Lines

I have been obsessed with getting the right kind of head gear over the past winter, living in Ottawa in Canada. The weather gets cold and I had been living in warmer countries. I started knitting hoods in the fall of 2019. I have long hair these days. It doesn’t fit into most hats, even if I leave it down and definitely not if I put it up. I figured hoods were often designed to go over a long head of hair, buns, and other up-dos. I like making things that have a historical flair. I started knitting.

Patterns? Bah! Not my forte. I’m not great at reading patterns and find it more stressful than simply trying things. However, it also means I don’t know that much because I am not following the instructions of one-who-knows-things.

As a result, I am not a very technical knitter. I really didn’t know how to make the shape I wanted, so I just started experimenting. I made several hoods, each with slightly different approach to getting the shape right.

With the winter is behind me, I took a break from hoods, and made some socks, ending up with a pair of hose that comes up past my knees, and a sweet pair of mid-calf socks (not quite completed — more below). It has been a long time since I tried socks and this time the stars aligned. The yarn was perfect and some instructions I had lying around matched the tension and the socks came out beautifully. The resulting socks fit perfectly.

Completed hose. Warm and cozy for the next winter.

They led to me making one more hood. Yes, yet another hood, for my growing collection.

To make a sock, one knits a tube, and then one splits out some of the stitches to make the heel. In the process of knitting the heel, one must “turn the heel” such that the shape follows the back of the heel and then turns under the bottom of the foot. I did this once for one foot, then again on the other. It was in the middle of the third sock that I went, OH!! This is how to make the back of a sweet, sweet, hood.

I abandoned the fourth sock to try out this new skill. I had some yarn that had been in my stash for a looooong time. It’s a lightweight (fingering/superfine) cotton/wool blend (by Patons) designed to make stretchy socks. I had made a test swatch with it recently while I was on this making-of-socks kick, but…