Grab your coat, and get your hat,
Leave your worry on the doorstep
Just direct your feet,
To the sunny side of the street.
[Dorothy Fields]
I knit the hats in the photo when I designed the pattern for a lace book a dozen years ago. When the publisher shipped them back to me after the photo shoot, they weren’t in the boxes I provided for their protection. They were all crushed together in a little shipping carton. I was dismayed and chucked them into my store room.
When I was cleaning up after Christmas, I found them, and decided I would try to salvage them. I removed the ribbons and silk flowers, and then I re-blocked them by pinning them out moist on a board and with a hat form. The process worked well. The three in the back of the photo haven’t been re-decorated yet and there is one left to do. It is of white linen and will be decorated for a bride.
An odd thing happened during this process. I was dismayed all over again when I found them but, during the restoration process, I’ve finally moved past being irked. There has got to be a lesson in there somewhere.
Knitting, writing and other joys 
My friend recently knitted your Picture Hat from A Gathering of Lace. She contacted you about the blocking, and you sent her an aid for doing so. She brought the finished hat to our gathering at the LYS today and I took photos. It’s stunning! She was very grateful for you assistance, and I thought you might like the photos (she’s not on-line, but gave me permission to pass them on). If you’d like me to sent them, please let me know at the e-mail below. Thank you!
Glad the episode of the “Hats” are being put in its place. Daddy used to say there are givers in this world and takers. You are a giver and the recipients of the hats are takers. What more need be said.
I love the hats, too, Katherine. Two things come to mind. Someone obviously had no recognition of their worth and beauty or the knowledge of how to take care of them. But you made them and you knew, making restoration a work of love. Yes, there is the lesson.
I love them, too, Katherine, and would love to see more hats worn. I was reminded of the poem, “The Touch of the Master’s Hand.”
http://gbgm-umc.org/disc/poems/mastershand.stm
There is a note of redemption in the reclaiming of these once and again beautiful hats.
Sensational designing & knitting! Love, love, love these hats! Please let me know how I can get my hands on the pattern, I have to make one for my mom!
The hats are beautiful, Katherine. The lessons? I can think of a few~a quality product endures; you can’t keep a good hat down; sometimes our greatest obstacles become our greatest blessings; what goes around ,comes around..shall I continue? 🙂 I’m with Mary Jo, there is a sense of “divine order” here.
I LOVE them, Katherine! I also agree about the lesson there, though I’m not finding the words at this moment. The words “divine order” come to mind, a spiritual concept I firmly believe in and perhaps that’s the nugget here.