Pancake hat

I came across this pattern years ago, and clipped it "for the future."

I liked the hat but had no intention of making it, because it involved purling on round needles.

Nevertheless, the pattern went to the future folder.

Over the summer my granddaughter Caroline took to tucking all her hair up into a cap,

Rastafarian style. Or eleven year old whim, as the case may be.

I thought about the hat I would not make.

"Idiot," I said to myself. "Why purl on round needles when you can knit!"

The other side of knit always is purl.

At the end of every set of knit rows I turned the work and began knitting again.

I took the picture above to show the "band" that keeps the hat on,

but the pancakes still hide it. The band merely is a set of pancakes on smaller needles.

I made this from a mohair/merino blend, very soft.

The pattern called for a heavier yarn, and the hat stood up on its layers.

This is much softer and fell right into pancakes.

I must find a box for it to keep in, or my cat will be prancing off to hide the hat under Laura's bed.

Paperwork

Returning a child to school these days involves a tree’s worth of paperwork. It is good the initial ten pages with basic information now come home in preprinted form, asking me to only make corrections. Ten pages is no exaggeration; each child is documented down to medications and third and fourth alternate adults who may remove the child from school.

Then come dribbling home individual teacher missives, telling me what my child will be taught that year, how often the teacher will be in contact with me by email, reminding me of assignments due from my child, and generally including a “contract” for the year, pledging among all of us to be in our best learning mode and behaving always appropriately, to be signed by both my child and myself.

Have your toes curled yet?

Emily brought home two more forms to go back tomorrow. One is to participate in a research study being conducted by a Dr. of her subject and a recent graduate of Emily’s school, now at Kent State University. Its title is “Teaching and Learning Experiences in a Service Learning Classroom.”  

Part of the curriculum of Emily’s high school is community service, and she is participating in hers by assisting in an elementary school class room two days a week.  The study seems a little hokey to me, but, then, I’m not the expert; the form will go back, signed.

The top form is one on which I can have an opinion, and it is a mixture of howling laughter and complete disgust. I cannot imagine such a missive in the hands of my parents back in 1960. Actually, I would have been ashamed to give it to my father, who scrabbled together enough money in the thirties to give himself two years of college education, crammed into the space of twelve months. He ran out of money and went back to work.

My parents were willing to send me to college; being accepted into a college was up to me. I asked several teachers for letters of recommendation to enclose with my application and my essay, and that was the end.  There was an application fee even back then, and my mother wrote out the check with her pearl handled pen and gave it to me for the envelope.

I don’t know why this request bothers me so, but it does. Perhaps I could ignore it, but Emily, and the school, expect it back. What happens? I envision form letters spewed out, my adjectives, adverbs and even paragraphs, inserted at appropriate places. Are teachers no less observant now than fifty odd years ago? Do they draw the grades they assign from a bingo cage, having never observed the student? Of course not.

What great educational principle have I missed in the years since I started college that I have this piece of paper on my desk, to fill out and return?

Ruth

My daughter’s mother-in-law was seventy nine last December. She has been a widow for several years. “I am a Kraut;” she told me. “We’re tough.”

Before she was a Kraut, Ruth was Lithuanian. The country was invaded by Germany; she, with many other women and children, set out on a forced march to the German countryside, to work on farms. Many did not survive; her grandmother was left along the road to die. I believe that’s when she quit being Lithuanian; their guards on the march included young countrymen conscripted into the German army. Cousins, she said, selected her grandmother to fall out.

Ruth says her childhood on the farm was very hard work, but not unkind. Her father had been swept away by the war, but she remained with her mother until she was twelve. A cousin a bit older than she was in her life, too, and the two of them were involved in adventures of any farm children.

Her mother was very strict; Ruth very rebellious. She knew her cousin intended to go into the village one day and probably get a sweet treat from the little shop. She knew even if he brought something back for her it would be gone before he arrived, so she determined to go with him. If she kept him moving and on task, they would be home before lunch, before her mother knew she was gone.

She had them briskly returning home when he lagged. She turned; he was holding a grenade and had pulled the pin. Even a little seven year old girl knew a problem. “Throw it,” she yelled. He threw it straight at her. Her left leg shattered.

She recalled people coming, being lifted from the road. When she woke again she was in a hospital; her mother was there. It was a Russian field hospital; her mother spoke fluent Russian, and was not about to let her daughter die. Ruth was a long time recovering, her mother returned her several times to the Russian doctors. She rolled up her trouser leg to show me how fortunate she had been, and I wonder how such wounds were able to fill in. She still carries shrapnel.

Ruth’s mother died when Ruth was twelve. She was an orphan, passed among several German families until about the age of sixteen, when she was in the home of a German barrister who helped her with schooling, secretarial training and finding a job. She walked everywhere, arriving hot and dusty or cold and muddy. It was her life; she knew nothing else.

Eventually she moved with a friend to the big city, Berlin. They worked in the same legal office, shared a flat, and read the writing on the not yet erected Berlin wall. One summer they took holiday together, to West Berlin, and simply did not go back. She met a young American, married him and came here. That was many years ago; her son has been married to my daughter since 2000. We think we did an excellent job of selecting ourselves as mothers-in-law to each other.

A while back Ruth and I were visiting a little museum that included a small gift shop. I saw her attention fixed on something as we came in, and on the way out she paused and told me to select between two figures of roosters in the display. They were very realistic, especially the bona fide feathers. She purchased it for the cousin who threw the grenade.

He has been in this country for many years, and suffers now from very advanced dementia. He recognizes little of what is going on about him. When they were children on the farm, there was a rooster that followed him everywhere! Not her, just him. Ruth was very jealous of that rooster.  She bought the shop rooster for an upcoming birthday. I asked later, and Ruth said he called her by name, and called the rooster by the name he called the one so long ago. He held and stroked it all evening.

Ruth says she is a tough Kraut. I say Ruth is the history we are repeating because we do not remember.

 The big smile in the superman shirt is my youngest granddaugher, Caroline, and Ruth's oldest. If Ruth had a childhood picture of herself, it would be that little face.

Sorry, Dad

My dad loved puns, and spun them mercilessly. I collected one recently he would have loved:

"There will be hell toupee."

Then I read Donald Trump "proved" he has real hair.

Sorry, Dad.

She still answers the phone "Hello, Sunshine!"

Perhaps you remember my niece, Tonia,

who hit a texter who ran a red light,

back on July 7?

Sweet young thing who walked away,

presumably texting OMG, can you believe what happened.

This was the two pin stage of recovery, a few days later.

Tonia has had three surgeries, plates, pins and screws put into her leg.

She as taught herself to use a walker and crutches, so she can be home and take care of her dog.

The sweet young thing's daddy's insurance has run out.

Tonia's attorney has a running tab with the hospital and the doctor.

That's a wound vac there, pumping oxygen in and sucking nasties out.

A nurse comes to the house to change it.

That's Moses, Tonia's dog. 

Her knee says, in pretty permanent ink, "Yes," so they know which one to go after, every new surgery.

As if.

Tonia says she will need a graft at the end to fill in the hole in her leg.

A big permanent marker square has already been drawn on her butt.

She's still four weeks from weight bearing and starting real physical therapy.

If you see anyone behind the wheel, texting, blow your horn and  shake your finger.