A productive evening with Kaiser Wilhelm II

Before I get to my evening,
Here is most of the sweater that I knit in nine days, the other sleeve had to be blocked elsewhere. You know how a lot of times you *know* you ought not skip a crucial step like, say, washing your swatch, but you skip it anyway? And then your sweater grows to monstrous proportions? Must consult with Mary Charles but there will probably be some reknitting in my future.

No remarkable progress on Dad's socks, although progress has been made. I want to get at least five more repeats in before switching to the ribbing. Each repeat has six rows and each row takes like 8 minutes (2 socks on 2 circs) so if somebody cares to do the math on that and tell me if it's possible, I'd appreciate it.

I have a meme that totally ties into the knitting. I saw this on Adventures of a Knitting Naturalist. Apparently some guy is trying to track the speed of a meme. I'm participating because of some of the language.

1. Write a post linking to this one in which you explain the experiment. (All blogs count, be they TypePad, Blogger, MySpace, Facebook, &c.)
2. Ask your readers to do the same. Beg them. Relate sob stories about poor graduate students in desperate circumstances.
3. Ping Technorati.

Sob stories about poor graduate students in desperate circumstances? I'm so in. I myself, as I told Julia, happen to be a poor graduate student in desperate circumstances. Which is how we come to this hat:

Desperate circumstances were as follows:
1) Yesterday we got our first really good cold front of the year, and my head was cold.
2) I have had this yarn in my stash for over a year. I don't really stash. This (with the exception of some regrettable fun fur) is the only yarn in my stash that wasn't purchased with a specific purpose in mind. It makes me feel guilty, and it took up a lot of space.
3) I was writing a paper, and there's nothing a gal needs more for her "woo hoo! wrote another page!" breaks than some fast and easy knitting.

The actual desperate circumstance was that I had less than 24 hours to write a really good paper for my major professor and I was pretty intimidated. The paper was on German politics, especially Max Weber (political theorist and father of sociology), Otto von Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and all the German liberals ever.

Because I wanted this done and didn't want to swatch, I looked at the ball band, pulled out some Size 19 straights, and cast on 10 stitches for the band. This is Rowan Big Wool Fusion, btw. Those size 19 straights are ginormous, I had to support them by resting the ends on my lap. I knit a straight strip (stockinette with garter selvedge) until it was big enough to go around my head. Then I picked up stitches along one of the edges, knit the crown flat, and seamed it up. I tried it on midway down the seam and realized I had a slight problem.

The last hat I knit I think I was in 10th grade. I didn't know at what rate to do the decreases. This hat reminded me of the hats you always see WWI German soldiers and the Kaiser wearing, which I thought was very appropriate and awesome. I named it the Kaiser hat, undid the seaming, ripped back to where the increases started and did it again.
You can't tell in this picture but it's still a little pointy, but not half as bad as it was before. I am contemplating a pom-pom. It also wound up a little too short and it doesn't cover my earlobes. I'm trying to decide between a crochet edging, which will require more supplies, ear flaps, which have the potential to take this from classy to Fargo in less than 6 seconds, or to just use the other half a ball to make a hat that fits. Haven't decided yet.

The paper went reasonably well. According to the book I read on the Kaiser, he was a total nutjob and probably wouldn't have been stable enough to wear a wool hat. His mother certainly wouldn't have made him one. They didn't get along very well.

It was slightly warmer today but still cool enough to get away with wearing a big wool hat. When I got home I decided that since it's now officially December I can finally start decorating.