I have no idea why the phrase hat-trick came to mean three of something. If I can be bothered I’ll look it up – or perhaps you, dear reader, could tell me if you know. Be that as it may I am now approaching a hat hat-trick situation. I downloaded a pattern to make a hat for Maisie, aged 14 months. I thought the toddler size would work OK because even if it’s too big now, she’ll soon grow into it, so I bought the wool and off I went. Hats don’t take very long to knit but unfortunately even though like a good girl I’d done a tension square * this one came out so small that it was only just big enough for a newborn. OK, let’s try again, I thought – and this time I picked larger needles. After a few rows I could see the width was OK but it came out far too short. So I got Holly to measure Maisie’s head from top to eyebrow and yep, it was far too short. This is a really crappy pattern, I fumed, and prepared to do a third hat. But as I checked the pattern once again I realised I’d been following the dimensions for inches instead of centimetres. Argh!
* sounds like one of those bubble-wrap things to reduce tension but is in fact a trial square knitted to check the tension of one’s stitches
I wish we’d make our minds up about this. As Beetleypete has pointed out, we’re neither one thing nor the other in this country. We have metres and centimetres but the roads are all in miles; we weigh ourselves in stones but food is sold by the kilo and we buy milk in litres but beer in pints. I guess with Brexit we might expect things to go back to the insane but poetic old systems, but I bet they won’t.
I can’t bear to think about Brexit right now. It’s such a nightmare and it’s getting closer every day…
Help!
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 