The pattern featured in the story
Here is a story from one of our readers. A hat she lovingly knit for her husband disappeared, never to be found again. Read on to find out how she reacted to this surprising turn of events.
I am a new knitter. I purchased the Love of Knitting Winter 2011 magazine because of the hat and scarf pattern on the cover. I thought it was beautiful and would make a perfect gift for my husband. I bought the yarn and couldn’t wait to get started on it. I checked for corrections in the pattern and then got started knitting. I worked on it in the evenings after my husband went to bed and during the day while he was at work. It was a labor of love. He was quite surprised when I gave it to him.
My husband was going to the grocery store and put on his new hat and scarf. I told him that when he got home I was going to take a picture of him in it and send it to the magazine. He is very supportive of me in my endeavors and was quite proud of his new hat and scarf. I should have taken the picture before he left. When he came home from the store an hour later he was quite upset. He sat down in front of me and said, “Something terrible happened at the store. You are going to be so upset.”
I couldn’t imagine what he was going to say. Someone stole his hat out of his cart! He was busy looking at the vegetables. He took his hat off and laid it in the cart. When he turned around, the hat was gone. He looked all around and went up and down the aisles checking out everyone’s cart and all their heads to see if someone had it.
For a week he went to the store every day to see if someone turned it in. He had always lectured me not to set my purse in the cart so it wouldn’t get stolen. It was ironic that he set his hat in the cart and it was stolen.
He thought I would be as upset as he was. However, I looked at him and said, “What a great compliment!” To think someone would steal the hat I made was the highest praise I could get. I sat there laughing and let him know that I just happened to have an
extra skein of yarn and would make him another hat. I told him that if he ever sees the person that has his hat he should just tell them that he has the matching scarf if they want that too. For a new knitter, this really made me stand tall.
A scarf I made for my husband (not a first project, but one of the first things I made for him) got left at the office and disappeared. The matching hat was at home, I think, so he still has it. But that scarf never turned up. I still haven’t gotten around to making him another. haha
My husband had several handmade socks lost in our move. He was devastated and was afraid I would be mad at him but I figured if that’s the worst thing we lost, we were going to be okay. (And I always have socks on the needles so it’s not like I can’t make him another pair).
Worse though, was the finished quilt-top that I made for a cousin’s wedding that went missing somewhere in our house prior to the quilting. She got a gift certificate instead but I was appalled that I couldn’t give her the same hand-made gift I made her sister. It turned up in our move (I guess in exchange for the socks). They’ve now been married five or six years but I may finish it for them anyway. Why not? It’s a nice gift no matter what.
Glad the original knitter in this story had a good sense of humor about the whole thing.
My brother had two sweaters I made him stolen from the back seat of his car. Nothing else taken, just the sweaters!
Love your stories… I love that hat and scarf pattern to…
To me this says that either someone really needed a hat and took the nicest one around, or just that they admired the hat so much, they had to have it. Either way, I think it’s a huge complement to the knitter and I like the way she handled it. I made my oldest two boys hats of alpaca yarn, despite the fact that they’ve never managed to keep track of their hats before. It makes me so happy and proud to say that they love those hats, and 3 years later, nothing else will do for a cold day. But I do keep a little alpaca on hand, just in case.