It’s A Miniscule Globe…And A Damned Hat

(You can thank me later for not getting that particular earworm started in your head.)

I love stories like this. I am a member of Ravelry, the knitting (plus crochet and spinning and weaving) community that has, I think, over 300,000 members at the present. Recently, I asked a question in the Techniques section about a certain hat pattern (more about that later) and, soon thereafter got a message from another Raveler about the hat, as well as a “friend” request. On looking at that person’s profile, I saw that she was from Charlottesville.

So I wrote back to her and told her I had lived there from 7th to 12th grade and that my mom had lived there until 2006. She wrote back a little later, asking if I had gone to Charlottesville High. By this time I had visited her blog, and found out her name…let’s say it was Euphemia Rundsbottom, because I don’t want to use her real name without permission. When I wrote back to tell her that when I went to high school we all went to Lane – the pre-Charlottesville High days, I also mentioned that her name sounded really familiar to me. I wondered if perhaps she knew Mom, and I gave her information about Mom…that she had been a teacher and worked on the book sale there. And almost immediately I got a reply saying that not only had Zazu and her husband known my mom and step-dad, she thinks that perhaps we met, years ago, at my mom’s house! And on telling my brother this story, he said, “Oh, I had a nice conversation with Zazu’s husband at a recent booksale!”

Actually, my favorite experience with this tiny globe phenomenon occurred the summer my mom and I spent in Oxford, England. We were eating lunch at The Nosebag, a tiny little restaurant run by University wives that had scrumptious food. The place was packed and an Englishwoman asked if she could share our table.

We said “Of course,” and she sat down.

After a few minutes she said, “Am I correct that you are Americans?”

“Yes, we are,” said Mom.

“I have a friend in America,” she said.

“Oh,” said Mom politely, “where in America?”

“Charlottesville,” said the woman.

“Charlottesville, Virginia?!” we said in unison, and when the woman said yes, we said “But that’s where we’re from!!”

“Oh, really?” said the woman, in a very blasé manner, “Then maybe you know my friend.”

And the funny thing was, that Mom did…not well, she was a friend of a friend sort of thing…but still!! Of all the places in America that this woman could have had a friend…

Now, about the hat. I am knitting a lovely hat from Jared Flood’s book Made In Brooklyn. (I can’t show the hat because it may end up being a Christmas present.) And when I first started, I had a question about where certain rows began (the beginning point shifts back and forth a couple of times during the 53 row pattern…a concept that I still can’t really wrap my head around but I accept that it happens…). During the conversation about the hat, someone said, “Oh, don’t forget to check the errata” and kindly included a link to said errata.

“But I don’t need to go there,” thinks I cheerfully, “because the copy of Made In Brooklyn that I bought includes the errata sheet!”

As of last night, I had done 16 rows, including two rows that included some cute little bobbles…eighteen bobbles in all. Now, I had thought that the bobbles looked sort of small when I did the first row…and I had checked the errata sheet carefully…no corrections to the bobble instructions as printed…so on I knit. But, as I was putting the hat away last night, that niggling little voice that lives in the back of my brain said, “Those bobbles sure don’t look like the bobbles in the picture…” So I went to the on-line errata last night…and there are corrections to the bobble instructions!!!! Argh!! My errata sheet needs an errata sheet.

Now I need to decide…keep the tiny bobbles I’ve created…rip the hat back…start over completely…or just sit quietly in the corner and weep.