Before this project, I hadn't really worked with Fair Isle patterns before. I'd done color changing with stripes and intarsia, but other than a couple of tossed small projects, I hadn't experimented with it. This was partly because the thought of working all the color changes annoyed me, but mostly because I dislike the look of Fair Isle patterns; they look too busy to me.
I finally changed my mind when I got the idea for this hat. It started when I was living at Kirston's in Houston, and I went to the River Oaks Theatre (where he worked) one night. Kirston was walking me down to the theatre when his coworker Greg called after him, "Hey, Kirston, is that your date?" Kirston, seeking a hasty retreat, didn't want to explain that I was a mere temporary roommate and awkwardly said, "Uh—yeah." We began walking away, and Greg called out, "Well, why didn't you introduce her, you fag?" Before Kirston could say anything, I blurted out, "Oh, he's not a fag; I can vouch for that!" Greg said nothing; Kirston said, "Thanks." I grinned and said, "Sorry; I had to."
The next few times I saw Greg were necessarily rather awkward as a result; Greg seemed to think I hated him. Then I moved back to Austin and began work on the Igby blanket to send to Kirston as a thank you for letting me stay at his place. In the process of unpacking my yarn, I realized I had a lot of scrap yarn and needed to knit a bunch of hats or socks or something to get rid of it all. I'd already made Kirston a plain ribbed hat (and still had plans to make him an Obama hat), so I instead opted to knit hats for his friends Greg and Ralf, the only two friends he told me he saw on a regular basis. I had a vision of a regular dark brown and burgundy Fair Isle hat for Greg, but that quickly corrupted when I remembered the "fag" incident. I got an idea. An awful idea. I got a wonderful, awful idea. I referred to the audio section of this site for the page with Morse code on it and devised a knitting pattern for the word "fag" in Morse code, using one stitch for each dot. It was easy enough: As I noted on the Morse code page, "If the duration of a dot is taken to be one unit then that of a dash is three units. The space between the components of one character is one unit, between characters is three units and between words seven units."
Thusly, a dot would be one stitch, a dash would be three stitches, etc. Thusly the pattern for the word "fag" (. . - . . - - - - .) could be written as
So I had the basis for the pattern. I designed a pattern around that, swatched a bit, experimented agonizingly over colors, and finally came up with something that worked. I think. I wasn't really satisfied with the top of the hat, but when I saw my dad trying it on (to the tune of much mockery), I decided it was all right. I gave it to Kirston in a box along with Ralf's hat, the Obama hat, and the Igby blanket. I'm not sure if he ever wore it, but I bet he won't if ever sees this page.
