Little Punkin Hats

Lately I’ve been working on little punkin hats. Although I’ve been making quilt squares during the past year, on dark winter evenings, my perennial urge to knit returns. This inner prompting reminds me of the Catskill Mountain days in late winter so many years ago. I’d step outside one morning to find the night’s cool air had warmed and turned humid. Then my bones felt an ancient wisdom: maple syrup season had returned. It was time to tap the abundant maple trees. The watery sap, when boiled down, turned into pure, heavenly maple syrup.

And so it is has become with knitting. The nudge arrived after Christmas when found a delightful little book in my library titled itty-bitty hats by Susan B. Anderson. I took the book to lunch with my writing friend, Rita, one day and showed her the precious hats. She had just welcomed her first grandchild, Jake, and I wanted to make him a hat. Rita chose the “little pumpkin” hat.

One of the little hats below is for Jake.  The other for a child in West Virginia I’ll never know. I’ll send the second hat along with several others I’ll make before spring to an impoverished area in West Virginia through a church mission project started several years ago by my friend, Carol, when she learned of a great need for warm winter coats, hats, and mittens by the children. Although Carol passed away more than a year ago, her church continues her wonderful project, now named “Carol’s Coats.”

On these dark evenings as I knit, ordinary time transforms to sacred as I mindfully thread prayers and love into the hats. feel deep gratitude: for Rita’s new grandson, for Carol’s kind heart and devotion to the project that lives on after her, and for the little ones who will wear the hats in West Virginia. I pray each child will be warm and happy and safe in our world.