As I said in my last post, since Laura knew she wouldn’t be able to finish her hat, she asked me if I could finish it for her and that I could keep it. Even though I wasn’t at all sure I could do it justice, I was happy that I’d have something to wear that Laura’s hands had knit. The other challenge was that every knitter knits with different gauge; some are tight knitters, others, loose knitters, and every variation in between…so in order to have the hat look right, I’d have to try and match Laura’s gauge…not an easy task. But because I knew it would comfort me to be wearing the hat, I really wanted to see if I could do it.

I’d be knitting with two different yarns…stranded knitting…which I’d done before, so that didn’t bother me. But I’d never followed such a complicated pattern before. I can’t show you the whole thing because of copyright issues, but here’s a few rows of what I’m talking about. Each square represents a different stitch, and the white squares are one color, and the black squares, the other. It’s hard to see each individual black square, but they’re the same size as the white ones.

I felt compelled to finish the hat to the best of my ability, and began knitting on February 12th, marking up the pattern and adding ukubillion stitch markers to help me keep track of what I was doing.  I worked on it every spare minute I had, and I was happy to see that there didn’t appear to be a difference between where Laura’s knitting left off and mine began.  It was challenging, but little by little I got into the rhythm of the knitting and the pattern. One stitch at a time, one stitch at a time, my confidence in being able to knit the hat began to grow.

Jenni and I were keeping in close touch, and one day she told me that Laura had asked her if there was anything of hers that Jenni wanted. Jenni had seen the start of the hat, loved the colors, and told Laura she’d love to have it. But Laura told her she’d already given it to me. 

When Jenni told me that, I was even more determined to finish it. And I also knew that I would give it to Jenni when it was pau, that Jenni needed it more than I did. 

Laura died on the 18th of February, and I finished the hat on the 19th.

Last Sunday, Jenni and I met for coffee, and I surprised her with the finished hat. We both cried a bit, and I knew that Laura would be happy that Jenni had it. It looked wonderful on her!

Two gifts?  Well, Jenni has a beautiful hat that Laura’s hands had started, and Laura’s request gave me the confidence that I can knit complicated patterns like this.  We were both blessed by Laura’s gift in such a special way, and I’m so grateful. It truly was an honor that Laura trusted me to finish what she’d started.