Now if you’d said ‘Why not make a cloche?’ to me before yesterday I would have said ‘What do I want with something for plants? I’m in no condition for gardening’. The only cloche I was familiar with was the kind that you stuck over tender plants to keep them happy and healthy. Little did I know that it also relates to hats and indeed cloche refers to both the hatty and the planty varieties being bell-shaped. You may be wondering what this has to do with our clinic appointment today, well let’s start at the beginning.
Yesterday I saw this adorable pattern, The Paiyton Cloche,
over at googie momma’s blog where she’d done a yarny round up. I was smitten and it just what I needed – there’s also some really cute over patterns there to – I was also particularly taken with the crocheted necklace and the crocodile bootees. However when I visited The Velvet Acorn it was sold! I convo’ed them, it was re-listed and I bought one.
Last night when I was contemplating what knitting/crocheting to do on the way to/from and while at the clinic appointment today I thought I’d start the cloche as everything else was too big to be easily portable or too complex to chat round.
What prompted me to be looking for a toddler size hat (although it includes adult sizes in the pattern too) is that the neighbours who have been picking me up from dialysis for the past two weeks have a two year old great grand-daughter who visits quite a lot – she’s so cute and adorable herself. Mrs Neighbour had asked for my opinion of what needles to use on a ball of wool that she’d bought in Spain (she actually brought it in when she visited me last time I on Royal-cation) as she intended to knit a toddler size hat. I said 6mm and emailed her a link to a site that provides free patterns as I didn’t have any for aran weight hats. She was telling me last week that she’d made one and had increased the 60 stitches instructed to 80 as it didn’t look sufficient and the hat had still turned out only big enough to fit a doll. ‘I only had a pair of 9’s so I used them. Would this make a difference?’ ‘If that’s the old Imperial size 9 then yes!’ (For the non-knitters a size 9 equals a metric 3.75 mm as opposed to the 6 mm that the pattern probably asked for so anything knit would turn out quite a bit smaller.)
I’m well impressed with both the pattern, which was easy to follow, and the resulting hat, I mean cloche. It was super quick and super simple AND it turns out to be one of those items that follow this equation
minimal effort = fantastic result
I started it on the way to the clinic and finished it after I got home from my Indian Head Massage – I could have finished it sooner but I hadn’t even looked at the pattern so didn’t realise how easy it was and didn’t have a tape measure to hand so I guessed at 18″ and when I measured it when we got home it was actually 4″ too long.
What’d think?
As to the clinic appointment – we had to wait for a short time as my case notes hadn’t been sent down from the ward I had my PD line installed on – so we went for a cuppa and when we got back the Prof chased them up but when they still didn’t materialise he got to prove right his quip last time when he introduced us to the new doctor saying ‘I’ve seen Paula that much I don’t need the case notes’.
I’m getting another ‘week off’, which is just as well as B took a chance and booked next week off himself at the last minute hoping that I wouldn’t be on another Royal-cation, and I need to ring the ward on Monday 2 April to see if they have a bed for me then so we can start the third (and last) DT-PACE.
To prove that even Professors are human when I said that this suited us fine as B was off next week Prof said ‘Oh, that’s good. Are you going away?’ to which I said ‘No’ but B said ‘It’s a bit hard with dialysis’. Prof then accused himself of being thick (especially as he’d only just confirmed what days I went for dialysis) and B actually disagreed – allegedly Mrs Prof wouldn’t have.
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