Last year, my daughter asked if I would knit her a turkey hat for the five-mile Turkey Trot run in Prospect Park on Thanksgiving morning. For almost a decade, she and her former college roommate have run this race together, getting up early to start the day with a little healthy exercise. My contribution generally involved picking up their race numbers at the running store on 14th Street; I once went to watch the race (too early, too cold, too boring), but generally I sleep through the whole thing, before I get up to start making stuffing.
Notwithstanding, I am here to tell you, in the Thanksgiving spirit, that I am still a better mother than you will ever be, because last year I knitted not one, not two, not three, but four matching turkey hats, since my daughter had also roped in her younger brother, plus a good friend from graduate school.
When I say a turkey hat, I don’t want you to picture something with a bird’s head and a fan of feathers. My daughter wanted a brown hat with two stuffed drumsticks artfully positioned, one on each side — you know, like wearing a roasted turkey just out of the oven on your head. I think she had some doubts about whether I could or would come through. She mentioned the need for four matching turkey hats at regular intervals last fall.
If you search “turkey hat” on the popular knitting site Ravelry, there are plenty of patterns available for crocheted turkey hats and there are knitted turkey hats. Many make it look as if you have a live turkey — well, a turkey made of yarn — sitting on your head, with a face and feathers. But we went for the more austere but profoundly Thanksgiving-y pattern made to look like the centerpiece of the feast, roasted but not yet carved — and made out of yarn.
I looked at the pattern more carefully. You knit a basic brown watchcap and then make two matching drumsticks, brown again, but with white cuffs, stuff the drumsticks and sew them to the side of the hat. So I had promised (had I?) to knit four beanies, and eight — count ’em, EIGHT — drumsticks. To be honest, I had a slight sinking feeling. I imagined three hats done and one not even started. I pictured someone running with only one drumstick, surely a bad metaphor for a footrace.
But my husband observed that they resembled the winged helmet of Hermes, a more promising image for runners.
I knit a lot. But I knit in a kind of open-ended way, always expecting projects to take a while. When my kids were small, I made them sweaters, and I always aimed for a size a couple of years older, figuring that if I got done fast, wearing a loose sweater never hurt anyone. It’s all about growing into it. I do miss the days when my children were small and some hard maternal work on (for example) a penguin sweater or a lighthouse sweater or a particularly colorful striped garment could end up coloring a child’s identity for a while.
(As I thought about those days, I felt a strong desire to go unearth those particular sweaters, all carefully packed away, and remember the child bodies they adorned, and maybe even reflect on the possibility of grandchildren — but I recognized this clearly as the desire to take comfort in what I had already done instead of doing the job at hand — like reading back over what you have already written when you are up against the deadline for a new and still unwritten piece.)
I went to the local yarn store (LYS, we call it, in the online knitting world) and bought a quantity of soft brown bulky synthetic yarn, with some elements of velour, suitable, I hoped, for keeping the head warm on an early morning November run, without being scratchy. And a little white to make the ends of the drumsticks.
I made a beanie, converting from the pattern, which was for a baby; needless to say, the calculations were complex. The author of the pattern, Elise Lopez, had helpfully added some suggestions for making larger sizes, for older children or adults. Even so, the first hat came out too small, too tight. I had to pull it out, or, as we say in the knitting world, frog it. Made another one, bigger this time, and made it a little longer than the pattern called for, so the wearer would have the option of cuffing the bottom. This one seemed right, so I started on the second, then the third. Worse comes to worst, I thought, if I never figure out the drumsticks part, they can be Team Brown Beanie. But I did not have the nerve to mention this to my daughter.
I was touched that my daughter, who would be unlikely to wear anything ostentatiously hand-knit, and can’t stand wool next to her skin, had made this request. It implied faith: My mom can do it, my mom can knit anything! Although actually, my daughter’s regular somewhat anxious check-ins carried more the suggestion that I was the kind of poor planner who might easily make the wrong number of hats, or make hats with the wrong number of turkey legs.
I felt intimidated by the legs, and especially by the fact that they had to be stuffed. I am fairly experienced with stuffing turkeys, and in fact, I make two different stuffings every Thanksgiving, in order to resolve the tension between the chestnut-herb people and the sausage faction (and yes, I do stuff the turkey, with the chestnut-herb stuffing, and yes, I know the experts say not to, but they’re full of, well, stuffing).
I ordered some fiber fill stuffing. It was apparently sold by the bale; a package arrived with enough to stuff several life-size Thanksgiving turkeys, if they happened to be made of yarn. I knitted the first drumstick, a brown yarn lollipop with a white shaft. I stuffed the brown ball of the lollipop, then the brown and white shaft, which ended in a little scalloped knob. Seven to go.
I made and stuffed my eight drumsticks. I made my four brown stretchy hats. I had to recuse myself from some of the other traditional Thanksgiving preparations, like moving the piles of unread mail off the dining room table, or shifting the heaps of newspaper out of the living room, because I was frantically sewing drumsticks onto watchcaps, trying to attach them firmly so they wouldn’t flop around, trying to get them at the appropriate angle, and keep each hat symmetrical (again, I felt it would be bad luck to send anyone out for a footrace wearing a turkey with an obvious orthopedic abnormality).
Four turkey hats. On Thanksgiving morning, my two runners headed out early for Brooklyn, carrying the hats for the other two. As my reward, I stayed under the blankets a while, then got up and began to make my two stuffings.
My own favorite part of Thanksgiving morning is what my children call “stuffing breakfast,” a small bowl of fresh stuffing, after it’s been mixed but before it’s been baked, and I was able to have that ready for the turkey trotters when they returned, triumphant, cheeks red, turkey hats bobbing (stuffing breakfast is served only after the baking pans have been filled and the turkey stuffed — and yes, I rigorously separate everything that is going to touch the turkey, thank you very much).
The runners assured me that Team Turkey Hat had attracted a fair amount of attention. I expressed the unselfish holiday hope that my children, at least, had explained to all admirers that the hats were their mother’s handiwork. They were more interested in what photos had been posted on social media.
This Thanksgiving, they are going to race in Manhattan, and all four of them are running again — in their hats. I may even go watch, if it’s not too chilly. But I was deeply gratified to get a notification that the hat pattern I used had been revised to include adult sizes. I like to think I’ve helped start a trend. Soon all the cool people will be wearing turkey leg hats. Happy knitting.
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