The Year Long Scat

"So what do you call that," I asked Kendal Calquhoun. "A hat-scarf, a harf, a scaharfat, what?"

Kendal shrugged. "A scat I guess."

"Why aren't you wearing it right now?" I asked him.

From behind the counter at Mud Bay Coffee, between drink orders, Kendal patiently answered, "It's ultra warm, it's really heavy and just bulky. It's hard to be doing things while you're wearing it. It's more of a sitting in the cold type of hat."

Kendal knitting his hat at Moon Base about a few
days before completing the project.
photo by: Kaylani, Oct 26, 2011

In October last year, under the instruction of our community's knitting guru Claire, Kendal learned how to knit. His first effort, a small gray test-swatch, is still attached to his key chain as a token of remembrance. After that, he began his hat. One year and nine skeins of yarn later, it is finished. "I wanted a wizard's hat. I wanted it to be a little over the top," says Kendal. "I knew it was done when it was dragging on the ground. It had taken so long I was ready to be finished. I just wanted to wear it."

The red and grey portions of Kendal's hat are knit with an alpaca and wool blend. The green at the end was knit with extremely soft baby alpaca. His yarns were purchased at Canvas Works downtown. "If you're gonna start knitting one, you'd better know your a patient person," Kendal recommends. "I knew I'd be able to finish it... I had an idea how long it would take, I didn't think it would be an entire year."

As a friend of Kendal's, I can confirm the patience he speaks of. I can't say I've encountered more patience in my life. But the man is not a machine. There were times during the project where boredom set in. "I got to the point where I had to take a break. There was a couple of times where I just didn't knit it for like a month." Learning new techniques helped keep the project interesting, though. "There was a lot of experimenting with knit patterns and ways of knitting where I took my rights as the person making it to go ahead and try."

Kendal learned from his experiments, though they didn't always go as planned. "In one of my experiments doing different knit patterns I ended up adding 40-plus stitches," He says. "After I screwed that part up I probably spent a good four hours fixing it."

Kendal also kept busy while he knit, exercising his multitasking muscles. "I listened to music, watched movies, rode in cars, came to Bible Study, sat by the fireplace [at Mud Bay]." When the hat was long enough to wear while knitting, he took full licence to knit wherever he wanted. "I walked around downtown, went to the Co-op, antique shopping."

During his walks downtown, he encountered a couple very curious folks. "I'd have the tail end and yarn in my bag and the part I was working on out in front of me," he explains. "People who didn't necessarily look like they understood I was knitting, but saw I had seven sticks in front of me, would come up like 'Whoa! What are you doing?'"

Next on Kendal's knitting agenda? Mittens. With a twist, of course. "I want the sleeves to be long, long," he says. With one hand outstretched as though a mitten coveres it, he draws his other hand up his arm and out past his head to demonstrate. "I'll have to fold them over my arm in order to wear them."