You know when something funny happens to you, but you can’t really explain properly why it’s funny?
OK.
My friend A and I work at events together – specifically, Comic Con style conventions. If you know anything about events, you’ll know that they can be high pressure, and very demanding on both body and mind. You have long days of firefighting and trying to be everywhere at once, while wearing your best game face and repeatedly saying ‘this is fine’. Throw in random encounters with celebrities, whether a planned photoshoot with the Doctor or a chance conversation at the hotel bar, and you have a unique environment where the show must go on, and normal rules don’t apply.
It’s wonderful and terrible all at once.
Anyway, by the time you get to Saturday evening you’ve probably reached a state of giddiness brought on by mental exhaustion, the sense of being outside the real world, and (chances are) a couple of beers. And on one such occasion, while standing outside a nondescript London hotel, A and I observed a man in a hat.
The hat was great. It was black, with a very wide brim. Very wide. The ‘body’ of the hat was quite short, making the brim seem even wider.
I want to reiterate that the hat was a great hat, the man was rocking it. I admired his style.
I pointed out the hat to A. We both looked at it, appreciatively. We both knew instinctively that we shouldn’t shout ‘GREAT HAT!’ to the man, as he’d almost certainly think we were being sarcastic or otherwise take it amiss.
Unfortunately, we both very much wanted to shout it. Being unable to do so, we started to giggle. We failed to keep it together and decided we had to go inside immediately lest the man notice.
We made it inside just before one of us (or possibly both, I forget) exclaimed ‘HAT’ much in the way that a goose would, if a goose could speak. If you tried to write it down it’d be along these lines: hhhhAAAHt.
The word ‘hat’ had now become the funniest thing anyone had ever said or would ever say. Particularly in the goose voice but over the remainder of the evening, and the next day, we found plenty of variations that also turned out to be funny. We swapped the word for other words in normal sentences (Hatting a nice day?). We texted hat emojis. We said it to each other as we passed on the show floor, as though it was a coded message. We absolutely cracked ourselves up, and continue to do so a year down the line.
It seemed only fitting that we agreed to exchange hats when we next saw each other – which will be in just a few weeks, at the same convention. I wanted to make him something cool, and while I’m not sure I’ve hat the mark, I gave it my best hat.
It’s another Musselburgh (Ravelry link), but I intend to distress and accessorise it, having been inspired by the Pierced Fisherman Beanie from Caps Apparell. I used aran yarn – the final scraps from my grey jumper – and 5mm needles. I used about 45g each of light and dark grey, then soaked and stretched to give a bit more length.
You can see how this hat ended up by reading the post here.
The Crafty Yarnster 