Today would be my father’s 70th birthday. He died at the age of 40. I was 14. The picture here is his high school graduation photo. That’s me in 4th grade below his picture.

My face is the spitting image of this man, especially his eyes. I’m built like mom, and my eyes are brown like hers, but the sparkle in them is pure “Pete.”

My father loved me deeply. He especially encouraged my poetry, because he was a writer/journalist/communications professor and loved words. He also encouraged my music. I remember him teaching me to sing harmony. When I finally got it, it was magic! I’ll never be the same. Now I sing harmony with my husband Brian, in our duo The Fabulous Heftones.

Daddy used to joke about the color purple. You really couldn’t find anything that color in the 60s. If something was silly or odd, he’d make a joke about it being purple.

My father never spanked or hit me, but he used to tease that if we were bad, at Christmas we’d get a purple whip in our stockings. Who knows where a gentle soul came up with that idea! But the story continues…

Our family opened gifts on Christmas Eve, as did the other Norwegian relatives. So on Christmas morning, to make it a bit more fun, we would buy each other “stocking presents” to open. For years the limit was $0.50 per gift, later it went up to $1. We would go to the next town where there was a five and dime, and split up, one kid with either parent, looking for gifts for the other two folks. Then we’d switch parents and shop again.

One year my brother was perhaps 4 years old. As he and mom were shopping for Dad, the kind lady at the store asked if she could help. Eric said “do you have a purple whip?” My mother was mortified, and had to explain the whole thing to the clerk. They looked and looked all over that store for something purple, and the only thing that they could find was a washcloth with lilac and purple stripes. Mom had to let dad in on the joke so he could laugh appropriately when he opened his gift on Christmas morning.

Last year, I painted my porch and my front door purple. It was the only color that would really be right. Daddy would understand.

May he rest in peace.

I got so excited about the mohair hat, that when I had two hours at the community center watching the computer lab today, I cast on for a new hat. I used the yarn that my friend Mandy had given me for Christmas. We work together at the center, so it seemed the right task for the time I had.

It feels great, it looks beautiful. I swatched and took a measurement, but the “gauge of the hour” struck again and got me when I was not looking! The mohair hat was just a bit too big so I rounded down, but once I paired that with the gauge change I ended up with a hat way too small. It could fit a child, but I want it to be mine.

It could be one of those fashionable beanies that fit the head tightly, except that my style is not that sort of fashionable. I guess I’m “stylin’” but not in fashion. And that is as I wish it to be.

If you like knitting it, you’ll like knitting it again! (I say that a lot sometimes.)